With musical intent

Gordon Monahan is a sound artist and composer based in Toronto and Berlin. The first two of the three pieces included in the 2007 edition of Drunken Boat are a beautiful crossover between percussion and musical instrument. Percussion is sometimes defined as an instrument with no discernible pitch or overtones, a noise instrument. The pieces included here vacillate between the repetition of a beat on a musical instrument and the more erratic sounds of drumming. Not quite a drum circle, not quite the order of a traditional composition, Monahan beautifully toes the line between the two. A nice Tuesday listening....

ps I love the above photo, which makes laptop-ism look downright rock star cool.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet. FK, May 17, 1910

noise of art

If, like me, you are intensely curious about new media art yet completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of its back catalogue, you may already be acquainted with Ubuweb. UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. It is an invaluable resource to sample the work of historical media artists, in particular sound and spoken poetics makers, which may otherwise be difficult to experience in traditional settings (like galleries or museums.) Most recently, they have added a catalog called "1000 avant garde films," a feature which hosts the work of filmmakers like Derek Jarman, Lev Manovich and Paul McCarthy. You now can decide how you really feel about Stockhausen or familiarize yourself with C. Spencer Yeh in the comfort of your own Bose headphones.