Notes 4/29/07

Notes 4/29/07

W/ tulsita, text was the backbone
here, sound is the backbone. Voiceover more important.

Development of a narrative—connections between the poems that develop a story, weave a narrative

Think Cardiff, Robertson

come up w/ a loose but specific narrative structure? List of characters, etc?

Lonely Soul Oil: use as a kind of word from our sponsor?

Grapes of Wrath: vignettes that separate the parts—turtle crossing road, used car salesman

N’s problem w/ getting a sense of structure, what’s fair game for sound

M: if we come up w/ a narrative structure, it gives a jumping off point for N’s and M’s work process

G: let’s say 7 sections, each with voiceover, separated by interludes, given to N to work with

N: runs the risk of me creating soundtrack for a text

M: much looser than that. Last time, the only thing that tied it together was process. This time we’re trying to focus it by giving it a sense of travel, movement

N: my process is based around sounds I think are interesting. If I think oil pump sound is boring, do we use it, how do we use it, do we process it? Do we use only sounds that come from oil and religion? Could be boring as piss.

G: constraints are going to be productive. N: I’m questioning that.

M: constraints are a starting point, should be a factor in at least one of our modes (text)—but we should be able to open out, not have to take pictures of gas pumps all the time.

D: I’m a little mystified by this: if it becomes less interesting, switch to something else; if it doesn’t end up fitting in, we’ll use it for another project.

N: but if I’m working on something I become attached, and if someone says “this isn’t about O and R,” I’ll wanna punch them. Let’s review sounds as they get made, as we do texts and images.

M: that’s about working in isolation. We need to be more collaborative with the sound as with everything else

G: pictures sound and voices blending a lot, as they did in Tulsita

N: not that hard to soundtrack the voices; not enough. How to go beyond that and bring in a variety of sounds we’re all interested in.

M: likes idea of chapters and vignettes. Combination of soundtrack and other things involving the interludes, other stuff. The soundtrack could be a totally sonic piece. How do we incorporate image w/out competing w/ each other? What if we did do chaps w/ interludes? Have a chap that’s meant to go w/ an image, like a slide show; then the interlude w/out image, just sound.

G: or varying approaches, like one that parodies Ken Burns…

N: in favor of having text in small portions, at least on the wall, maybe quoted as if it’s someone’s philosophical sayings

D: I agree; that’s what we accomplished in Tulsita; collaboration of text and visual is part of the point of our process, and we should evolve that in the next project

G: 2 models: 1) chaps loosely related, connected by sonic interludes; 2) frame narrative into which chaps ostensibly fit—frame is intro and conclusion, and interludes

[fight and argument—blah blah blah]

then we start reading the texts:

“Here are artists”: first part of it, M and I imagine a filmstrip style, with the sound and the same border—can we photoshop this? Nathan wants one to melt. Filmstrips also usually have text—high five! Also, one of the fun things about filmstrips was that the sound and image always went out of whack.

Here are artists, yuppies, and Baptists
Here is a block in the America of heart
Here is manifest wind coursing through oil derrick park
tfos
ykcits
drah
who work for oral.

Images: Tulsa parks, Glenpool, oil parks, derricks, refineries (through oil derrick park)
flag sticking up (manifest wind)
who work for oral—janitors at ORU

get some brown recluses jumping

If I experienced a wave of oil notions, it would sound like this:
first the rusty doublewide door opening into the empty warehouse
then the skyscraper scraping steel
then the motorcycle of advance warning, the apostle
higher, then training my sights lower,
ticking off the paperthin railings as they melt by

images: ticks, melting

skyscrapers/ scrapes/ sorrel/ scapes

“then we then” trying to find sonic equivalents for Nathan’s d.j.ing

“Deep Long”:
two characters: 1) doctor in graphoilogy, “Dr. Cocktail” 2) ape-man

http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/
contains a diagram that describes our process: cumulative production/proven reserves/future discoveries

“Resale the Copious”
Jesus is a doctor like Dr Cocktail—Cocktail as reincarnation of Jesus?

“film strip” or “filmstrip” on youtube

“DavidGrantMindyNathan”: the way G reads it, sounds exactly like a filmstrip

Maybe 2 filmstrips that comment on each other—start and end w/ filmstrips? In the first, the sound and image get out of whack; in the second, the image itself becomes deformed, transformed into a different kind of media.

use the graphoilogy graph, modifying it in various ways over time

6/8/2007 Meeting notes

Nathan and I met in his studio to work on sound. I also showed him the beginnings of a chapter draft in flash.

Nathan’s idea of fourth screen in back with video of us as viewers/hecker—has a big brother, self-reflexive feel; with only occasionally saying something, sometimes just standing there, sometimes speaking without sound; in fact, sounds don’t even have to by synched.

The way LA was set up when we visted is just closed enough to suggest the box, the room, the sanctuary. Our installation is a sanctuary within the sanctuary of Living Arts.

Instead of ch, G says, we could work in modules, little riffs of time in images, motion, and sound. Then, we divide the sound modules in a kind of Chinese recipe—noodles/rice, meat, sauce, veggies—that always go together—that might solve the synch problem.

David read in most of the remaining texts, so we have lots of poetry.

Pick out certain lines and phrases and sounds from poems and have Nathan find the recordings. Use those little chunks in animations.

Reverse the process—give Nathan a flash animation and have him accompany it.

During this installation, we should have every combination of text/sound/image, including dead silence with images moving, still images with sound, etc etc.

We need to take advantage of the space and time that LA affords us without succumbing to the impulse to be too complicated. Spread sound, images, texts, and silence over the space and the time.

Without four sound systems, I’m afraid that it will just be another movie soundtrack.. Nathan says he doesn’t want this either.

We can use other sound systems, on side perhaps, to draw people’s attention to a certain event.

Check out video cameras from TU>

Nathan slowed down some video from Catoosa using Final Cut that is really great.

WE NEED A TRIPOD!

Part of an installation is recognizing the viewers perception within the space of the gallery, in addition to our perception of the material/place.

Figure out how to make a DVD run automatically.

Notes on Nathan's sound homework

Track 1 & 2
Short clip of preacher

Track 3
David reading (The modernity of est lubricates est)
I’d like to see some of the photos from Catoosa here—sandpipers, river, etc.

Track 4
rechanneling of sexual mores

Track 5
similar to track 4—could be the same?

Track 6
Grant reading dig down deeper along with Mindy reading new text (“Deep long rolling”), rain in background.
I see how Nathan is drawing parallels between the two “deep” poems.

Track 7
sermon, Tulsa movie, rig sounds
Too much of the sermon??
marriage (reminds me of the “Interesting Facts you may already know”)

Track 8
“Dot dot dot”
Grant reading from “DavidNathanGrantMindy”. The long chords from Tulsita (taken from Tulsa movie I believe)
Mindy reading from “Deep long rolling”.
cellos?
Great use of sermon in this one, though I’d like to hear more of David’s voice reading our texts than repeats of the sermon stuff from Track 7
7:07-Indians singing Jesus song (more of this)
7:30-David reading “The modernity of est lubricates”—I think we could use other texts rather than repeating


Notes:
I’d like to hear more of the “music” you were making when we were writing
I do think we need to read more of the poetry we’ve written
More oil derrick sounds?

Notes on sounds

070515 Wakow Listening Notes

New processing of some old Tulsita sounds, from Tulsa movie. Nathan feels strong about using this. (Flatlander high)

One track he played while we were writing, Nathan produced from an acoustic guitar (canal’s rending)

Nathan suggested that each chapter have a real broad conception of how we are using sound, not just as soundtrack or layers or background music.

Original key of Tulsita chords in original key (contrails)

Acoustic guitar, sounds at first like violin picsicado (Rabelais guitar); vaguely religious sounding,

Nathan suggested giving us each homework, a 3-5 min sound that we have to put image and text to.

Fluid sounds, low register morphs into high metallic sounds (overload guitars)

Sound of water (trickle)

Oil pump (oil pump)

Nathan reading and grant over embers sound (after fires)

sermon in downtown Tulsa, culled references to books ie OK divers manual (more light or not)
Tulsa clips interspersed in Presby sermon (canal rendered)

long track, beginning with metallic buzz then fading into filtered oil pump sounds (slow pump fizzy)

salt water sound with some other old Tulsita sounds and Presby sermon

“sermonicity” –Nathan

The part with David reading on several tracks is already what I imagine the sound track to this movie to be.

The tryptich is very enticing to me because of the long religious history to the form.

Notes from meeting 4/20/07

Frames juxtaposing still photos with short movies along a wall. Maybe even giving it a “stations of the cross” type effect. Other frames might have just subtly changing images. when you walk in, it feels like a normal gallery show.

We could still do this in a large scale, with projectors doing the images. Most of the gallery would be dark.

Could have a box-type situation where the projectors were on the outside and the images could be seen from the inside or outside while still retaining clarity of resolution.

maybe we could have five projectors projected into five frames along the two major walls

Next we need to:
Text from sound
Image from sound
and image from text

links to gas stations and Alexandre Hogue

Gas station sounds

weird OK Centennial website

Oil in the Sandhills

essay on Hogue

Crucified Land

Hogue Bio

TU's holdings in Hogue's papers

Wakow minutes 4/14/07

Shazzam, 'kowers:

Sound ideas:
local news and media?
church/religion sounds
oil: the physical sound, sounds and lines from movies

oil/water
lack of water—drought, landlocked (ties up to dust bowl)
relation entre oil/religion and water? Holy water, transportation
unspoken third term in a triangle
sound of the explosion at the OKC memorial: the hearing is about drilling for water, then interrupted by an explosion caused by ingredients for petroleum-based fertilizer

baptism vs transportation of goods; both industrial

2007 is the 100th birthday of the gas station

Do we know what happened between two days before the oil boom in OK and 2 weeks after? Like Saudi Arabia, in which enormous amounts of money cause a drastic rift? Or a surge in population? etc

all the churches are built in the 20s and 30s—they are literally coming out of the ground at the same time as oil

what were they using to get oil out of the ground? water?

is there a causal relationship between the oil boom and dust bowl? For instance, when did wide-scale damming begin in the state? What kind of power did it provide? I’ve heard that damming changed the climate here, making it more humid in summer—is there some correlation between the dust bowl and damming?

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/RADIO/c_w/guthrie.html
In 1926 after returning briefly to Okemah, Woody set out for Pampa, TX to join his father. There he began painting signs, but an uncle bought him a guitar and taught him to play.
"And there on the Texas plains right in the dead center of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about. . . . I never did make up any songs about the cow trails or the moon skipping through the sky, but at first it was funny songs or songs about what all's wrong, and how it turned out good or bad. Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in the country was thinking. And this has held me ever since."

reading: have someone w/ strong OK accent read some of our source texts? But we ourselves should read our poems.

the OK book section M read from was about missionaries

what about more testimonial, site specific, or process specific readings?

dry, technical readings that link up, perhaps drawn from TU library

write some connective sentences? write in church signs? (M says no)

deal w/ the original Oral Roberts building on Boulder and 18th?

our own sort of testimonials, specifically detailed observations of sites that we record? Photos do that well, but the voice description may add

“rooms and brains and ear canals” –description of psycho-acoustics, but a great title for something

Wakow notes 3/28/07

Wakow notes 3/28/07

Use Tulsita as a separate computer screen as you come in, that you can play through it, in addition to the main exhibit? Unless the main event is so awesome.

Tulsita still doesn’t manage to produce true integration between sound and the other elements. N8 wants more of an organic development in the way sound emerges in the work.

M: as an aficionado of This American Life, she’s interested in stories—incorporating those, sound-wise?

N8: voice overs, narration, that explains something about the process.

M: or recording our conversations, or using sermons, etc. Then can we learn something about sound processing, use our computers, make it more of a group concept?

Copy the sounds of oil and religion, integrate them into some kind of soundtrack for the project?

Some sort of photo project where the images are created by sound vibration?

Create computer programs like the itunes one that incorporates photos to a soundtrack?

what about visual elements of sound in terms of the files themselves? The way the sound looks vs what we expect them to sound like.

taking the sound of an oil derrick, seeing what it looks like visually, then abstracting it and making it beautiful—cyanotypes, etc. (Somebody did that, says N8, with a spoken alphabet or something)

or use as layering—the spikes in the wave echo the spikes of the prayer tower or of flowers

our great achievement shall be to make art out of Tulsa. Larry Clark showed the dark side of this model Midwestern city; can we reverse it, showing a postmodern beauty in a strip mall wasteland?

figure out ways to work from sound to text. Transcription software? What would that do to a kind of crazy set of sounds?

for next week: get a collection of sounds, build a text based on it?

Put an archive of sounds on our computer, then somehow wire them together and do an improv in which we play the sounds off each other and record the product.

Our City of Manifest Destiny

Who Knew Tulsa?

We reach for it, famished
an approximation
this kind desert
with insides blunted for the fast of will

it exists
ignited in the rising
buildings of clay
a city manifest

We did not know a thing in Tulsa.
But worthy elegance has treated our drainage.

Here, under the earth, which are memories?
Which art-treated?
Hipness and pit, which good taste?
We have found our city of opportunity.

It is said they damage their house in order to remain.
Opinion E: Undeniable aesthetics.

We have the goal of more elasticity
In order to give the impression of progress

The gift of the article is revolution
We cut ethical
It is the accumulation of demand we attempt to deny

We began to come with hunger
but close ourselves as soon as we think we will make it.

Tulsa. Who knew?




We were getting hungry and approaching Tulsa, Oklahoma so we thought we'd stop off for a quick bite at Subway or the like. We didn't know a thing about Tulsa, except that it existed. What we found was a town clearly on the rise; industrial-chic brick buildings encased galleries, shops and restaurants worthy of any major arts-concerned metropolis. But the vibe here, hipness and good taste notwithstanding, is unmistakably small-town. Tulsans could easily qualify as our nation's friendliest people.
By chance, we parked next to a store, Dwelling Spaces, that was having its grand opening party. The loftlike shop was smartly stocked with eclectic-modern doodads, whimsical Alessi kitchenware and T-shirts silk-screened "I'm down with T-town." The owner, Mary Beth Babcock, was living out a dream ("It was just time for this," she said) and provided tasty hors d'oeuvres from adjacent restaurants Tsunami Sushi and Blue Dome Diner. Jen and I bought some trinkets since we didn't think we'd easily be able to find stuff like this elsewhere.
We walked out to find a restaurant and passed the May Rooms Gallery, which seduced us in. The feel was the same as the rest of the neighborhood: industrial, lofty and undeniably aesthetic. The current exhibit, called Cuba 06, featured revolutionary propaganda posters, ethnic sculpture and moody black-and-whites of Castro. It's the collection of Milly Moorhead West, who was there regaling us with tales of her 20 trips to Cuba. She asked us where we were from; we told her.She asked us what we were doing here; we told her. She asked us where we were sleeping; we said good question. She said we should stay the night at her house. We were humbled by the offer -- here was that Southern hospitality we've all heard about -- but after thanking her, we told her that we were aiming to make more headway toward Texas.
Dinner, rather than Subway, was at James E. McNellie's, a happening neighborhood joint with all-American food, a pamphlet-length list of worldwide beers (Jen was excited to order her rarely found favorite, a Belgian brew called Leffe Blonde) and a talented band playing upstairs. We left full, happy and marveling at our good fortune for having stumbled upon Tulsa. Who knew?

Full 2nd draft ready for view

Click on the Tulsita (2nd draft) link above to see the whole thing, with four buttons on each poem, elongated interludes, cleaned-up animation on "Big Box Block", and no pop-up photos.