SOUND ARTIST 

This has something to do with travel.  Standing on street corners and leaning out of hotel windows.  I don't leave Seattle without my recording setup.  Traveling in new places keeps my head level and encourages me to keep track of the human condition and increasingly the ecological state of the planet.  I generally achieve this by walking around and listening. My work is about composing through geography and circumstance.  I'm listening for the moments when the world combines at my ears in such a way that it develops new meaning, new implications, and equally as important, becomes entertainment.  This collection and presentation of location sound recordings is central to the work I do under my own name.  With location recording at the center, I can cater to my love of sonic theater, sublime colorization, and juxtaposition.

Presentation is achieved through various means.  My CD releases are perhaps the most accessible and definitive medium.  I sometimes think that my work is best received when a listener is alone.  Listening can be a social event, but concentrated listening is a singular experience that is most reliably at its best when the listener picks the time and place.  And speaking of presentation, I'm a big advocate of headphones.  Many of my works are packed with depth and detail that the headphone environment enhances.  Headphones also tend to encourage a more involved listening experience, which is what I hope for with most of the titles available through this Web site.

While the compact disc is ideal in many ways, it should not overshadow installations and live performances and the performance-installation hybrid that continues to intrigue me.

SOUND ARTIST: SELECTED INSTALLATIONS

Tenant Union installation, OK Hotel, Seattle 12.7.89. to 1.31.90.
Twenty-four artists responded to this single-room-only seaman's hotel on the Seattle waterfront. A very rare opportunity to turn a derelict, history-loaded room into a new space. I was very influenced by the sense of low-rent history and super humanity permeating these worn-out spaces. I bolted shut the door to my room and opened the transom above. I made a soundtrack composed primarily of early 1980s Conrail railroad workers in a camper, drunk, bored, and utterly aimless. In combination with recordings of related marginal lifestyles, I filled the small room with the workers' voices. As one walked down the narrow hallway toward the room, these lives filled the hall. Twenty-four of the rooms on this floor were transformed by artists influenced by the OK Hotel, and it all intermingled to create a fantastic experience. Transformation of old industrial and urban spaces is perhaps the single most satisfying installation experience I could ask for. The OK Hotel became a premier live music club throughout the 90s and was home to many new-music nights.An earthquake around 2000 put an end to its final chapter as a haven for the arts.

Sonic Desert 1 and 2, Palisades, Washington 8.3.91. and 9.11.93.
Many people who live west of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State don't get over to the desert east of the range, where there is some lovely dry country known as the scablands. I organized these two numbers in a box canyon out near Palisades to record some original music in a great sonic space and give urbanites a reason to sink into the desert. Fifty or more participants showed up each time with a fleet of instruments and sonic implements. We circled the wagons and then spread out over the canyon for hours of improvisational interaction with player and place. The effect of night and day on the recordings is dramatic. A piece from these camping trip sessions can be found on (Y)earbook compilation of improvisation, volume 1, on Rastascan Records.

Diagonal Avenue Sonic Wharf, Seattle 6.25.96.
If you invite the public to an abandoned wharf on a sleepy, polluted river to watch the sunset and listen to 20 or so horn improvisers, will it work? Yes, this worked. The acoustics were hard echoes from behind and soft trails out into the river in front. Saxophonist Scott Granlund picked the players, and the musical interaction with the million-dollar river sundown was inspired. The event was recorded but I've never done anything with it to date. This sort of event can only happen when there is a large pool of well-acquainted improvising talent available. That would describe Seattle.

Anti-Counterclockwise, Georgetown, Seattle Monday, 5.5.97. at 1 a.m
This performance installation, part of the 12th Seattle Improvised Music Festival, was located near the Union Pacific railroad yard in Seattle.Composer Ron Fein and I had fun bringing a lot of people out to this obscure industrial location at a very unlikely hour. We billed this little event as an improvisation between two independently generated soundtracks, the location, a visitor's mood, and the hour. Our goal was to sonically influence this deep industrial setting with a haunted presence. Seemed to work. Bringing an audience to this setting was very satisfying in its own right. These days Ron spends most of his time in California's Mojave Desert.

Other Sounds Concert Series, Speakeasy Cafe, Belltown, Seattle 12.17.97.
A solo performance installation featuring a screwball surround-sound system in almost total darkness. The primary piece was "Chinese Hotels: Lobbies, Windows, and Hallways in Melaka, Thana Rata, Bangkok, Solo, Ubud, and Panganduran." I wanted to transport the audience to places that exist on earth. Anyone who has traveled the backpacker routes in Asia will recognize these ambiances and hopefully be filled with their own stories. Those new to this world will quickly start making their own theater. That was the intent.

WTO demonstrations, Seattle 11.30.99.
The city of Seattle was shut down by massive protests against the World Trade Organization, which was in town to plot its profit curves. Before things got very ugly, the downtown streets were filled with protest art. My contribution emanated from a pair of 9-volt battery amps hung from my belt. I played a cricket field recording that engulfed me and those who found themselves next to me. It was subtle and affecting. To be honest, I doubt that more than 10 percent of those within the perimeter of the cricket field were even aware of it. It was absolutely the opposite of the emotional intensity of the situation -- a truly satisfying juxtaposition.

Large Mudflow in Cabin 7, Camp Long, Seattle 8.19.00
The Nature Consortium held an "Arts in Nature" festival at this old West Seattle park. In each of some 12 small cabins scattered about the park, a sound artist created work inspired by the surroundings. Each cabin was named after a mountain in the region. Mine was Mt. St. Helens. It got me thinking about volcanic activity. I developed a soundtrack that suggested the slow movement of a large mudflow with the presence of a lot of low-end rumble. I installed a Bag End subwoofer in the center of this one-room cabin and bolted the door shut. On the door was the title of this piece with no other information available. The low end radiated out of the wood structure very clearly for quite a distance. It was a very wet low sound. I would call this piece theater. One can only imagine what a mudflow of this intensity could be doing in a cabin. Absurd, of course, and typical of man's presence in the natural world.

Burning Man, Black Rock City, Nevada Labor Day 2002.
The art theme for BM this year was Floating World. The site was an inland sea on the playa floor. I rigged a bicycle with speakers and a CD player. After dark, I radiated the sounds of foghorns and buoy bells. Particularly effective back in the residential streets. Also quite strange in a dust storm.

Cornish College of the Arts "Sound Structures" Exhibition 9.5.02 to 9.28.02.
This was an opportunity to install a sound field in the Cornish library. I'm quite taken with the idea of subtle sonic enhancements to quiet spaces. The library setting is ideal for this purpose. My intention with the piece "Late Summer Afternoon, 4 p.m." was to infuse the space with the depth and pace of rural summer scenes. Using sounds from South Carolina, northern India, and central Bali, I opened up the space with the content and by diffusing the sound off the ceiling. The installation was completed by having a window open to provide a sonic interaction with the outside.

Removed and Haunted performance installation, Polestar Music Gallery, Seattle12.12.03
Improving on the idea of sonically surrounding an audience in a solo performance, I filled the space with radios of all kinds by using a 60-watt FM transmitter. The broadcast source material was based on early pre-mixes of what has become the Removed and Haunted CD, available in the Releases section of this site. I applied large numbers of notch filters to location recordings I've made from around the world and created some very ghostly extracts of the human condition. Heard through 30 or so radio speakers, this soundtrack developed fascinating new relationships with the walls and air in Polestar. I also played an additional soundtrack that was heard through a hi-fi system that included a lot more low- and high-frequency material to complement the restricted range of the small radios. I played around with the loudness of each soundtrack during the performance but otherwise let it ride. I was happy to discover that many in the audience entered a trance-like hypnogogic state.

SOUND ARTIST: SELECTED PERFORMANCES

"Slow Light Terrain", Pilgrim Arts Center, Capitol Hill, Seattle. 4.28.90.
Marc Barreca, Jeff Greinke, Jon Keliehor, John Wesley, and I turned a large space into a sonic sounding board for percussion, electronics, and fireworks, and a 4-way street for the interaction of our new ideas. This was a lovely night and an inspiration for me to pursue performance as an event, not a gig.

Artificial Life Concert Series, Consolidated Works, Seattle 11.26.99.
This surround-sound performance with Tucker Martine and Climax Golden Twins was an improvisation with location recordings that had a very overseas feel to it. We worked with the idea that new places and situations could be created by recombining our recordings in new thin air. The event was heavily influenced by the arrival of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Sets and lights were designed and built by Curtis Taylor. Further evidence that people love the cinematic nature of location recordings.

"After Sundown, 82 Degrees, 90-Percent Humidity", Vital 5 Productions, Seattle 5.31.02.
We don't have a lot of hot weather in the Pacific Northwest and I can really miss it. I asked Brent Arnold (cello and erhu) and Jeff Greinke (samplers and electronics) to join me in creating a very hot climate in this very urban space with floor-to-ceiling windows. I used a new system of organizing hundreds of location recordings onto a laptop computer so that I could improvise spontaneously. Jeff and Brent are masterful instant composers. The audience sat in the ambient light from the city outside and got lost in their personal equatorial dreams. This is part of the continuing story of my fascination with transporting people to new places through the medium of sound.

Phonographers concert, Polestar Music Gallery, Seattle 10.11.02 (second set with Alex Keller, Dale Lloyd, and Mike Shannon)
The Seattle Phonographers Union is perhaps the largest and best organized in the U.S. Our interest is in making and presenting location sound recordings on disc and in improvised settings with a good sound system. This night found eight of us splitting into two sets and creating huge soundscapes that were cinematic, dynamic, and super earthly. Check out phonography.org for more info on this loose group of big listeners. Several recordings are currently available for those who are curious.

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