"Crossing the equator implies a change of rotation described by the Coriolis effect. In the upside-down world everything is inverted but masked by gravity.  There too, there are imposed and plutocratic rules. But there are a few singular people who swim upstream, avoiding the turns or simply strangling them; they know how to swim much faster, surrounded by the ocean. And they know how to break the rules."

David Chesworth (@david-chesworth) is known for his distinctive and diverse explorations of high and low brow themes via synth wave, electronics, ensemble music, experimental opera, installations, video artworks. Performances at BAM Next Wave, Bang on a Can Marathon, Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, Sydney Biennale. Co-founder of post-punk group Essendon Airport. Early solo albums recorded for Innocent Records in late 70s early 80s.

https://davidchesworth.bandcamp.com/

HOCast #64 - David Chesworth

Of late I’ve been getting to know the MakeNoise Morphagene modular synthesis device. The User Manual describes it as being “informed by the worlds of Musique Concrete and Microsound”, “a set of tools for creative synthesis” “ for the creation of new musical form and content, previously unimagined.” 

It enables extreme manipulation of recorded sound using a syncretic paradigm of delimited analogue tape splicing exaggerated by the granular control capabilities of digital software. That is, infinitely variable fragmentation and reassembly of sonic units discretised down to improbable fractions of seconds duration, organised and disorganised in complex systems activated by tiny variations in voltage control signals. Unscripted, possibly unscriptable combinations and sequences of sonic fragments drifting into basins of attraction, pattern teasing and spilling into unpredictably chaotic cascades. 

As source material for this most aleatoric composition, I prepared a small set of recordings using five empty aluminium beer cans. I teased a variety of sounds from them on the kitchen bench, beginning with the objects intact and gradually reducing them by stages to tiny pieces, coaxing sounds from each stage of their disintegration by tapping, dropping, rolling, shaking, etc.

Once ingested into the Morphagenes random access memory, combinations of cables carrying tiny voltage variations were experimented with to derive the dereeve you’re about to hear. 

The resulting composition paradoxically synthesises interruption as flow, using fragment as method to simultaneously generate and disrupt an unusual listening experience - its a kind of aural synechdoche or fractal in which any part effectively represents the whole.

Back in the 20th century, French essayist and semiotician Roland Barthes explored and expounded the fragment as technique, content and political strategy.

For Barthes, fragments held the potential to manifest escape from the tyranny of mundane meaning imposed by so-called ‘common sense’ and received wisdom. He characterised his writing, and intellectual works as ‘a circle of fragments’.

A quote from 1977 exemplifies : “To write by fragments: the fragments are then so many stones on the perimeter of a circle: I spread myself around: my whole little universe in crumbs; at the center, what?”

44  SONIC SKETCHBOOKS - fragments

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sonic sketchbooks is a podcast series about sound art, art music and field recording hosted by sydney-based artist gary warner

44 SONIC SKETCHBOOKS - fragments

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