30.7.11

... after the stunned silence ... on being asked why make a Women's Club?



















... well first off I really don't want to waste a whole lot of time arguing with the guys or gals or anyone really why its ok for us GIRRLSOUND to exist. But given that 'one' will get asked, I've been putting together a (working ) mission statement - a general one  that these address these questions ... I'm posting these responses for feedback, so please tell me what your thinking is on this ...


* First off ... why not? Why not form an org. that supports and presents womens sound work? Is there a good reason not to? And whats wrong with a women's club? As a women I like women's clubs- they represent me. They are OK.

* This is a big one, sound arts and digital media is a male dominated field. Womens comments contributions etc are ignored, talked over, and  even removed from online forums... Wikapedia's a good example of this.  Its a field where women are chronically under-represented (less than 5%) I believe that women's mastery of sound expands the vision and voice of media and popular culture an is a vital inclusion.

*  I am interested in what womens unique relationship to sound is... this can be argued philosophically and theoretically as well as socially, culturally and historically

*  diversity and difference is good! there is plenty of room for a group focusing on women's sound there is not limited sound in the world.

*  we are invisible as a whole, I'm interested in what that wild mix is saying?

* Women do not speak up in mixed groups, the online forums are male heavy, there are very very very few female (commercial) producers, curators and or reviewers of sound art.

* Why not just build a web site on Sound Art? (another question) I have a website already about sound art its called that-unsound, and it features my research, its a collection space of links. I'm wanting to focus on an area of what I see is particularly fascinating, more relevant to women working in the sound arts, to me and to my own work, to the networking I am involved in and the research I am doing. I am wanting to focus on  networking, linking, collaboration and setting up projects for women in the sound arts. I'm wanting to provide a forum for discussion (uninterrupted) a place for presentation of work and a  frame for providing  curatorial frames and reviews  of women's sound works.

Why not just get on with making your own work?  (another question) I see this as my work, a part of my work ... part of sounding out- connecting making women's voices (techno or voice) amplified to such an extent that  its can be heard, and hearing what the 'sound' of their work is saying ...

So ... what do you think?
cheers Jena

Sound art needs new words to explain the rumblings within it...




The Wire  did a little article on Rosalind- Furtherfields lexicon of 'new' new media words ... which reminded me of the terms I'm finding I have to invent for 'working' my own sound theory/ideas... I'm working of the notion of sound in data/language and  am plying the notion of 'soundage' (my word) for a particular space of sound in language, against philisophic space and notions of the matrixial... but first heres a quote from the Wire article.

'Rosalind, is an upstart new media art lexicon, born in 2004, following a sheltered 9 month gestation. Feed Rosalind with your own words and definitions to express and declare what you are, what you do and the worlds you create, on your own terms. Influence and mutate her, help her to maturity...

Your words may :
- describe something very particular to your life/experience/work.
- be invented in a moment of desperation.
- arise in conversation with others.
- already be in circulation.'

click here to go strait to Furtherfield's Lexicon...add or browse...
heres some of their deliciouswords under 'D'

(or Diwo's, or Diwo groups) Expanded from the original term known as D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself). D.I.W.O 'Do It With Others'. Is more representive of contemporary, collaborative - art practice which explores through the creative process of using...
 
A contraction of Dada and Africa in acknowledgement of the too often unacknowledged non-western influence of Non-Western art on the European Avant-Garde.
 
1. To remove content from; make ancontentdrous. 2. To preserve by removing content from.
 
the act of removal or transferance of context.
 
The Defastenists are a group of artists advocating a spontanious, energetic and self referencing approach to art
to undo the finishing
 
a sense of exhaustion and decathecting that occurs when a pornographic image no longer 'works' or when a half-read novel is picked up again - there's a sense of distaste, defeat. the word was coined from defuse, refuse, refuge, and represents a...
 
A wiki information-worker who takes pleasure in “maintaining standards” by regulating the flow of authorised knowledge and expression. Coined during discussion of Wikipedia Art at the MADE REAL exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery http://...
 
when one is a) fed up with trying to be a digital artist and realises that picking up an acoustic guitar might not neccessarily be a bad thing after all, and besides, catherine has left you now and if nothing else it'll give you fodder for songs...
 
The digital intelligensia, by analogy with 'literati'.
 
Self explanatory.
 
1) To remove the old unused code from a system (source:Zack Booth) 2) go dredge up some art! (sunysb.edu)












 image: majena mafe - digital opera for funnels 


In both my own research, writing and practice,  I'm engaged with lots of word play. I've always ben interested in the need for   broarder richer more evocative language frames, especially for women... We need more words and or another set of words to  explain what we are doing/thinking/talking/sounding about...

I've been trying to come up with good terms to define sound in language, sounded language and the new arena  I'm working on 'soundage,'  I've named it as a particular space  generated from my  work/research. As a word its still in its opening phase, clearing its voice ... In terms of language I am thinking/talking of language as all sorts of data...text, verbal, image and sound based communications. These are the three definitions for my own lexicon, I'm working with at the moment ...

SOUND IN LANGUAGE
Sound in language can be described as the sense based auditory or visual emission initiated through forming language either in the mouth, screen, page or in the mind. The shaping of words/data or information. It can also be the sounds/images etc that are excess to that information, the slips and slurs of the mouth, the auditory drone of language as it is emitted over a period of intervals in space (be it architectural or page based) through time. The glitch, the … In Two: (a text by Gertrude Stein) this register or form of sound in language erupts as …

SOUNDED-LANGUAGE
Sounded-language is the producing of the data/information, think verbal language, digital software as an assemblage the whole ensemble of language …(the complete complex of sounds in language make up the whole i.e. the orchestration of sounds within the system of language, I identify as sounded-language). This is a holistic view of language as a landscape/field of sound. (Stein quote on landscape goes here...)

SOUNDAGE
Soundage is the intertwining of both language and the sound of it- this creates feedback that in turn expresses relationship as reverberation, binaries are dissolved in this space. It is a state not a thing as in Lyotard’s differend, pre-verbal in the sense of ... (to be added)

Soundage is the ‘sound’ (qualia/resonance) of sounded-language where sounded-language can be seen as an ‘object’ – i.e. an imaginary object generating imaginary affect (imaginary equals virtual i.e. conceptual) the affect of which could be called or acts like a thing called ‘love’ poetic awareness necessary to understand that  a word is like a sea an ocean/it is material/ (this is Ponge) … to big for the mind to grasp  as a reality i.e. a tangibility but as a  intuition  a concept a virtuality. Query its  similar to Deleuze’s abstract machine  and Object orientated Ontology’s ‘object’ that withdraws. 

23.7.11

While we are getting girrlsound up and running ... visit that-unsound

Hi, while we are getting things flowing here would you like to visit the incredibly wonderful collection of posts, odd information and lots on Women Sound Artists on the blog 'that-unsound? 

It is this site that birthed girrlsound... no wonder with this title page image eh?

18.7.11

Reflections On Echo—Sound By Women Artists In Britain by Jean Fisher

 quote ...
'Discussions of media-based art rarely include a substantial review of sound, whether it is used as a component or as the sole medium of a work- At its most effective sound is not simply laid on to provide a background unifying element to the flow of images or actions, but both collaborates in the production of meaning and extends the spatial dimension of the work. Sound evokes images; but it also positions the listener in a physical relation to the source of transmission, or in an illusory relation to distance (drawing nearer/fading away). There is an extensive practice by women artists that uses sound to explore the socio-sexual implications of speech and audition. It is what this work has to say about the construction of female subjectivities that these notes attempt to address.
The inattention to aural experience in the construction of human subjectivity is undoubtedly coincidental with a general emphasis in critical debates on visual representation, an emphasis which is attributed to the priority given to vision in a Western culture dominated by patriarchal principles.... A [ ] depreciation of the female voice and a usurpation of its creative potential is to be found in contemporary media representations....' for the whole article click here

Jean Fisher teaches at the Royal College of Art and is Professor of Fine Art and Transcultural Studies at Middlesex University.
Other books by her click here

QUESTIONS:
How do you or do you think women artists use sound to explore the 'socio-sexual implications of speech and audition'?

What do you think about the notion of 'inattention' to the aural experience...?

13.7.11

New American Radio features Women in Sound

New American Radio series New Work Somewhere ...produced by Helen Thorington and Regine Beyer from 1987-1998? Apart from these two pioneers. lots of women were commissioned including Norie Neumark, Pauline Oliveros, Helen Thorington, Pamela Z, Suzan-Lori Parks, Roz Cheney, Toni Dove, Diamanda Galas, Rachel Rosenthal, Hildegard Westercamp, and many more.

http://somewhere.org.

Opening GIRRLSOUND BLOG with a History of Sound Art ...

... a pretty interesting 'history' of sound art here, arranged and composed by J Milo Taylor
Mixed by Joel Cahen
click here