tristesse....engraved
issue one .... september 2010
contents **** page 3: Laurence Whistler * page 4: Gerda Taro * page 5-22: wandelweiser - a photographic response by Jez riley French * page 23-25: Michael Pisaro on ‘ascending series’ * page 26: green * page 27: treasure hiding - ‘a small, circular hole in a fishing hut window....’ by JrF * page 28: David Velez - two photographs selected * page 29-32: Bridget Hayden - three works * page 33: by Amy Newton * page 34-40: the leaf explorer - ‘children as artists’ & ‘great cities of the world’ * page 41: information * page 42: forthcoming
Laurence Whistler -
poet & glass engraver (1912 2000) His finest engraved glass serves as a fine metaphor for contemporary intuitive music - fragile, focused and often a hair’s breath between success and collapse.
As a poet Whistler created a body of work essentially sitting firmly within the English tradition but imbued with a sense of almost desperate purpose brought on by the early death of his first wife, the actress and poet Jill Furse. Whistler’s contribution to the tradition of glass engraving, which he revived, is unquestionable. More important however is the sheer beauty of many of his works and the ‘music’ of gesture - of sound and silence - they contain.
Gerda Taro
Gerda Taro (real name Gerta Pohorylle; b: 1 August 1910, Stuttgart d: 26 July 1937, near Bruntet, Spain) - the history of the photography of struggle would be poorer without her work & richer had she survived.
editions wandelweiser a photographic response by Jez riley French
Michael Pisaro - harmony series 11 - 16 ewr0710
Eva-Maria Houben - dazwischen / immer anders ewr0407/8
Jurg Frey - string quartets ewr0410
Cage . Schlothauer - for seven players ewr0604
Andre O. Moller - musik fur orgel und eine(n) tonsetzer(in) ...2003... ewr0702
Michael Pisaro - Transparent City (volumes 1 and 2) ewr0706/7
Michael Pisaro - Transparent City (volumes 3 and 4) ewr0708/9
Eva-Maria Houben - works for double bass ewr0803/4
Makiko Nishikaze - aqua . piano . aerial ewr0301
Makiko Nishikaze - pianopera 1 & 2 ewr0405
Tim Parkinson - cello piece ewr0603
Michael Pisaro - hearing metal 1 ewr0902
Michael Pisaro - an unrhymed chord ewr0801/2
Christian Wolff - stones ewr9604
Jurg Frey - klaviermusik 1978 - 2001 ewr0201
Beuger . Cage - Jurg Frey, clarinet ewr9607
editions wandelweiser can be found at http://www.timescraper.de/ * with thanks to Antoine Beuger & Richard Pinnell *
驶these are works that takes a long time to unfold & reveal themselves. The listener is always an essential part of that process - individually so始
Michael Pisaro on ‘ascending series’ score
(11) Waves and clouds of colored noise. Photographs of some nebulae:
Sustained noises of any color (pink, red, blue, violet, grey, green), filtered noise, or pure noises from instruments, that have an irregular dynamic shape or envelope, but which nonetheless have an area of intensity somewhere towards the center of the duration. The sound will begin softly or vaguely, gathering irregular momentum and then fade in a similarly irregular way. This is preferably an ensemble event (although it may occur occasionally from one player). Performers who come prepared with this kind of sound, should be ready to finish with whatever they are doing (on another layer) in order to join in with this procedure once it has been initiated. (The movement into the procedure should not be too obvious: finish, consider your various options with regard to the kind of noise and enter imperceptibly.) Similarly, in a larger group, not everyone needs to jump ship in order to join the wave of noise. The total ensemble sound of this layer can overwhelm any of the other layers. A wave or cloud should last at least a minute and may last in total up to twenty minutes. The timings, ensemble and duration of these events may (but do not have) to be predetermined. (12) Objects fading from view (decaying sounds). These are repeated sounds from instruments with decay (pianos, guitars, harpsichords, bells, large drums, contrabass pizzicato, metal objects with resonance, etc.) that, over the course of their duration (from 40 seconds to two minutes) gradually get and slower (timings of the slow down may be calculated or simply Ascending Series (5.1), p. 7
Ascending Series (5.1): a root system and rhizome for orchestra has as its basic harmonic structure (that is, the “root” part of the root and rhizome), a set of potentials derived from the fifth b/f#. The first part of the score works out trajectories (for an open number of musicians) based on various tuning schemes: creating ascending microtonal scales between the tones, and overtone chords based on those scales, etc. But I wanted to set up some interference for this rather systematic latticework. One form of interference was to be “clouds of noise.” But, without going into detail or writing specific sounds for specific instruments (not within the scope of this piece), how do you describe noise? For the purposes of this piece, I considered frequency-based descriptions to be a little “too much of the same” (i.e., of the same order as the heavily frequency based descriptions of the first part of the score). So the nebulae reproduced there (all Hubble telescope shots) are attempted descriptions or examples of potential noises (or clusters of noise) – their shape in time, their colors (perhaps after all related to the various color classifications of noise). They seemed to me to somehow be far more exact than anything I could describe in words. And they look nice.
- Michael Pisaro (August 2010)
recordings of several of Michael’s works can be found on wandelweiser (see page 22)
treasure hiding : wells-next-the-sea, norfolk - JrF a small, circular hole in a fishing hut window....
David Velez two photographs selected
photo 1: selected by David Velez photo 2: selected by JrF
Photography number one - title: 7809 This photograph was taken during the winter of 2009/2010 in an area called "the hole" at the intersection between Queens and Brooklyn in NY. On the 1930's and 40's the hole used to serve as a mobster dumpster and as habitat for rodeo horses; it's characterized by having a hole-like terrain structure and by being one of the less developed areas in NY. When I visited it a snow storm just hit NY a few days ago so the flooded and frozen streets enhanced this imagery of urban underdevelopment. Photography number two - title: Building at Floyd Bennett Field This photograph was taken in the abandoned airport of Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn on the fall of 2009. This is one truly amazing place: the enormous complex of airstrips draw an infinite horizontal landscape of tarmac. Since this place has been abandoned for such a while in some areas the vegetation has invaded some of the buildings and airstrips. Floyd Bennet is surrounded by sea and forest. - David Velez (September 2010)
Bridget Hayden - three works www.notwavingordrowning.co.uk
Bridget Hayden - ‘beaklady’
Bridget Hayden - ‘birdgun’
Bridget Hayden - ‘goldleaf ’
by Amy Newton
the leaf explorer * the following 6 pages stem from the leaf explorer blogspot - a site about discoveries in old books * theleafexplorers.blogspot.com
‘children as artists’ by R. R. Tomlinson (published 1944) dedication: ‘To Amanda’
‘Miss Richardson, being fully aware of the need for new methods in the teaching of pattern-making to children, associated lettering and writing with design in a most successful manner....There is one aspect of art teaching, however, which has been generally overlooked, and it is the development in children of the power of plastic expression....A close study of the following plates will convince all but the most sceptical that the creative power displayed by children encouraged to express their ideas by new methods of teaching opens up rich possibilities for the future which should not be overlooked’ -
R. R. Tomlinson
‘still life painting with snowdrops’ by Doreen Stokes, age 11
‘still life group with flowers’ by Audrey Hislop, age 13 1/2
‘the seaside’ by Joyce Fegan, age 14
‘two people walking in the sun’ by Rachel Cohen, age 5 & ‘in a waiting room’ by E. Cullender, age 8
'Great cities of the world - London, Paris, New York, Moscow, Tokyo, Rome' (published 1978)
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forthcoming.... planned future issues will focus on: found slides mobile phone photography bird illustrations concert / event poster design / drawings please feel free to make contact if you would like to be involved....