Townes Van Zandt
"I’ll Do This Talkin’ Blues"
Recorded live at the Old Quarter, Houston, TX, July, 1973

I'll Do This Talkin' Blues

Samples of sounds recorded by the artist and broadcast as part of the ongoing Radio Presque Rien radio art project. Sample includes:

- Dawn chorus, Harned, KY, May 10, 2015
- Typical program introduction by the artist
- Heifer competition, Kentucky State Fair, Louisville, KY, Aug. 23, 2015
- Sandhill cranes, Cecilia, KY, Feb. 6, 2015

Radio Presque Rien (Sample)

Excerpt from two hour-long programs produced and edited by the artist for broadcast on the radio station of the Incubate Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, 2013. The programs were created from field recordings collected simultaneously by 25+ community members in Kentuckiana and submitted to the artist for inclusion in the project. The project chronicles the variety of activity and sounds heard and created during the 5-6pm hours of August 26 and 28, 2013.

L/o/u/i/s/v/i/l/l/e S/o/u/n/d/s (Excerpt)

Excerpt of a regenerative four-channel sound art piece created for the Ritual & Residue: The Art of Drink exhibit at the Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft, 2014. The source sounds were all captured during the boiling of water (an essential process in the creation of drinks from tea to bourbon) by multiple means and in multiple vessels. The four channels contain programs of differing lengths so that they recombine infinitely as they repeat.

Boiled Water Three Ways (Excerpt)

A collage of chants of "Black lives matter!" from throughout the "Lville2Cville" rally and march held in response to events in Charlottesville, VA. Recorded at the Carl Braden Memorial Center and along Broadway in the West End and Downtown, Louisville, Kentucky, August 13, 2017. Created for WXOX 97.1FM Louisville / ARTxFM.com.

Lville2Cville Rally & March, Louisville, KY, 2017-08-13

Cassia Herron reading "Omni on Third," about economic development policy and inequality in the shadow of the new Omni Hotel in downtown Louisville, Kentucky at the Rally to Move Forward (Women's March) held on January 21st, 2017. According to Herron, the poem was inspired by Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey's on the Moon." The text of "Omni on Third" was published in the March 7, 2018 issue of the LEO Weekly. Find more of Herron's work at @cassiaspeaks on Twitter and Instagram. Cassia Herron photo courtesy of Forward Kentucky / forwardky.com.

Cassia Herron, "Omni On Third" read at the Rally to Move Forward, 2017-01-21

An iterative, stereophonic work composed from videotaped interviews with eight members of the immigrant and refugee community in Louisville, Kentucky. Original interviews conducted by Kentucky Refugee Ministries. Created as part of the Kentucky Refugee Ministries We Create program and premiered at Better Block Woodlawn Avenue during the World Refugee Week Festival.

Sidewalk chalk drawing in accompanying image by Mary Beth Brown.

E Pluribus Unum

One of two hour-long programs produced and edited by Aaron Rosenblum and Heather Fox for broadcast on the radio station of the Incubate Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, 2013. The programs were created from field recordings collected simultaneously by 25+ community members in the greater Louisville, Kentucky area during the 5-6pm hours of August 26 and 28, 2013. Only sounds from a given point in the hour of recording are used at the corresponding point in the final program; a sound that occurred and was collected from 5:17.00-5:20.00pm can only appear between 0:17.00 and 0:20.00 of the program.

L/o/u/i/s/v/i/l/l/e S/o/u/n/d/s (2013)

[Remixed from vertical four-channel array to horizontal stereo]

Pure tones, field recordings, four-channel audio system, microcontroller, audio files

As presented at Crown of Rays, the inaugural KMAC Triennial, KMAC Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, 2019.

High, Low, and In Between employs a multichannel audio system to explore vertical, rather than horizontal space. Two signal types - field recordings and pure tone sine waves - travel and clash in an exploration of the interactions between consistent, idealized abstraction and the unpredictable complexity of representation.

Field recordings of human-made and natural sounds are broadcast from the highest and lowest points in the system, and are selected according to a literal or metaphorical sense of their vertical vantage point. Collected in forests and cities, on beaches and by railroad tracks, they offer the listener dissociation from the immediate environment. But they only do so when they are able to overcome the other stimuli of the present surroundings.

Meanwhile, a chord consisting of four pure tone sine waves rises and falls throughout the multi-channel speaker system. These focused, consistent signals fill the air and reflect off of nearby surfaces to create elaborate sets of standing waves and harmonics. The physical environment is in effect mapped by sound in a way that precisely locates, rather than dislocates, the listener.

By remaining still the listener can experience the sounds in motion. By moving with the sounds they can attempt to keep pace with a specific relationship between the tones in the chord and the field recordings. By timing, choice, and ability, the work and its significance become unique to the listener.

High, Low, and In Between (2019)

Audio Flag
CRT monitors, field recordings, digital video players, acrylic sheet
20m21s
2020

A reinterpretation of Nam June Paik’s Video Flag (1996), the first piece of video art acquired or commissioned by the Smithsonian Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, DC. Audio Flag is composed of an audio recording of the electronic equipment and fans that control Video Flag and the ambiance in the gallery where it is shown collaged with audio recordings of the May and June, 2020 protests in Louisville, Kentucky in response to the extrajudicial state murders of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee. The audio is combined with a video recording of the reflection of Video Flag in the surface of the Hirschhorn’s waxed floor. 

With Audio Flag, Paik’s frantic, jittering American flag is inverted (usually a sign of distress or protest) and washed out, the effects of reflecting off an imperfect surface. The specific, fleeting patriotic images and TV stills of the Paik’s original are lost in the blur. Attention is refocused on the audio inadvertently created by the piece, now intentionally reintroduced and amplified and accompanied by the urgent sounds of today’s ongoing racial justice movement. Reflective materials are added to the gallery floor, offering yet another inversion. The flag is once again right-side-up, though rendered even less distinct by yet another refraction but accompanied by a clear-voiced intention breaking through the drone and re-establishing (or just establishing) a vivid, inclusive, and just America.

Audio Flag (2020)

Hank the Herald Angel Recordings, Aaron Rosenblum, Kentuckiana Sounds, Radio Presque Rien, SONICBernheim, etc.

Aaron Rosenblum

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