Last Strains

lang syne

Jaye Allen Thomas (electronics) and Kimberly Sutton (myself on cello) performing a Wet/Dry Mix at Detroit Contemporary March 13, 2015. The series requires each musician to surrender some level of control- the electronics may not generate any sounds but only apply processing, and the sound source has no control of what that processing might be...

WetDryMix20150313KSuttonJThomas

Sounds recorded from the production line of Feeney, Inc. (a manufacturer of architectural cables) and improvised cello (Kimberly Sutton) are played and transformed by Ben Sutherland on laptop. Movement 1.

Feeney Inc., for Cello and Laptop 1

Sounds recorded from the production line of Feeney, Inc. (a manufacturer of architectural cables) and improvised cello (Kimberly Sutton) are played and transformed by Ben Sutherland on laptop. Movement 2.

Feeney Inc., for Cello and Laptop, 2

Geometry

Here is a preview of my upcoming sound design work for Fatelessness, a new radio play based on the novel by Imre Kertesz. A challenging  recounting of 14 year old Gyuri's year in concentration camps based on the author's own experiences, Fatelessness is a sardonic, unsentimental look at the daily minutiae of the holocaust and Hungary's willing participation in it. Kertesz won the nobel prize in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history." The radio play will debut in January with dance accompaniment supported by the Chicago Cultural Center.

Preview: Fatelessness

Live performance at Mills College, 3 March 2013, with Joshua Marshall, saxophone; Jacob Peck, guitar; Shanna Sordahl, laptop; Kimberly Sutton, field recordings; and and architectural cable, banana squash, silicon wafer: resonance and filtering of the sounds of their own making.

Sonically realizing Marx’s analysis of the commodity form, this piece expands our interaction with material culture using sound to expose the process of production, the human labor congealed in the inert object. Field recordings from the specific production line of the objects on stage (a farm, a factory, a lab) are organized, processed, and routed by the composer, creating a sound field for the improvisatory interaction of the instrumentalists. The piece culminates when the production sounds animate the object via a transducer coupled to it; the object’s vibrations are then recorded through contact microphone, and fed back into it, over and over again, re-emphasizing each time the natural resonant frequencies of the object. A volatile organic, analog, and digital system, this piece is intended to celebrate the inherent productive creativity of human work in quotidian existence, and is an homage to Robert Morris, David Tudor, Alvin Lucier and of course Karl Marx. Eternal gratitude as well to James Fei, John Bischoff, Les Stuck , Zeena Parkins, and Mills AV staff for their endless patience and generosity; and to Feeney, Inc.; Green String Farm, and Arjun Mendiratta for kind hearts, open minds, and luscious soundscapes.

The Sound Beneath the Surface, for musicians and objects

Mills College is a lush 135 acre  with old growth eucalyptus and redwood, babbling brooks, and a surrounding perimeter fence topped with barbed wire. Founded concurrently with the incorporation of the city of Oakland itself, the area surrounding Mills College is now a high crime, low income area. The contrast is striking as one enters Mill's single security gate. Students hear gun shots, but there is little significant engagement with the surrounding community. Exploring this spacial and social context, sounds collected from outside the perimeter fence animate trash found there--a tire, abandoned drum head, and broken glass. The glass skitters across the surface as traffic noise, rowdy corner gatherings, and large sub-woofers provide a sonic contrast as striking as the shocking visual of trash on the calm, serene campus.

Campus Trash

Field recordings of wind from the construction site of the new Bay Bridge in Oakland, California played back through large pipes stored near the port of Oakland owned by a construction company working on said bridge...

Pipes Project

Kimberly Sutton aka ginny incus is a cellist and sound artist working in Chicago and Detroit.