TRIGGERED SOUND

Pp001

Published by Palaver Press

GREGG KOWALSKY//

CARO MIKALEF//STEPHAN MATHIEU//

ÉMILIE PAYEUR//PIERRE PARÉ-BLAIS//

//JILL DUBOFF

stop. go. potato. next. so too is life. the midi trigge

r knows

the r

est is

just noise

this photo was taken by my grand

mother Etsuk

o Hara in 1967 during her extensive travels throughout Europ

e and t

he U

SA

MARIHIKO HARA//

stop. go. potato. next. so too is life. the midi trigge

r knows

the r

est is

just noise

this photo was taken by my grand

mother Etsuk

o Hara in 1967 during her extensive travels throughout Europ

e and t

he U

SA

RIE YOSHIHARA//

//BENJAMIN TOMASI

MARLA HLADY//

triggered sound

We record, we playback. And this is how we silence the world around us.

At this point, it’s obvious. We tend to want to control our foreground and ignore

the background. This is why we walk around wearing our headphones, it’s why music

plays in cafés and elevators, it’s why movies play on airplanes. It’s why almost every

digital gadget available today comes with innumerable functions that allow us to trigger our

own heard-environment at the push of a button, or perhaps just a slight tap.

Triggered Sound commands our auditory attention, as we’ve become distracted and quite

unattracted by the landscape of random sound ‘out there’. Yet this is also a byproduct

of our progress; push-button audio navigates us through places we’ve never been, it

helps our children learn the sounds that animals make and it helps us get rid of pesky crows.

To say that we are dependent on artificial landscapes of sound would be an understatement.

And perhaps these innovations which allow us to capture recorded sound

and extensively choose when, where and how to listen to it, are both the source

of our inability to focus out naturally occurring sound and the silencing solution

we’ve created for it.

In December 2011, I began observing how we engage with triggered sound. I wanted

this project to reflect the notion that recorded audio is this catalysing tool, rapidly

influencing our sensorial interaction with the world. And as we have made recorded

audio a centrepiece in our lives, it almost begs us to silence everything else out. What I found

is that as we trigger the recorded sounds around us, mp3 players sure, but also car alarms,

toys, answering machines, video games, loudspeaker announcements, our customized

heard-environment becomes increasingly theoretically complex, involving a range of sounds

that are simultaneously being created in a present moment and those being played back from

moments past. Our daily engagement with the world is shaped by spheres of recorded audio,

which is to say, sound created in the past. A child playing with a noise-making toy creates live

sound by touching, dropping, chewing, banging, rubbing. In the same instant, they are amidst

artificial sounds that have been created by someone else, somewhere else, some other time.

This toy was designed then manufactured, its sounds recorded then loaded, its batteries added,

it was distributed, sold and purchased, then opened and operated, broken and repaired, and

yet recorded tracks remain as if no time has passed at all since their creation. Time is this

masked element in our heard-environment, plotted onto the grid of our everyday experience

with the world around us.

These played-back sound events function as frozen images, representing that entire

hidden, historical process of how they inevitably got ‘here’. And every time we trigger

a recorded sound, this historical image re-enters our present. I can’t help but think

that this is why recorded sound always tends to connect with our sense of memory.

Perhaps just by virtue of its representation of the past, our brains are triggered to

recall emotional sensations from our own past. But could it be that our brains actually

differentiate between recorded and immediate sound events subconsciously?

Triggered Sound (the book.)

Photography, as the act of recording our world, fitting it to a frame and creating

a manipulatable double, tightly mirrors the notion of triggered sound. Photographs and

recorded sound both provide images of a past present and both have this great power

over our emotional memory. And yet we are so saturated with representation via

advertising, surrounded by duplicated frames and automatic sound, that these images

have over time become an inextricable and very unemotional part of life. In the age

of accessibility, with millions of our favourite songs available at the push of a button,

entertainment is now both immediate and invisibly embedded into every moment of our day.

Entertainment is something we have to ignore most of the time, just to be able to enjoy

some of the time. I think the only way to reflect upon the impact of these changes, both

in the way we live alongside representation by triggered sound and in the way we

interact with our senses at large, is to stage Absence. Exposing the objects of triggered

sound visually by removing their ability to ‘speak’ to us.

I wanted the visual language of photography to silence these audio objects, as a way of

reclaiming perspective on their presence in our heard-environment, so I asked 17 sound

artists to perform this silencing. These artists share an acute consciousness in regards

to recording, editing and playback devices, but more importantly, a concern for the

implications of recorded sound and both the contexts and contours of our heard

environments. Yet this was also a humbling experience, at least for me personally,

to force myself to see these objects for what they are visually. These are our tools, and

for once the performance is one of silence. And so, I ended up with a gorgeous collection

of images which convey a diverse array of silent moments, even if these machines

naturally suggest the presence of sound. Deupree’s existentially lost tape recorder;

Hara’s nostalgic monitor, reflecting both an entertainment experience and the lived

experience of his grandmother; Szczepanik’s hegemonic battle between sound and light;

and sawako’s playful daydream of a forest listening to itself.

This project could have been called Triggering Silence.

To some degree, this is an exhibition of fetishistic techno-portraiture. These images

of machines, some artfully composed, some stumbled upon, all stimulate a very natural

but strange sensorial response. It’s the sound that we long for while gazing upon these

photos because it’s the sound that has been left behind. The silence here is tense,

disharmonic in accordance with what we expect, and yet distinctly telling of the

reactionary relationship between our brains and our heard-environment.

Repulsed/comforted, distracted/nostlagic, tense/calm.

Sight complicates this delicate aural sphere.

In this book-space, there is an absence of recorded sound. There exists only an imagined

sound inspired by an image. In this book-space, we are pushed to keep in mind that

we can still choose to switch on or off our triggered foreground, and interact with

what’s naturally in the background.

JEREMY YOUNG//

//NICHOLAS SZCZEPANIK

YAN JUN//

JEREMY O’SULLIVAN//

AKI ONDA//

//NICOLA RATTI

SAWAKO//

TAYLOR DEUPREE//

Warm thanks to all the artists who contributed and to everyone who supported this ‘offbeat’ project.

We would like to especially thank Taylor, Alex

and Christian for their invaluable time. .

Jeremy & Catherine

December 2012

/150

Taylor Deupree www.12k.com

Jill BC DuBoffwww.jillduboff.com

Marihiko Harawww.marihikohara.com

Marla Hladywww.marlahlady.com

Yan Junwww.subjam.org

Gregg Kowalskywww.greggkowalsky.net

Caro Mikalef & Stephan Mathieuwww.espaciocabina.com.arwww.schwebung.com

Jeremy O’Sullivanwww.flickr.com/photos/ahiram

Aki Ondawww.akionda.net

Émilie Payeur & Pierre Paré-Blaiswww.myspace.com/emiliepayeur

Nicola Rattiwww.nicolaratti.com

sawakowww.troncolon.com

Nicholas Szczepanikwww.nszcz.com

Benjamin Tomasiwww.benjamintomasi.com Rie Yoshiharawww.tricolife.com Jeremy Youngwww.palavermusic.com

First EditionPublished by Palaver Press

www.palaverpress.com

Printed at University of the Arts London (UK)

© Palaver Press 2012. All rights reserved. Any unlawful reproduction without

permission is strictly prohibited.

ISBN: 978-0-9885491-0-4

Taylor Deupree//

Jill Du Boff//

Marihiko Hara//

Marla Hlady//

Yan Jun//

Gregg Kowalsky//

Caro Mikalef & Stephan Mathieu//

Jeremy O’Sullivan//

Aki Onda//

Émilie Payeur & Pierre Paré-Blais//

Nicola Ratti//

Sawako//

Nicholas Szczepanik//

Benjamin Tomasi//

Rie Yoshihara//

Text by Jeremy Young//

Edited by Catherine Métayer//