Example sounds form the outside of the Sounding Dome Sauna - a collaborative project with Jan-Erik Andersson, to be installed in Turku FInland in June 2011.  See www.shawndecker.com for more details.

Sounding Dome Sauna - outside sounds

This is a recording of a live performance of Gryke's new piece "Six-spotted Burnet" at the Empty Bottle in Chicago on Oct 13, 2013 by Gryke (Mark Booth and Shawn Decker)- analog and digital electronics.

Gryke: performance of "Six-spotted Burnet" At the Emptybottle, Chicago

This is a stereo recording made in the large-scale electro-acoustic sound installation Prairie, installed at the Chicago Cultural Center from Feb 8 to May 5, 2013.  Full details (and video) available at www.shawndecker.com. This piece is made up of 432 thin rods with small speakers at the tip, and with vibration motors near the base.  Each of these stems is independent, and issues small clicks and buzzes, controlled by a central computer program.  his piece mimics the rich soundscape and eco-systems of grasslands with insect sounds, rain, wind and other rhythms of the life found within them, while it also incorporates a visual recreation of tall grasses moving in the wind. Quoting curator Lanny Silverman:  "Each of the multitudinous vertically mounted brass rods contains a vibration motor at the base and a small speaker at its top resulting in the “grass” stems shuddering and sway- ing as the speakers emit clicking and buzzing sounds, possibly sug- gesting a relationship between sound and motion. This is all controlled by a microprocessor with patterns generated by simple rules applied to each stem, so that they operate independently, but are also affected by neighboring stems’ actions as well. This interplay between structured patterns and chance is modeled after natural systems’ emergent behavior; thus Prairie’s ongoing changes mirror that of an eco-system responding to gradual changes in its natural environment. This interaction between programming and chance, between authorship (and intentionality) and “natural” can easily be seen as an evolution of John Cage’s compositional methods.
Rather than hide his process and the work’s structural underpinning, Decker has made this an important part of the work, and these design choices impact our experience of the work. Hence functional elements are also aesthetic choices. In addition to the irony of an artist “designing” a natural system – or at least a recreation of one, Decker has created a large-scale sculptural piece with nods to highly manufactured Minimalist sculpture of the 1960s as well as to the modernist grids evident in Modernist architecture, especially that of Mies van der Rohe. Again, the peculiar notion of “manufacturing” nature and the contrast between natural order and human order (which of course at some level is also natural) is complex and fascinating."

Prairie

This is a live recording made during the performance of this piece at Elastic Arts, Chicago in March of 2022.  The piece was performed live over the 16 channel CLEAT system  - and this recording was made with a 4 channel ambisonic microphone.  The recording is in Dolby 5.1 format if you have a way to listen in surround sound.

Mare - Live - Elastic

THis is a 2 channel version of an 8 channel piece - produced using Max/MSP and Max for Live along with eurorack analog synthesis gear.  Based around a number of samplea recorded in Venice and the surround area in Italy which are used as raw material.

Mare - stereo version

Documentation of the sound installation "The Night Sounds. See www.shanwdecker.com for full description.

The Night Sounds

This documentation is from the first exhibition of Jan-Erik Andersson's and my  Bird’s Nest piece in Berlin: Klosterstrasse / Berlin, sculpture and installations at Franziskaner-Klosterkirche in Berlin from August 29 - October 19 2002. This exhibition is situated in the center of Berlin, near Alexanderplatz. Franziskaner-Klosterkirche is originally a Franciscan monastery church, whose oldest sections were built in the 13th century. In 1945 the church was severely damaged in air raids. The ruins of the church have been preserved as a park and since 1987 the roofless monastery church and its surroundings have been used as an exhibition space. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, since 1992, the cultural activities have been organized by a supporting association, Förderverein Klosterruine e.V.

Our collaborative installation combines sculptural elements with multiple channel sound. The  bird’s nest that we constructed is large enough for people to enter into and sit.This bird’s nest is placed in what remains of the altar of the church. The soundscape I constructed is made up of environmental sounds, early organum such as would have been heard in the monastery (Perotin and Leonin), birdsong, etc. which has intermingled with found sounds from the area, and is presented via 4 speakers surrounding the nest.The documentation heard here is a sample of the piece - mixed down to two channels.

 Subsequent versions of this piece were  done in Helsinki (Kiasma Museum), Wakefield (Wakefield Public Arts), Hyvink&auml;&auml; Finland (Finnish Artists Union), Turku (Waino Aalto Museum), and Evanston, IL (Evanston Art Center) among others.  Many of these versions are also documented here on this site. 

This project was supported by the Illinois Arts Council, a State Agency.

Berlin Bird's Nest

Sauna-stereo

This is documentation of the installation "Casting the Circle" (Shawn Decker and Annie Finch, 2009) recorded at the Chicago Cultural Center.The piece was made up of 21 speakers (bare w.o. cabinets) arranged in a large spiral on the floor.This recording was made with a Sure VP88 microphone head height, centered within the piece. 
For complete documentation, see www.shawndecker.com.The Artists statement for the piece follows.
COLLABORATIVE STATEMENT
Artist Shawn Decker and Poet Annie Finch
Though our backgrounds and aesthetic orientations differ quite radically, working on this collaboration revealed that we are both involved as artists with the power of the natural world and the patterns and rhythms underlying natural forces.
In “Casting the Circle” these ideas take shape as a spiral representing the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—arrayed in the four directions associated with them in Native American and Celtic/Wiccan cosmology.
East-air-intellect, south-fire-passion, west-water-emotion, and north-earth-body circle around center-spirit. Each direction adds its own character and energy to human experience as we progress through the spiral.
The four brief chants, one for each element, are excerpted from Annie's poem “American Witch.” Shawn’s settings treat the chants as raw material, on the same plane as natural sounds. 
Viewers moving through the piece are surrounded by sounds that simultaneously abstract and embody each element in turn.Voice, words, and the elements themselves fuse together, moving the viewer further through the spiral of the elements and seasons as part of the cosmic dance.
We hope this piece will “orient” its viewers-readers-listeners-participants more closely into the patterns of natural forces that we all absorb, embody, and live among every day.


Casting The Circle

Archive of weekly Numbers.fm live studio performance broadcast. Includes some previously recorded live sets or studio recordings (last 20 minutes).  The rest is a live performance  from the studio.

Decker.Numbers.fm.1.12.12

The Difference is an light and sound installation that is a collaboration with Jan Tichy (light) and me (sound).  The installation is made up of 5 raw speakers each playing individual tracks with a light projection from above onto the 5 speakers.  For full documentation, see my website:  www.shawndecker.com.  This track is a stereo  audio recording made in the installation space.

TheDifference

A denatured song cycle for voice, violin, synthesizer, sfxs and electronics by Lynn Book and Shawn Decker. .  Excerpts from the 60 minute live performance at the Outer Ear Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL,  Jan 2012.

Transmedia and vocal artist Lynn Book in collaboration with electronic musician and sound artist Shawn Decker deploy Phaedra as a divining tool to denature the song cycle by way of voluptuous frictions between release and containment, stasis and white hot freedom. Part history and part possibility, Phaedra is both a mythical figure and a contemporary sign of escape.

Lynn Book has a vibrant stream of transmedia arts practice resulting in hybrid projects that explore embodiment, cultural critique and radical imagination. For more than 25 years, her works have been seen in the U.S. and Europe,
and heard internationally, including Roulette, the Kitchen, Bowery Poetry Club and the Knitting Factory in New York City; Hothouse, the Experimental Sound Studio, Club Lower Links and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago,
the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in the US, and in Europe at Emmetrop Festival in Bourges, France as well as Vienna, Berlin, Marseilles and recently Art Stays International Festival of Contemporary Art in Slovenia.

Shawn Decker uses technology and technological processes on the one hand and works with traditional elements such as Irish and American folk fiddle-traditions on the other – merging physical elements and techniques from sculpture with environmental sound and music performance, Decker sees art and art making within a very broad context. His work has been frequently performed, seen, and heard in the US and Europe at a wide variety of venues. Recent exhibitions of both solo and collaborative work have shown at venues such as: the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago’s Millenium Park, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the 2003 Biennial of Electronic Art in Australia, among others.
Australia, among others.

Phaedra.excerpt1.Act2

SONIC PERIPHERIES is a curated series on sonic art practices by Petra Klusmeyer, artist and Teaching Researcher of Sound Studies at the University of the Arts Bremen, in cooperation with the Artist-in-Residency Stuhr-Heiligenrod.  This excerpt is from the 6th installment in the series, a live installation/performance in June 2012. This installation/performance, titled Non/natura naturans; discerned presence  was realized as an installation involving 40 small speakers and 8 large speakers distributed through the gallery complex (2 galleries, the kitchen, and the WC and hallway).  The piece was made of of various field recordings, synthetic tracks, and small furtive clicking and chirping sounds from the small speakers, all centrally controlled.  Also, live processing using analog synths and other live electronics was incorporated into the work, along with external microphones monitoring cars passing and other outside sounds. The overall goal and idea behind this piece was to investigate the boundaries between the natural (field recordings and outside microphones) and the synthetic sounds I created based on natural processes and simulations.  The entire performative installation lasted 3 hours.


Non/Natura Naturans excerpt

FactoryFloorStereoVersion

Shawn Decker is a composer, artist, and teacher who creates sound and electronic media installations and writes music for live performance, film, and video. His work is positioned at the intersection of music composition, the visual arts, and performance, using physical and electronic media to investigate, simulate and praise the natural (and unnatural) worlds.  He teaches in the Sound and Art and Technology Studies departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Shawn Decker

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