MTrayle: Grunts, breaths, and other 'unintentional' vocalisations were extracted from news and punditry broadcasts. These are played randomly in time (within limits) and trigger a sort of fast tape scrubbing through a long soundfile of speech.

CKim: Mark’s sounds made me think of a troubled diaphragm. In the video I chose to highlight the contrast between the expletive grunts with the moments of breath.

“In one ear...” refers to a body of work conceived of by interdisciplinary artist CAROLE KIM that explores left and right channel aural compositions by artists, writers, and musician/composers. This is a long term project that has and will continue to take many forms including multi-media installation and performance, single-channel video, dual-voiced spoken word.

MARK TRAYLE is a California based musician and sound artist working in a variety of media including live electronic music, improvisation, installations, and compositions for chamber ensembles. His work has been noted for its use of re-engineered consumer products and cultural artifacts as interfaces for electronic music performances and networked media installations.

N.B.: Some of the footage for Untitled #17 was generated with a new audio/visual interface developed by sound designer JESSE GILBERT called SPECTRAL. Spectral is a visual instrument that employs an interactive software system to generate real-time 3D animation in response to live or recorded sound.  Employing a number of computational analytical tools, including Fourier analysis and oscilloscope-style waveform deformation, Spectral reveals the deep structure of sound in a visual language that is both intuitively and aesthetically linked to our emotional experience of music.  Spectral's interface gives the performer the means to generate highly dynamic 3D scenes that place the observer in a visual relationship that both enhances and reflects on the process of listening.

The visuals and text for this piece were initially inspired by the book, "GLASS: A World History" by Alan McFarlane and Gerry Martin. This anthropological history explores how the development of glass for precise optics, mirrors, and windows transformed our relationship with the natural world and impacted the divergent courses of Eastern and Western civilizations.

This piece furthers my interest in the reflective and porous qualities of a translucent membrane as investigated in my previous work on the theme of Narcissus (see "N1"). In shooting, I wanted to present Paul Outlaw with situations that were experiential, durational and unrehearsed--more about doing than acting. Playing with the Renaissance practice of drawing on a glass pane to represent perspectival space, Paul instead draws the outlines of his own reflection.

The technology was programmed and routed with the objective of being able to incorporate sync sound and image from a roving a/v cart. I designed an i-touch controller for Paul Outlaw to determine playback of his pre-recorded footage and audio clips. The computer on the cart communicated data to my laptop to sync image on my computer and send sync audio to Carl Stone.

"The projections were black and white and often murky-misty. They somehow had the quality of seeming to greatly expand the size of the room, creating an open, outdoor, sacred space, something like the ruins of a Greek temple in an alternate universe. Outlaw’s area was the theater’s perimeter and his purview was the personal...Outlaw on the vivid color video screen was a compelling, dominating presence, while he became a more mystical one when Kim toyed with his video on her larger playground.

Stone, on the other hand, ... is a master of non-counterpoint. Rather than accept rules of how one line of music must behave when it comes into contact with another, he makes magisterial layers of sound. He tends to start simply and end his journey filling a listener’s head with a rapturous sense of thrilling multiplicity... One never had a clue watching him, the mad scientist at his laptop, as to exactly how he was chopping, dicing and combining his ingredients. But he made fragments grow into fabulous new sonic species. " -- Mark Swed, LA Times

Meditation on dirty dishes and soapy water,

The pool of light through my kitchen window.

Cleaning with sunlight.

In this Spanish-style building and former library, the shelves were filled with drinking glasses.  25 participants including musicians, filmmakers, movers, family, friends were invited to set this piece in motion.  We had 2 hours.

A very complex world of microcosms kept forming, colliding, interacting.  After exhausting one’s initial ideas, there was a hush to the room, the tangibility of the focus of the group took on more weight.  This piece was about a certain warming process, if you will, breaking down the ice to smaller pieces.  After an arduous two-year battle with cancer, my father had managed to beat it.  There was reason to celebrate.