Japanese sound artist, Mamoru Okuno, transforms everyday objects and practice into musicalinstruments.
Okuno’s artistic practice crosses over sound/music and visual art. He looks into the simple gestures and the complex social condition of the everyday life at the same time, and brings out the “beauty” of the sound that derives from there. It results as the live performances, where artist becomes the host to invite and guide the guests introducing the subtle sound that they might have heard but never intentionally listened to. It is a type of relational art in a sense that he interacts with audience to create and share the experience in time and the environment on spot. The video works crystallize the ritual aspects of the performance and stresses more of his visual and conceptual ideas. It is also realized as the installation works consisted of the ordinal furniture and everyday objects with the visual/written instructions for the audience/visitor to explore the sound by themselves. In his latest project entitled “etude for everyday life”, he started to highlight and incorporate the everyday objects and practices as the main material to create intimate listening experience. The objects such as plastic straws, food wrap, ice, steel hanger, instant noodle, electric kettle, and microwave are employed to make the sound. He also integrate everyday practices such as purchasing products, eating food, drinking into his work as means to create his art work. He extracts the essence or forms and rearrange them in a different way in order to create the unexpected sound experience. His affirmation goes towards the things that our highly rationalized society would ignore or regard as worthless. He looks at them from a different perspective, also listen to them, and present the opportunity for the audience to rediscover and live their lives creatively.
I tried to change the way I pressed the tap in the toilet:
Tap 1:
Tap 2:
2) Interesting Finding: Bruno Zamborlin
Bruno Zamborlin is a technologist, researcher, musician and designer. He’s been working on a joint PhD in computational technologies between Paris and London, exploring new methods for gestural interaction and its applications in performing arts and the creation of new musical instruments. Bruno is interested in the topic of Interactive Machine Learning and the possibility of allowing the artist to interact with the entire supervised learning process and the creation and design of his own gesture vocabulary. The early results of this research is Mogees, which uses contact microphones to turn any touchable surface into a musical instrument.
3) SOUND SEMIOTICS OF THE KITCHEN: MARTHA ROSLER
Semiotics of the Kitchen is a feminist parody video and performance piece released in 1975 by Martha Rosler. The video, which runs six minutes, is considered a critique of the commodified versions of traditional women’s roles in modern society.
Followed by this is something done by Robin James with Rosler as the reference.
This project is a sound- and social-media-based reperformance of Martha Rosler’s 1975 video “The Semiotics of the Kitchen.” Rosler’s work is one of the foundational texts in what was then the brand new genre of video art. It was also an early-ish participant in the tide of feminist art that would sweep the artworld in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the video, Rosler dissects the gestural semiotics of common kitchen and culinary tools, one for each letter of the alphabet (except u-z). Her gestures are exaggerated and often violent (e.g., the stabbing with the fork or the ice pick); this suggests the patriarchal “violence” that relegates women to kitchens, to “second shift” domestic work, and so on.
There are sounds in the video, but, because it’s a video, its focus is on the gestures and motions Rosler’s body makes while using the kitchen implements. I wanted to focus on the sounds themselves. And not the sounds of kitchen labor, but the sounds that kitchen implements can make when used in non-standard, non-utility-driven ways. In 2012 we generally recognize that the kitchen is the studio in which culinary artsare made (Modernist Cuisine, sugar art/sculpture, cake art, etc.). But what about the sound art potential of everyday kitchen gadgets, furnishings, and pantry items? I basically used the kitchen as one big concret gamelan, so to speak. Can the home kitchen be something other than a site of sheer drudgery and “second-shift” labor?
I guess because I come from a more third-wave feminist perspective, I don’t see the kitchen or domestic labor that’s traditionally gendered feminine as inherently or necessarily oppressive. Patriarchy makes it that way; even so, women have always found ways to exercise agency, to make something interesting out of their drudgery. (I disagree here with Beauvoir—and with Elaine Miller’s reading of SdB on this—I do think repetitive, domestic labor can, when twerked/reworked/remixed, be the site of transcendence rather than just immanence.) I wanted to consider the implements as something more than just tools or labor-saving devices. I wanted to play around with their purely sonic properties—so, I generated sounds by doing things with them that weren’t generally part of their intended functioning. So, for example, I blew through the teensy holes in the zester; I often played things like percussion instruments (the Pyrex dishes, the measuring implements, the dish rack, the knife). I did not generally use the objects as intended: I treated them as sound-producing objects, manipulating them to maximize sound output.
Because Rosler focused on objects, I focused mainly on objects. I am considering doing a second alphabetic series dedicated mainly to the sounds of actions (specific cooking techniques, etc.).
The 27th tweet in the series is really important: if you watch Rosler’s video, you see that at the very end she shrugs her shoulders. It’s like she breaks character for a minute, inserting some humor and levity into an otherwise very serious, even dour, performance (or, a performance she knows will be interpreted as dour, because of sexist expectations that women are always uber-cheerful). So, I ended with a sting/rimshot/ba-dum ching.
Tools
I stuck as closely as I could to Rosler’s original list of implements. I changed a few (E, H) because I didn’t already own the devices she used; I added letters u-z. I followed her format of using the tool, then saying its name. It
My departures from Rosler’s list, as well as the differences between, say, my measuring implements and her measuring implements, reflect the vast changes in American kitchens, diets, and culinary culture (foodie culture) in the 35-ish years since Rosler’s video was filmed. For example, it was really easy for me to find something for the letter W: most middle-class white people have woks in their kitchen, and they’re sold at Wal-Mart and Target. Similarly, my fancy measuring cups from Crate & Barrel clearly function as both design objects and utilitarian ones (that’s why one buys something like this from C&B, rather than just some perfectly functional ones from Wal-Mart or the kitchen supply store). This reflects the aestheticization of food into foodie culture.
Rosler
James
Apron
Apron
Bowl
Bowl
Chopper
Chopping
Dish
Dish Rack
Egg Beater
Egg
Fork
Fork
Grater
Grater
Hamburger Press
Heating Element (on an electric stove)
Icepick
Ice Cube Tray
Juicer
Juicer
Knife
Knife
Ladle
Ladle
Measuring Implements
Measuring Implements
Nutcracker
Nutcracker
Opener
Opener
Pan
Pizza Cutter
Quart Bottle
Quiche Dish
Rolling Pin
Rolling Pin
Spoon
Slotted Spoon
Tenderizer
Torch
Utensils
Utensils (in a drawer)
V
Vermouth
W
Wok
X
PyreX Dishes
Y
Yogurt
Z
Zester
Method
1. Audioboo—It was easy, intuitive, and free.
a. I recorded one or two sounds every day (or so) for about three weeks. I published each individual “letter” as I recorded it, so the initial publication of the project unfolded over a few weeks.
2. Twitter—This initially grew out of SoundingOut’s #tweetasound project. (Here‘s their round-up.) I used twitter because, well, when I started tweeting kitchen sounds—initially, the sound of the first three speeds on my mixer, or the crust of a loaf of bread I just baked—I didn’t have this specific project in mind. But, I think there are good reasons for using twitter (see #4 below).
3. Storify—collects and organizes items across social media platforms. This was an easy way for me to collect each individual tweet and publish them together with this blog post. Basically, Storify is like my editing suite.
4. Why these social media tools?
a. Well, I wanted the technology to be as easy, intuitive, and widely available to the average user as, say, a fork and a knife, or a set of measuring cups are. Women are socialized to “just know” how to use basic kitchen tools; they’re not usually socialized to “just know” how to use more than the most basic consumer-grade audio technology. I wanted to use technology that was already in the kitchen—smartphones, social media, etc.
b. This also goes back to Rosler’s original: video is a consumer technology that is used in people’s domestic environment. This is why we have, for example, Bill Wegman’s dog videos, or Sadie Benning’s early video work. It’s not an expert technology. It’s something people use to record, document, and facilitate their daily routines.
c. Of course what social media does is complicate public/private distinctions: I’m broadcasting from my kitchen in my pajamas (seriously! I made most of these recordings right after breakfast, before I even showered.) Jasbir Puar talks about the ways neoliberalism reworks public/private distinctions (using a reading of Lawrence v Texas). Similarly, neoliberalism has found ways to extract surplus value from care and service work, from social relations, from all those things that used to be women’s work, domestic/private, etc. By using social media like twitter, Instagram, Audioboo, etc., I do the same thing, turn what was once private and domestic into something that’s neither “public” nor “private” in the traditional sense.
i. Relatedly: if the private/domestic was gendered feminine under classical liberalism, how is femininity different under neoliberalism? There’s both femininity as a logic or structure, and femininity as qualities, properties, etc. I suspect they both change. But how?
Next Steps
1. I may re-record some “letters” to get better sonic results. Maybe.
2. I am strongly considering doing the “verb” or activity version (this would be the “object” version).
3. I need to consider if—and if so, how—I want to “show” this work in a more official artworld-y way.
REFLECTIONS:
I feel that it is very interesting to use daily objects, something we often take granted for or have overlooked to create sounds and even make sound art from them.
As for the first artist mentioned, Mamoru Okuno, I didn’t know that such sounds can be created from blowing into a noodle. The most I could have thought of was 1) crushing the noodle 2) breaking the noodle into halves and shaking them in 1 bag 3) hitting the dry noodles together.
As for the second artist, Bruno Zamborlin, he leverages on technology as well as physical objects to create sounds from it. Although that will require some investment and skills (such as the touch-microchip detector technology placed on the bicycle), I find it a very cool invention worth sharing. Even though it may be a little high on budget for first year students, it may still be applicable for us as we advance further in ADM and perhaps we can explore a similar type of technology. (This is more so for those with interactive media specialisations, like me 🙂 )
As for the third artist, Martha Rosler, she is directional and is clear on the subject matter of her performance piece. Despite the focus on feminism, I would like to bring the attention to the kitchen tools she is using. These are also daily objects that we come across and when pieced together, can form interesting sounds. This may also be a direction I want to work for project 2.
