Wednesday 9th April.
After 11 months patient struggle, we finally have a new and permanent studio space.
17B Ellingfort Rd, Hackney, London E8.
At last music for bodies work can really continue.
Thursday 14th February
Ok yes, I love your ears and souls oh audience and won't put you through my feeble struggles.
Back to the practise room / VIetnam - oh teacher, where could you be ?
I will pink ball a performance of solo trumpet lines from "Men Being Butterflies" instead.
Tuesday 12th February
Admit it. Only one in every seven notes or so is really worth listening to.
Yes, back to that familiar struggle of the acoustic musican - the live player - the performer.
So much pleasure in the doing and sometimes so little in the listening back.
And with this sound system its brutal.
I am attempting to make music out of microtoanl bending and shaping of single plucked notes.
Each one should be diamond.
Monday 11th February
I am at GRM, Maison Radio, Paris, France on a week's residency. They really look after me.
I work slowly and carefully with my dan-bau in the middle of a circle of eight big speakers.
The room is huge and comfortable, sounds fabulous and is full of acousmatic history.
I work with David's pink ball interface, plucking then drawing a note around the room as I
shape its pitch en meme temps. It's slow work, requires the accuracy of Bed composing,
but the labour rewards.
Monday January 14th
After two years making multichannelled music to feel, I am back on a table working small but direct with physical instruments to make music. The Bed work is a stunning teaching in the experience of the human enjoyment of music. Working direct with the human body as map, as score, only adds to that learning. The amount we have covered reveals we have only just begun this work, but back on a table, with oh so fresh ears and a vibrating string box back under my hands, the life in this music is fabulous and I wonder how I have left it so long.
Tuesday January 1st 2008
I am humbled and tenderized: bashed back to animal by elements slapping
on the Isle of Skye for a week.
2008 feels calm and Hampstead Heath's New Year's Day huddles of arm in arm
perambulators strangely 18th century as we paddle through the organised mud
in herds, reassuringly chatting of the better things to come.
Spot a herd of Red Deer running the far side of a black heather covered valley
and you might think they were Velociraptors.
Monday 1st October
Back in Mexico City where the gallery has become a place there across the square
where scruffy dogs meander, old men play chess and later bash out funky songs in
trios as the sun comes down. Inside there is the Body of the Bench, made in concrete
from the plans that did come through fine after all.
Right now it all seems pretty miraculous.
Monday 12th February
It's -26C. It sounds much scarier than it is. In reality it means that prepping to go outside is a lengthy business and the nose freezing inside is an intriguing sensation. Am being silent and reclusive. Breaking from one Bed to make music or sleep in the other. The light is more than stunning. So quiet.
Monday January 1st 2007
London surely reaching for the sky exponentially.
Wednesday 13th September
It's all so obvious.
We talk, we play, I move his sounds in the Bed as he plays.
The duetting is very close and precise. We are super focussed
with our time and productive. We are working in new arenas
for both of us with such trust and we don't know where we will end up.
Tuesday 12th September
No time to waste. Bed is unpacked and installed in the main space at Rich Mix
looking onto Bethnal Green Road. We are about to begin 5 months of working in
a truly open studio : open to to look into and out of, and open for anyone to enter.
Shri arrives this afternoon to begin our collaboration to make a new work.
He plays instruments.
How will I handle these in the Bed ?
Monday 11th September
We are angry. Bed comes back from ARS on time but damaged. After all that
careful packing for the trip out and then such high standards of skill
and care by the technicians at the OK Centrum, its extremely disappointing
that the pack up for the way home somehow fell short. Only one thin layer of bubble
wrap around the polished ends, again, packed into a huge container lorry which
bumped its way back here, the flimsy packing torn to shreds on arrival.
Friday 1st September.
We should be open 24 hours
Thursday 31st August.
Visitors flood in continuously, surprised and delighted at the experience. Many
think that its interactive and climb out commenting on the subtlety of the
interactivity.
" .....so is it the weight of my buttocks or their temperature that causes those gorgeous
bass frequencies to modulate ? "
I am spending all and every day watching people experience it and answer their questions.
It's fascinating and they love it
So much for the conference.
Wednesday 30th August.
The workers give it a test and realise what all the work was about.
It's only now that I realise how wooden and cozy/analogue? this work is.
The other side of that curtained door there are hundreds of computers and
monitors and black surfaces and visibly fast moving hard surfaced technology
and dark dark rooms. Here the white blinds sway in the summer breeze and bodies
trip happy on simple music.
The OK centrum is presenting the Interactive Arts Prize winners for ARS Electronica 2006.
Wednesday 30th August.
Good morning and David has arrived to sort the automated loading of
appropriate software on booting of the computer. Also fine tuning the
webcam causing visitor presence to turn the Bed music on and off.
We are running on a new MacMini which is a small and powerful Intel
Mac that will run without monitor. Perfect for installations. However, it
had required new versions of Max and MOTU driver updates in London,
so this is the first time we have run all this together. We test and retest.
Meanwhile I get in Bed and wire up all the amps and speakers and by
noon we are happily running. ~ and doesn't she sound sweet.
Tuesday 29th August
I have arrived and so did Bed. Fine and fast.
Our space at the OK Centrum für Garegenwartskunst, is large, still and block wooden floored
with big windows that they are already making plain white blinds for. After a welcome ARS glass,
Rudi, Hans and Kaffe come down and unwrap and measure and screw it all together.
It's essential for the Bed to sit 100% square abnd horizontal otherwise the corners and tops won't
slip perfectly into place. Its late but Freidl's rule and Austrian diligence solves the wobbly floor and
we're not too late for sleeping.
Thursday 24th August.
ARS have sent a huge lorry driven by a really nice Hungarian guy who doesn't
speak a word of English and has been super struggling with this massive machine
and Tower Hamlets parking zones all night not to mention getting a cup of tea.
But the early morning sun revives spirits and we strap our tiny load into the front of his
huge box with a wing and a prayer and hope all that paper work does the job.
See you on the other side!
Wednesday 23rd August.
We are packing Bed to ship to ARS. The first time it has been abroad and the first time
I have had to pack a work that won't fit in my suitcase.
Rich Mix had kindly offered flight cases but the cost and amount of time available was
too much so we use bubble wrap and cardboards edges. With the super polished side
panels and polished hard wood tops, this is very time consuming work.
Friday 18th August
I am happily ensconsed in Bed quietly working on piece for ARS Electronica. Surprise, Bed
won a Distinction in the Digital Musics category, so it has to be shipped out to Linz next
week. In the interim, I shall do things to the piece that I have known that it needs, adding
new phrases, remixing /replacing old ones, removing a few dudds. With six months of
focused work at Annette Works with Alex and David and all those visitors and their feedback,
this concentration alone now is fabulous and I am so fast with it .
Wednesday 16th August.
Elated but wounded. Moving has its side effects.
We empty the studio and move the Sonic Bed and all its essentials into the Glass Room
at Rich Mix on Bethnal Green Road. Good to be back in this stomping ground. I had
a studio at the other end of Brick Lane back in 1998 when you couldn't get a cup of
coffee down there. Now when I pop out for my first fresh baked bagel, I bump into 2
artist friends I had barely seen since those days, so its all very welcoming and timely.
Tuesday August 15th
6 years working with this space just here, and now its time to go.
music for bodies and Annette Works are being kicked out, but the new and local
arts space, Rich Mix, invites us in for a commission and residency with Sonic Bed
in their large, street facing studio, - right into the arms of the public.
Things couldn't be better.
Thursday 3rd August
MIDI be gone.
at last i have a truly musical bit of hardware
and built by an old friend i met 10 years ago
and again was behind something
brilliant found on the web.
Friday 28th July
visitors come for new bed piece enjoyment.
lots of 24Hz at butt + spine makes them stoned and starving for meat.
Friday 21st July
great summer heat.
crikey
hot in the bed
i can barely walk after an afternoons making
Thursday 20th July
now i hear nothing from Akram in Beirut.
here our suffering is the blue blue sky and the heat in the city and having to water our window boxes a lot.
who can i contact in the media?
http://beirutupdate.blogspot.com/
Wednesday June 28th
i was here yesterday for about 15 minutes.
i had come to return and buy some vibracoustic speakers.
i drove all the way back south thinking of ways of combining them with woofers.
Tuesday June 27th
its a long time since i've been on the open road alone.
how would this journey pass with a sub woofer playing the balancing to the road's frequencies all the way ? of course, the volume would alter with the accelerator .
Monday May 22nd
they give you a choice of synthesized strings, whale song or something ambient.
i needed to do this in silence as of course once naked and in and the lid had slowly closed down sealing me into this soft warm blue goo that my body lay on quite obediently, everything got very noisy.
there was my heart and blood thud thud thud pump pump and the high pitched whine in the ears and images of Sigourney Weaver emerging from 3 million years in outerspace.
then my body felt like it was bending and contorting through some multidimensional magnetic field as tensions released over surfaces that weren't there.
one hour is too short a session.
Thursday 13th May
i think i'm exhausted from the fan noise of the power supply.
Or is it that I have been playing 24hz into my shoulders for 2 minutes at a fff vibration level that causes this semi mulch sensation of bodily tissue.
Friday 12th May
i'm learning how to make shapes with sound. i mean really, in this pretty arduous scientific kind of way. it’s a several stage process and I need to be more disciplined (oi. hark at her!).
Years of running with the idea that emerges as I make I have to put aside to be able to complete the thing I am attempting to make first. The list of asides grows too fast.
Still as usual there is the added layer of when feeling the sound it makes something else.
A single sound increasing and decreasing in volume creates a growing mound sensation.
Play a sound next to it and the one nearest the ear dominates.
Play the same sound in a plane opposite it and the sound leaves its mound sensation and moves in a line back and forth across the bed.
Add in the neighbouring sound and the effect is increased changing the single line shape into a geometric pattern.
This is the way to make a lattice effect over the body.
(or, are these ideas just impossible and again its the imagination driving what ends up being days of wasted time?)
Tuesday May 2nd
possible outlets for Sonic Bed.
Healing Music: everyone comments on feeling so relaxed after a ride
Sleeping Music: 4 out of 5 people who lie on bed for more than 10 minutes will fall asleep.
Sex therapy : certain frequencies cause sensations similar to orgasm. When played all over the body at the same time, the effect is startling.
Dietary Aid: certain frequencies played under the top of the back causes the heart rate to increase and therefore metabolism.
Saturday April 15th
7am.
This morning I am so in China it's textbook. The spring sunshine shines fresh. The red star and crescent flag flaps gently outside my window. No traffic on the street, just people, walking. Old woman ruddy cheeks, no more than 5' tall strides up the pavement, young bright faced woman on corner with pancake and banana in a bag waiting, old man on bike in blue glides by, uplifting vigorous marching music fills the street with vitality!
Wednesday 12th April
e-2.org offer sponsorship to music for bodies.
yippee.
Tuesday 14th March
ok yes, so i was thinking that as i am deep in musicforbodies land and not performing, that this last year booked upcoming Mex show would be more of an installation performance using the bed software rather than a live playing beast. but david's work has produced this beast that plays a treat. I drive LiSa through it and am leaping in possible sound territories i've wanted to craft through for ages.
Saturday 11th March
do coffee with David at the new café that plays unreleased serbian rock music and has an out of London suburban feeling (Reading?). a pleasant relief from the the new urban wealth that swarms over the Broadway on saturdays and phew warm inside.
i propose the 6 channel version of the bed software idea for the mexico show and we plan how to do it. yip. at last a multichannelled instrument not based on stereo.
Thursday March 9th
swinging into Hoxton St, pumping thighs pumping riding fastest to the pod for fish dinner and
bang, it hits me.
the whole street went translucent and i'm slammed by a 'this is it' as clear and static as a glass bubble moment.
this is all it is.
that woman with her kid and that man with his chips and this bend and bump in the road
this is all it is.
Tuesday 7th March
i'm having the best time preparing for the Mexico show.
today they sent jpegs of the venue so i'm planning to do this
Friday 24th February
scores in floors 3
Thursday 23rd February
scores in floors 2
Wednesday 22nd February
scores in floors 1
Tuesday 21st February
back in shanghai oh land of noise and glorious food. stage one of worldwide sonic bed project gets underway.
February 19th 2006
Surface Membranes for Bed.
thinking on other surface membranes for prone sonic bed bodies considering the possibility of
1. lying on a trampoline type surface that is moved by air vibrations underneath.
2. lying beneath the surface with the sound.
3. the possibility of the air from the sound holding up the prone body, no solid physical surface. Sound therefore acting like some kind of fountain.
How loud would that have to be?
Friday January 27th.
i am surprised that i am surprised that the majority of people who listen to the music I make refer to it as sound. and why does this bother me?
Well it doesn’t. I mean I can hate music.
Right now, I rarely listen to it.
This morning I listened to Radigue’s Adnos part 1 3 times. I fairly floated to the studio. The night before, I listened to a cd of classical violin hits from China by a top young player (a gift from Bonny) which is surprisingly invigorating played very loud. That morning I had got up and listened to Trevor Watts Moiré Music, Janis Joplin, Hendrix ,Elton Dean’s Ninesense and Arthur Blythe’s Bush Baby.
The thing about sounds is that it seems folk can dismiss it as sounds and not therefore listen to it as they would music. Not give it the attention they would music.
But then is music given attention?
Well no….
Do people listen to sound as music, I mean hear the musicality in it ? and I guess with that I mean, listen to its flow
Wednesday January 25th.
Rearrange Annette Works studio as Music For Bodies Laboratory
No longer the solo performance practice needed middle of space.
Relocate mixer, computers, soundcard + 6channel system to north east side.
set big table and chairs by window, north .
install espresso and microwave machines on platform with chaise
clear south west corner for SONIC BED to be installed.
all shelf and contents moving requires sorting work from as far back as 1992.
Midi violin stuff seems dated and retro. a fabulous recording of bees swarming outside a wooden practice hall where Terry Riley’s in C is rehearsed is jammed and destroyed eek.
up and down ladders installing fat green velvet curtains. keep out that cold.
Wednesday January 5th
Derek got cremated today. beautifiul light filling North London chapel as his music played. he was really there. freezing outside. gathering in typical old style LMC backroom gig upstairs London pub room for wake after. inspiring to see us all again. full of love. all older and more wrinkled and getting grey and some falling apart but still at it. still making weird music. top.
Monday January 2nd
The only thing that seems important, alive, is the present.
When I see back, or look or listen to past things, I am amazed at what I used to be able to do or where I was, and have no understanding of how I did it or would ever be able to do it again.
It'd be useful to have an organised catalogue of what I have done in immediately accessible filing cabinets all directly linked to each other via immediate super highways in the brain. Memory that could remember and remember and be with that context again.
Its not just catalogue training, more like 'state' training too.
Actually, this is probably a very bad idea. desensitizes the now.
Maybe this no memory is what allows the possiblity of absolute absorption and sensitivity to the present of course.
A new year, a Dreamtime gal.
a time of not knowing.
this is good.
Sunday January 1st 2006
3pm
Dark.
Physical vibrations.
To make music from the vibrations of this moment.
Thick grey air so still it is almost malleable.
Solitary solo
alone in it.
This is it,
this now.
And now.
I have managed to clean the floor smooth.
Another new start.