Sound Art and Soundtracks

Protest series

Sound Field/Sound Byte Collages

The 99% - Occupy Wall Street

All tracks in order from Old to New

All tracks in reverse order, from recent back to 1981

All tracks in reverse order from New to Old

Themesong for the feature 2021 documentary film "The Biggest Obstacle" [thebiggestobstacle.com]

Taispeáin an Bealach 2021

One of the tracks in the score for the feature 2021 documentary film "The Biggest Obstacle" [thebiggestobstacle.com]

Synthesis Shuffle 2021

Soundtrack to multichannel film installation and performance
Performed first in public in 1987 at Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin

X-To-Bear 1986

Soundtrack to multichannel film installation and performance

Slaughterhouse 1986

Soundtrack to video installation and performance
Performed first in Dublin, 1986

13 tracks by the pre-screaMachine duo Balu/Galu

Deep In The Woods 1986 [Balu/Galu 13 chapters]

Soundtrack to multimedia installation and performance
Performed at the international group show "The Irish Exhibition of Living Art" in 1985 in Dublin

Factory 1985

1988 remix of the 1987 track. Soundtrack to multichannel film installation and performance
Performed first in 1987 in Dublin
First in the US at ABC No Rio, NYC 1987

Perversion is a Symptom of the Malaise of Society 1987

Soundtrack to interactive roving video projection installation and street intervention performance series.
Winner of the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technology Award

Protest 2013 The 99% DriveBy

Soundtrack to multichannel video projection installation and street intervention performance series. Part 1 of 8
Winner of the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technology Award

Protest 2011 The 99% - Occupy Wall St Part 1

Soundtrack to multichannel video projection installation and street intervention performance series. Part 2 of 8
Winner of the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technology Award

Protest 2011 The 99% - Occupy Wall St Part 2

Soundtrack to multichannel video projection installation and street intervention performance series. Part 3 of 8
Winner of the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technology Award

Protest 2011 The 99% - Occupy Wall St Part 3

Soundtrack to multichannel video projection installation and street intervention performance series. Part 4 of 8
Winner of the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technology Award

Protest 2011 The 99% - Occupy Wall St Part 4

Soundtrack to multichannel video projection installation and street intervention performance series. Part 5 of 8
Winner of the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technology Award

Protest 2012 The 99% - Occupy Wall St Part 5

Soundtrack to street intervention video projection installation and performance series

Protest 2019 Climate Strike

Protest 2020 Black Lives Matter

Soundtrack to street intervention video projection installation and performance series.
Winner of the New York City Artist Corps Award
Winner of the IndieFest 2021 Awards of Merit for Social Justice/Protest and for Contemporary Issues/Awareness Raising
Nominated for:
NYC Independent Film Festival: Best Short Documentary 2021
Manhattan Film Festival: Best Short Film 2021
Doc NYC: Best Sort Film 2020

Protest 2020 Queer Liberation March

Soundtrack to street intervention video projection installation and performance series.

Protest 2022 Roe V Wade

Maske Thaery Bop! Bop! "Dull" 1981 [loop]

Maske Thaery Bop! Bop! "Phazvoc" 1981 [loop]

Maske Thaery Bop! Bop! "Listen 1" 1982 [loop]

Maske Thaery Bop! Bop! "Listen 2" 1982 [loop]

Soundscape soundtrack loop for installation created with sound field recordings from the subject site

West Pier [loop] 1984

The Hand Speaks 1985

Soundscape soundtrack for live performance created with sound field recordings from the subject sites

The River Liffey - A Cyclic Movement 1985

Soundtrack [23 minute loop] for the animated version of Jana Leo's book "VIDAS-UXORICIDIOS". The book is "an archive of women who died at the hands of their male partners in Madrid between 1999 and 2020", explored through drawings and writing.

Murder Meditation 2023

an alternative to white noise, a drone track for sleeping in noisy places like on a long plane or bus ride, with occasional unobtrusive beats

screaMachine

Drones To Sleep To

Moves and builds slowly from a soundscape to a highly constructed dance mashup.
The original recordings for this piece, totaling just over 1 hour and 30 minutes, were made during the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality, NYC 2020. This took place on the date that Pride March 2020 was scheduled, but cancelled due to CoVid19. Put together by the Reclaim Pride organization which the previous year had held an alternative simultaneous march to pride, in the form of a protest march, trying to "reclaim" the march from what they call "rainbow capitalism", the co-option of what was a protest march for LGBTQ+ rights by corporations and institutions, many of which were complicit in funding anti-LGBTQ+ rights efforts. I have made some films and done performances on the subject, all without altering the audio content, keeping the "voice of the people" intact. With this project I wanted to stretch into a more creative and subjective rendering, taking the listener on a constructed journey from a pseudo-real presence into a more and more abstracted and funky dance mix space, all the while only using original sounds captured at the march. I did some enhancements with software to the sounds, for clarity, without changing their essential characteristics: there are no sound effects other than eq, amplitude and stereo position. The listener starts out listening to a montage of sounds and protest chants, clearly constructed, but with a sense of being present in the thick of the march with sounds and voices surrounding. As the piece progresses there are further indicators of construction and composition as phrases are repeated and the sense of being there starts to be replaced with the feeling of listening to a more curated sequence, which in turn becomes more and more obviously involving repetition until the repetitions become rhythms and the sounds and noises more abstracted into the sources of instrumentation and percussion, with the voices of the protestors taking on the role of vocalists in what is now a deep dance mix.
The original recordings were made with a Zoom H5 on a suspension mount and with a "Dead Kitten" wind shield. I extracted 108 regions from the 1hr 32mins captured, using Steinberg WaveLab audio editor and put a basic amplitude envelope on each of them. I then opened each in iZotope RX audio editor and normalized and did the fine tuning frequency envelopes in iZotope Neutron. I took two of these now enhanced clips, that I wanted access to every syllable and beat and chopped them into such in Reason Studio's Recycle, which just makes the chopping up process streamlined for beat based content. Once I had all my parts ready, I imported everything into Logic Pro. The original audio and the bigger samples were arranged in 3 stereo audio tracks with amplitude and pan "rubber band" keyframe editing and the others were loaded into 3 samplers to be triggered with midi, using an amplitude master keyframe track and individual velocity parameters for each hit controlling volume. One sampler was dedicated to the "sibilings" singing, with each syllable on a separate midi key. Another to the "Hey rhythm" set and every sound and noise that could be used percussively. The third had each of the other 98 samples on separate keys. I composed and mixed the piece in Logic Pro then exported the final mix and opened that in iZotope Ozone for maximization and enhancing the stereo field, and then in iZotope RX for a final spectral analysis and frequency envelope pass.

Protest: Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality, NYC 2020 [mashup]

screaMachine, the one and only, the original, established in New York City in 1987 by Irish musician/filmmaker/performance artist Gearóid Dolan.
Sound Art, Music, Soundtracks and more. Most tracks have multiple incarnations: as standalone tracks, as soundtracks for films, for multimedia installations and for performances. With a background in homemade instruments and field recordings, the works are mostly made with instruments created from on site recordings, sound bytes from Media and generated sounds and as such wander from purely abstract music to recreated environments of sound field collages. Early works, pre-screaMachine are included for reference and history. The earliest tracks are under the solo act name Maske:Thaery Bop! Bop!, the name used from 1981 -1987 and the duo Balu/Galu from 1984. All got consolidated into screaMachine in 1987.
"G-man", the side dance music project and Drum'n'Bass DJ-ing in the 90's, tracks are included as there is much cross over and G-man tracks regularly appear in screaMachine products (films, installations, performances, interactive works).

Note: over the decades since being established, many interlopers have risen and used/appropriated this name, spelling with one or two "m"s, and mostly bands of the noisy variety. They are not related, just were too dumb to check if the name was already in use - we've counted over 20 such before we stopped counting.
:)

Scream
to speak with intense expression
a sudden loud penetrating cry, expressing anger, terror or pain
to make violent protestations		
to move with a screaming sound		
to produce a vivid startling effect

Machine
a device for performing a task
an instrument that transmits or modifies the application of power or force
a structure or constructed thing whether material or immaterial		
an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion and energy one to another in some predetermined manner and to some desired end
a person or organization that acts like or resembles a machine

Narrative
With a background playing in punk bands, Gearóid Dolan, aka screaMachine, aka G-man, aka Gerhardt DeKunst, turned to performance art with a political edge at a very early age, performing on stages at Dublin punk events, accompanied by audio recordings and slide projections, 1981 - 1983. In 1985 they were shown in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. Dolan developed a style of performance featuring audio/video/film/animation and props accompanying the performer and in 1987 performed in Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery with all these elements. They moved to New York later that year and started branding their works with the name “screaMachine”, beginning with a performance series shown at ABC No Rio, 1987/1988 with multiple film projections, animations and audio accompanying. Since then they have been performing in the underground performance scene in New York, dipping in and out of the Art World, doing street interventions and developing new media techniques. In 1989 Franklin Furnace featured their “Survival... Against All Odds” series. In 1990 at MoMA PS1 Dolan presented a month long installation and performance series. In 1992 they got to return home and show in Dublin’s Trinity College. Through the 90’s Dolan further developed the A/V components, moving into digital media and video projection. For 10 years they presented new works in their storefront studio in Manhattan, presented multi screen animated video installations in nightclubs and underground spaces and developed video works for web streaming in its infancy and was an early pioneer of the medium. Through the 90's they also DJ'd and produced and released dance music under the name "G-man". In 1996 they launched their website www.screaMachine.com. In 1999 they presented their first “Drive-By” video performance at the newly formed DUMBO Arts Festival, the start of a 13 year run presenting new works at this festival. In 2000, Dolan had their first solo gallery show, at the Moving Image Gallery in Soho, NYC. Since 2000 Dolan has received the New York State Council on the Arts award for Film, Video and New Technologies five times, funding large scale performances and the development of new technologies.
They started working with protest movements in 2003, with the Iraq War protests, shooting and producing semi-animated films for installation/performance/interventions titled “Protest”, which continue today. They have also shown at The Kitchen (NYC), Westbourne Studios (London), Western Front (Vancouver), Tulca Arts Festival (Galway), FILE (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Darklight Festival (Dublin), Inport (Estonia), TED-X NYC and many more venues and festivals around the world.
In 2010 Dolan introduced their latest outdoor street intervention interactive video projection device, presenting the piece “Target Assault” at locations around New York City. Following along with the Occupy Wall St movement, 2011/2012, Dolan documented the protests and interactions with police and created a series titled “Protest/The 99%”, presenting them in video installations, including at The Storefront for Art and Architecture, and on the streets of New York in Drive-By projection performances. Similarly with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014 -2016 culminating with an 18 building projection series for the Art in Odd Places Festival 2016. 2016 forward saw versions of “Protest” following the reaction to the election of Donald Trump, documenting that protest movement and projecting them on city buildings in performative street interventions. In 2017, Dolan produced a series of large scale multi-channel video street intervention performances at 21 locations around NYC and produced a 10 channel video installation and multimedia performance at Superchief Gallery NYC in 2018. In 2018 “Protest” incorporated the March for Our Lives protests and in 2019 the Climate Strike movement, and returned to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 with regular projections on buildings in Union Square NYC.
2021 featured the release of their feature documentary "The Biggest Obstacle" following disability rights activists and their struggle for accessibility in the NYC Transit System, which won awards and was featured in numerous film festivals along with their documentary short "Protest: Queer Liberation March". In late 2021 Dolan received a City Artist Corps grant to produce a live street intervention and performance of "Protest: Queer Liberation March", which took place in September in the East Village NYC.
During CoVid-19 lockdown, 2020/2021, they produced a number of online interactive projects for people to participate in protest movements from their homes, including an app developed to allow people to digitally insert themselves into protest footage and post online and a series of interactive web projects to engage people online.
Dolan taught Digital Media courses at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and Hunter College Film & Media Department, 2000-2021. In 2021 they joined MIT's Art Culture and Technology program, teaching new media, interactive technologies and all things photo/video/sound.
Dolan continues to do body performances accompanied by sometimes simple and sometimes complex A/V components; to do street interventions with physical performances and with projections; to create online interactive projects and to seek new ways of interacting with the public outside of the Art World
#screaMachine