JAC interview with Noam Chomsky discussing radical politics in relation to language, writing, philosophy, and rhetoric

JAC interview of Clifford Geertz discussing Anthropology in relation to writing, philosophy, and rhetoric.

Sound recording of a Jefferson County Historical Commission seminar in Beaumont, TX in April 1991, outlining the history of markers in Texas and the historic marker application process.

The idea for this piece came to me on a beautiful spring day as I listened, amazed, the music produced by droplets falling melting icicles. I was fascinated by the sonic complexity, the beauty of such a banal natural phenomenon, which usually receives very little attention. A channel had been dug. Melting in the slush, she would probably end up joining the swollen stream at the bottom of the stream. Everything was there: the climate, the tracks of development, the formal idea. Just be attentive.

Recording of Santiago Lanchares' Recordanto a Ma Juan.

"Li-Po" is a vision of the mysterious and millennial Chinese culture, supported by a composer also belonging to another mysterious and millennial culture (Andalusian). Carried out with a computer and using the "M" program, the work reflects a legendary soundscape, where the poet Li-Po is the central character, his adventures are told by a woman's voice, voice of Ana Mejias.

Recording of Bernadetta Matuszczak's Libera Me.

Recording of Iannis Xenakis' Voyage Absolu.

Dedicated to René Daumal Electroacoustic piece in three movements of non-Euclidean inspiration from the poetic work of René Daumal, "Le Contre-Ciel" (Ed. Gallimard)

My work is dedicated to the memory of Uncle Dalle, who died last year. Uncle Dalle, whose real name was Carl Gustav Wahlqvist, was my father's best friend, already from his earliest childhood. Uncle Dalle was born in Stockholm in the house next to ours where my father and I both were born. Then a day came when he also became one of my dear friends, especially after the death of my father. Uncle Dalle was a wonderful and cheerful person, he was extremely gifted in society and was always passionate about communication and discussion about everything and anything with anyone around him - from the diet method to food alive from Ann Wigmore until the last financial scandal. Under this pleasant surface hid a volcano which sometimes erupted. The person who happened to be the target of such an explosion was really in the heat of the moment. Uncle Dalle also wrote little songs, mostly about his friends in the Stockholm archipelago where he spent a lot of time. In some cases, I helped him with music notation because he couldn't read music himself. The compositional work began in a mode of great despair, where the futility of existence …

"Annazone" (Anna area), analogue concept of proximity with Amazon (Brazil equatorial forest). The singer is of Brazilian origin. During early childhood, the singer was especially impressed by the songs and cries of the birds and insects of the Brazilian forest. This sound world is entangled on several levels (vegetation, smells, noise, light, humidity in constant variation with the hours of the day and the night.) It is astonishing how much the human being is first able listen carefully to the sounds emanating from the vegetation, countless insects and multicolored birds, then imitate them, while adding their own distorting imagination In the forest the signals are slightly redundant to convey intelligibility in this complex environment. The sounds emitted may seem "vocalic" by far (allusions to our vocabulary: Kiveliukiu, Piahiuhuu, Kaijakukike, Jokokoka, Karemu, Hojonga ...), but birds and insects emit all the vocabulary of electronic music, harmonic sound more or less complex, passing through all kinds of impulse sounds until approaching the modulated noises.The volubility is so great that the listener does not succeed. s always really listen to these sound messages and tends to interpret them, especially simplify them. The singer not only imitates the song of birds, but generates, by …

This work is inspired on some pre-Columbian conceptions: man submitted to the forces of a giving universe, yet one that is demanding at the same time. In such a situation, man understands that all security is an illusion, and needs some kind of ritual in order to reconcile the opposites, and to restore the equilibrium of the cosmos. These trusts are not only protected at different levels of the musical structure of the piece, they also orient the criteria employed in the construction of sounds, in an attempt to explore the marginal zones of sound generation with digital media.

"Atlantis", as a piece of a triptych, is perhaps an offering to lost civilizations and their cultures.

We invest the birds of human qualities to create imaginary connections between them and the men. This is what the old storytellers did too, but at bottom the parable spoke of the relationship between man and man. Finally - through music - this piece also speaks about them and us. His composer has tried to pay attention to what the birds themselves know and can do for themselves: the melody, the rhythm, and the possible meanings of their intonation, which have been familiar to us for so long. This is not just the usual information of a coexistence of a million years. Precisely, what we pay attention to - here and now - is not something that is outside the limited world of man. Maybe it's something that exists in humans. This is in the depth of the unconscious, on which our existence of man is constructed. Whence these particular relations, these strange rhymes between the voice of man and that of the bird come from? The birds live around the cathedral already for a very long time. They were fluttering around her already when the towers rising to the heavens were still surrounded by a forest of scaffolds, and …

“Bosco : jardín al compás del deseo” is based on Hyeronimus Bosch’s triptych and especially, the painting on the right, “Musicians’ Hell”. Instead of translating visual images into music, there has been a representation from the unconscious of some relevant aspects like human nature metaphors and the metamorphosis of the objects, the presence of unnoble metal waiting for the alchemic mutation, the oneiric, the fantastic. The characters dance at the hands of Bosco, a huge mask-ball in honor of the goddess Dinamo.

Unetsu (The Egg): is based on a Butoh dance piece performed by the Japanese ensemble “Sankai Juku.” The text and corresponding soundscape are based on a poem I wrote after seeing a performance of this work. There is no direct connection between the theatre piece (similarly named) and this tape piece. Only the “global” theme and some of the imagery have been used in organizing this piece. Essentially the theme is one of life, death, transformation, and rebirth. I have structured the piece in an oratorio-style as follows: Introit, Stanza A, Recitative I, Stanza B, Recitative II, Stanza C, Extroit

Recording of Gerald Eckert's Klangräume 2. This is a work for piccolo and tape that examines both the instruments and electronics as well as the combination of graphics and sound/timbre. The aim was to create a relationship between graphical constructions and sound.

Work for tape supplied in 1/2 stereo track format. I want to broadcast it acousmatically. In this piece, I mainly tried to create connections between grainy sounds and the mechanics of rebounding. For example, the sound of a hand biting wood is mainly the accelerated mechanics of the rebound of each tooth on the wood. My sound material is almost entirely drawn from concrete sounds. A ping pong ball, a basket ball, the starting of a lawn mower, a door stopper, the neighing of a horse are all ingredients used to make the dish. Only once, I use an FM sound which contained morphologies similar to my material.

Recording of Javier Alvarez's Mambo a la bracque. The composer based this work on the famous mambo number: Caballo Negro (Black Horse), by the Pérez Prado. The composer wanted to create a mosaic of this piece by taking it apart and re-assembling it to create his own new piece. He included other electronic sounds to act as "glue" in holding it all together.

date: January 07, 1991 source: dat instruments: tms, dx7, synth, voice character: game with the fingers means: 24-track mixer, 4-track tape recorder, recorder: dat studio: spaces-cpm the alley of the Knights Templar 1207 Geneva description: computer keyboard vocals, vocals of potentiometers of analog synthesizer, keyboard vocals of the synthesizer of frequency modulation

Recording of Pierre Mariétan's Paysmusique symphonie. This work is for large ensemble and tape. It includes sections of a large crowd talking all at once and sections of a symphony orchestra performing a work.

Recording of Gilles Gobeil's Là où vont les nuages.... The composer states: "This "super-instrument" that the Midi system allows gives access to a host of sounds - simple or complex - which envelop and accompany the timbre of the Martenot waves but while remaining subject to the sensitivity of the performer's playing."

Recording of Radek Rejsek's Carmen campanarum. This work is an electroacoustic fantasy created from the sound of bells and vocals to the words "Deo gratias". The composer also used sounds of clockwork to symbolize the flowing of time while the bells act as a hymn to God as thanks for our existence. This work was produced in Audiostudiu Czech Ragio in Prague.

Recording of Alain Basso's Acéré. The intention was to create a piece about war. Different object sounds were recorded in the studio, to have a wider palette of percussion sounds. The idea is that these percussions gradually change. As in the repetition of a 'kata', a movement sequence in martial arts, the concentration becomes more intense and the sounds increasingly sharp, by playing on the harmonics they contain. To give a feeling of space to this movement, transformed soundscapes create an atmosphere with a progressive opening and a greater perception of the human presence.