Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Lucier, Alvin"

This paper considers the early work of Alvin Lucier and its often problematic positioning between concert and installation work as a means of questioning how installation might be defined. Following an introductory survey of Lucier's work, a history of installation in the visual arts is traced through the debate, initiated by Michael Fried, on the ‘theatricality’ of minimalism. Fried's condemnation of the role of the viewer in what he termed ‘literalist’ art became, contrary to his intentions, a central element in thinking about installation work. Fried's position was recently engaged again by Hal Foster in positing a particular phenomenology of minimalist work, which is seen to be directly relevant to the example of Lucier. Having thus established the relevance of this phenomenology to the consideration of sound installations, whether they are themselves minimal works or not, discussion returns to the problematic example of Lucier, and the conclusion that the boundary between concert and installation works may always be permeable, that a precise morphology of installation will remain elusive.

Alvin Lucier reminisces about his former student and colleague Stuart Marshall. Marshall's sound works investigated such phenomena as the threshold of hearing and the displacement of sound environments, through scores that combined participants and equipment in incongruous ways, with instructions based on seemingly contradictory statements, creating unexpected groupings and responses.

The alpha brain wave sonification inaugurated by Alvin Lucier in Music for Solo Performer (1965) ushered in biofeedback as a new possibility for art and a racialized fantasy of the “Orient.” The “Alpha Orient” encompasses sonic methods equating alpha brain waves with the supposed exceptional “composure” and “silence” of the East. Eunoia (2013-2014) by Lisa Park and Yoko Ono’s 1964 Cut Piece and 1965 Sky Piece for Jesus Christ expose the Alpha Orient as an ableist fantasy of the Asian woman in the remarkable soundness of her self-control.

‘I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in’, states the American sound artist and composer Alvin Lucier (1931-) in his canonical piece I am Sitting in a Room (1970), thereby emphasising the very act of enunciation in which someone is addressing someone else in an individual speech act. Though the question of enunciation has been touched upon in several analyses of this piece, none of them have connected it to the strong and vast theoretical field established by the French linguist Émile Benveniste (1902-1976) and further developed by numerous phenomenologically-oriented analytical approaches, particularly in relation to literary and film studies. By shifting our attention from the statement to the very act in which it is produced, the article aims not only to shed light on an essential part of Lucier’s artwork, but also to show how the theory of enunciation can prove fruitful in relation to sound studies as such. In conclusion, the article suggests that in addition to the text, the vocal performance and the recording can also be seen as communicative acts.

This paper defines the object-based sound installation as a distinct category of sound art that emerges from the intersection of live musical performance and the sonic possibilities of the recording studio. In order to contextualize this emergent category, connections are drawn among the rationalization of the senses, automated musical instruments, the lineage of recorded sound and the notion of absolute music. This interwoven history provides the necessary backdrop for the interpretation of three major works by Steven Reich, Alvin Lucier and Zimoun. These respective pieces are described in order to elucidate the ways in which object-based sound installations introduce embodied visibility into the transformative gestures of sound reproduction.

Der Komponist und Klangkünstler Alvin Lucier ist einer der Mitbegründer der Live Electronic Music-Szene der 60er Jahre in den USA. Vergangenes Jahr feierte er seinen 80. Geburtstag. Im Dezember 2009 widmete sich das SOLOLALA Festival, eine Veranstaltungsreihe des ausland Berlin unter der Leitung von Gregor Hotz, Alvin Luciers Solo-Stücken. Fünf seiner Stücke wurden hierfür von fünf Performerinnen neu interpretiert, darunter zwei seiner bekanntesten, "Music for Solo Performer" (1965) und "I Am Sitting in a Room" (1970). Der Beitrag führt Interviews und Statements der Beteiligten – Performerinnen, Techniker, Lichtdesignerin und Kurator – zusammen. In dieser Vielstimmigkeit wirft er den Blick auf das Solo als Teamarbeit, die Aufführungspraxis in Musik und Performancekunst und fragt nach der inspirierenden Essenz von Luciers langjährigem Schaffen.

Der Komponist und Klangkünstler Alvin Lucier ist einer der Mitbegründer der Live Electronic Music-Szene der 60er Jahre in den USA. Vergangenes Jahr feierte er seinen 80. Geburtstag. Im Dezember 2009 widmete sich das SOLOLALA Festival, eine Veranstaltungsreihe des ausland Berlin unter der Leitung von Gregor Hotz, Alvin Luciers Solo-Stücken. Fünf seiner Stücke wurden hierfür von fünf Performerinnen neu interpretiert, darunter zwei seiner bekanntesten, 'Music for Solo Performer' (1965) und 'I Am Sitting in a Room' (1970). Der Beitrag führt Interviews und Statements der Beteiligten – Performerinnen, Techniker, Lichtdesignerin und Kurator – zusammen. In dieser Vielstimmigkeit wirft er den Blick auf das Solo als Teamarbeit, die Aufführungspraxis in Musik und Performancekunst und fragt nach der inspirierenden Essenz von Luciers langjährigem Schaffen.

Cette thèse présente une analyse problématisée de la démarche musicale très particulière du compositeur nord-américain Alvin Lucier (1931), désignée comme performance musicale. Que voudra Lucier après une césure compositionnelle de dix ans après avoir été pourtant lauréat de prix de composition ? Quel est son bagage et quels sont donc ses enjeux compositionnels, notamment par rapport au contexte de l'avant-garde de l'époque ? Quel est d'ailleurs son rapport au modèle européen ? Cette étude montre alors la très grande originalité de Lucier, artiste connu mondialement, mais finalement peu dans le détail, inscrite dans le contexte général de l'art performatif américain, peu abordé également en musicologie française hormis les collaborations de Cage avec Cunningham, Rauschenberg ou Tudor qui seront vus ici en compagnie de bien d'autres personnalités du théâtre, de la danse, des arts plastiques, notamment dans des moments exceptionnels de rencontres tels les soirées des 9 Evenings ou celles données dans le loft de Yoko Ono. L'approche de Lucier permet de percevoir ainsi frontalement, en plus des aspirations d’une génération d'artistes qui a 30 ans au seuil des années 1960 très revendicatrices politiquement et socialement, une perception nouvelle de l'objet d'art, délaissé pour le mouvement, et qui voit alors Lucier se porter vers une scène, vers une scène du son, vers une musique qui soit scène de l'audition, vers donc une scène proprement performative. D'où vient le son, quelles en seraient ses coordonnées dont Lucier est bien rétif à accepter la certitude, quel le lieu exact de l'audition, telles sont des questions récurrentes chez Lucier et de la récurrence desquelles il fait art et, bien entendu, musique. S'il manie en conséquence un étonnant mélange de sciences physiques, d'éthologie, d'alchimie, de poésie, d'aléatoire, il en ressort une conception propre et passionnante de la causalité, de l'environnement, de l'écologie, lesquelles seront à percevoir également dans leurs contextes d'apparition. Imperceptiblement, pas à pas, mais radicalement, Lucier sort la musique du champ musical strict bien avant le sound art, dont il devenu postérieurement une icône, ou avant le fied recording qu'il déborde, en ouvrant la musique à prendre à égalité d'inspiration et même en homologues les sciences, physiques et cosmologiques notamment, les animaux, un art à l’aveugle, voire une pensée ésotérique si tant qu'elle offre un modèle unificateur au-delà des apparences des choses. En effet, la nature ondulaire du son permet à Lucier de franchir les portes (du son) et de constituer une problématique perpétuelle de la propagation et de la conversion où le performer interroge, en forme d'art, les trajets, translations et métamorphoses du son dans des canaux différents. Ceux-ci peuvent être ceux de la mémoire, des milieux physiques environnants, ou même encore des formes puisque Lucier, moderne alchimiste, peut promouvoir un son plus que sonore, un son physique, un son visuel, voire un son de l'inaudible, en tous les cas un son circulant et qui rend perméables des dimensions hétérogènes. Devant ces conversions physiques et mentales qui sont, de fait, des bouleversements, c’est donc toute une aventure intellectuelle inédite, et qui a des grandes répercussions sur la musique d'aujourd'hui, que cette thèse veut mettre à l'honneur en couvrant la très longue carrière de Lucier, toujours bien actif
This PhD dissertation describes how north american composer Alvin Lucier (1931) found his path in composing music once he figured out his previous musical training lead him to an aesthetic dead end. Not without good sense of humor Lucier had to cope with lack of inspiration for almost a decade and focused mainly on conducting a contemporary music choir before he could take up a new composing perspective. His art, that one might define as performance art, has a form obviously different from what is commonly called (art) performance and is related to an art trend that was rising up within the Fifties and the Sixties. Lucier's music belongs to this history of american experimental and performative art, a topic barely known in french musicology at the exception of Cage's famous collaborations with either Cunningham, Rauschenberg or Tudor. These oversteppings of the bounds of the music field of the time as well Lucier's music itself indeed must be looked into at the light of the works of young artists who were often friends and working on common projects, be they dancers, musicians, painters or sculptors. All have altered the meaning of the word "to perform". Lucier amazing example helps to catch a glimpse on some artists who were on their thirties at the turning of the Sixties while their works help in turn to understand how in his case Lucier has considered music (and hearing) as if taking place on a stage. Where does a sound come from, on what stage, where hearing really takes place, these questions could be Lucier's ultimate seek motives. If his musical thinking therefore seems to deal with various matters as diverse as chance procedures, physics, ethology, poetry, alchemy his conception of what causality, environment or ecology are proves very consistant. All were new topics that must be now carefully driven back to their original backgrounds. To sum it up now in one sentence, the physical aspect of sound as a wave including a wavelenght that can be felt by the human body in different sensorial ways gave Lucier the opportunity, or so to say, the excuse to create a sound propagation art where sound is as much physically reflected as mentally thought over along the many conversions Lucier provokes. For Lucier sound is a puzzling question whom he surveys in all its manifestations be they its trajectories, transformations or even its metamorphosis so far as Lucier seems a modern alchemist willing to make the sound visible, haptic, or audible if litterally inaudible. Besides being a still active, highly influent composer and a seminal sound art icon, Lucier's long career displays thus a complete intellectual adventure that deserves to be pointed out in its most relevant and breaking features

This practice-led Ph.D. research consists of a body of work and its contextual analysis and reflection through the creative practice of Roni Horn, Robert Smithson and Alvin Lucier. Initiated with the following questions: why do I hear sound when there is no sound to hear? What is it to cause the impression of something that is not present? which emerged from my own practice and my chance encounter of Horn’s work, the aim of this writing intends to explore and adumbrate the notion of en creux evoked and circumscribed in and through sound as a creative medium in the light of the practice of Roni Horn, Robert Smithson and Alvin Lucier. Five pieces of artwork have been developed, analysed and discussed as case studies alongside with the foregoing artists’ work and aesthetic thinking. In order to tease out the constituents of an encounter of en creux, each case study focuses the examination and investigation on different aspects of Horn’s creative strategy of doubling, Smithson’s dialectic of Site and Nonsite and Lucier’s I am sitting in a room, and in turn, their aesthetic and critical influence on my approach to use sound in the pursuit of the subject in question. The primary concern of this practice-led research is not to develop and define sound as specific aesthetic object impinging on in its environment, but as specific aesthetic agent in which the form and the content constantly modifies and contains each other, and as an aesthetic agent through which specific circumstances are created in time and space. The creative practice of this research project is thus modulating between these three artists’ practice while the critical reflection and the analysis of the work produced is triangulated by their conceptual and aesthetic thinking. Five pieces of artwork, varying from stereo recordings, installations, performance and textual instructions, are selected and discussed as case studies in the written thesis. These include Spring Piece (2009), 2 p.m. (2009), Folding (2009-10), Hear One Near and Think of the Other (2011) and Measurement No.1 D NAB (2011-). Being both the source and the outcome of the critical findings and analysis, these works are considered as doubling to the written thesis, and vice versa.

This thesis explores a series of relationships between music and acoustics in order to develop a basis for discussing and critiquing aesthetics in post-Cagean experimental music. Specifically, it examines the acoustic and aesthetic theories that inform the practice of American composers La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier. One particular theme - the sine wave - emerges, both as a prominent feature in the work of these two composers, and also as a nexus point between music and acoustics. Pursuing this theme, the thesis begins by looking at issues in the science, technology, and ideology of acoustics in relation to the study of musical sound in the late nineteenth century. It then aims to situate the sine wave historically, culturally and technologically within a range of scientific and aesthetic practices in operation in the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, it explores the deployment of concepts from the field of acoustics by artists of the avant-garde, and considers what contribution these factors played in broadening the developing discourse of sound within the arts. These discussions then inform detailed investigations into the work of both Lucier and Young, examining their use of sine waves to explore and produce simple acoustic phenomena.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2008.
A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Humanities and Languages, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographies.

The project examines, in an experimental way, how differences in massing, aperture, and sectioning are affecting the natural resonant frequency of an architectural space. An investigation of boxes with these different qualities resulted in more than 200 minutes of sound material. By creating visual representations of the sounds, a catalogue and scheme for amassment of the boxes, could be organized. With the knowledge of how resonant frequency in prehistoric megalithic structures could have been used to support ritual chanting and the parallel to historic and contemporary religious buildings, a chapel was designed. Each room of the chapel has its own reign of resonant frequencies, with the third node being generated from my own voice and a monologue. Since the sound is a big part of the project, the main representation of the project is a series of soundscapes of each room of the chapel. This illustrates that architecture should not always only be looked at, but also listened to.

Les XIXe et XXe siècles sont caractérisés comme des siècles de la critique. La plus grande partie de cette thèse porte sur l’analyse de la « Nouvelle Critique » en relation avec l’œuvre de Jean Racine. Ce mouvement critique qui a marqué les années soixante, s’intéresse plutôt aux structures sous-Jacentes qui peuvent être dégagées d’une œuvre littéraire.Les représentants de la Nouvelle Critique qui sont en principe, Lucien Goldmann, Charles Mauron et Roland Barthes dégagent de l’œuvre racinienne, chacun de sa propre façon, une structure de base. La critique sociologique de Goldmann, la psychocritique de Mauron et la critique structurale de Barthes offrent plusieurs pistes de réflexion.Présenter les méthodes proposées par la Nouvelle Critique, dégager l’essentiel de ses théories et apprécier leur valeur en démontrant la raison qui les a rendues fondamentales ainsi que comprendre la polémique déclenchée autour d’elle sont pour ce travail des tâches à accomplir. Or, cerner les enjeux de la « Nouvelle Critique » dans la critique racinienne en examinant les critiques faites par d’autres critiques constitue l’objectif de ce travail
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are characterized as centuries of literary criticism. The primary objective of this thesis will focus on the methodology used by “New Criticism” in relation to the work of Jean Racine. The New Criticism was a formalist movement, popular in the sixties, which focuses on objectively evaluating the underlying structure and text from literary work.Representatives of ‘‘New Criticism”, such as, Lucien Goldmann, Charles Mauron and Roland Barthes utilized structure methods to interpret Racine's literary works. The Sociological criticism of Goldmann, the Psychoanalytic criticism of Mauron, and the Structuralism of Barthes offer several areas of consideration.The aim of this study is to present the methods proposed by “New Criticism”, to reveal the essence of its theories, to assess their value by demonstrating the reason of their importance, and to understand controversy sparked around this formalist movement. So, identifying the “challenges of the ‘’New Criticism” in Racine’s criticism’’ by examining the criticisms made by other critics is the purpose of this work

This thesis explores a series of relationships between music and acoustics in order to develop a basis for discussing and critiquing aesthetics in post-Cagean experimental music. Specifically, it examines the acoustic and aesthetic theories that inform the practice of American composers La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier. One particular theme - the sine wave - emerges, both as a prominent feature in the work of these two composers, and also as a nexus point between music and acoustics. Pursuing this theme, the thesis begins by looking at issues in the science, technology, and ideology of acoustics in relation to the study of musical sound in the late nineteenth century. It then aims to situate the sine wave historically, culturally and technologically within a range of scientific and aesthetic practices in operation in the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, it explores the deployment of concepts from the field of acoustics by artists of the avant-garde, and considers what contribution these factors played in broadening the developing discourse of sound within the arts. These discussions then inform detailed investigations into the work of both Lucier and Young, examining their use of sine waves to explore and produce simple acoustic phenomena.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Musizierende, die auf über 2.500 Jahre alten Ton- und Bronzegefäßen abgebildet oder als kleine Statuetten dargestellt sind, sind stumme Zeugen antiker Musik. Leiern, Panflöten oder Auloi in ihren Händen sind wichtige Basis, um die Musikkultur der älteren Eisenzeit in Mitteleuropa zu erforschen. Wie die Musik der Hallstattzeit (ca. 800–500 v. Chr.) tatsächlich klang, ist nicht überliefert. Sie wieder „hörbar“ zu machen, ist Ziel der Musikarchäologie. Darstellungen antiker Instrumente und Vergleiche mit noch heute existierenden archaischen Instrumenten, deren Stimmungen und Spieltechniken bekannt sind, halfen dieses musikalische Revival zu versuchen. Das Ensemble Cantlon lässt die Musikwelt der Hallstattzeit als charmant-vergnügliche Zeitreise auferstehen. Die Musiker Albin Paulus, Nadège Lucet, Niki Fliri, Pat Feldner sowie die Gastmusikerin Beate M. Pomberger spielen Leier, Hornpfeife, Panflöte, Knochen- und Gefäßflöte, Bass-Winkelharfe, Maultrommel und verschiedene Rasselinstrumente, die archaischen antiken und traditionellen Vorbildern entsprechen. Klänge und Musik, die ihre kulturellen Wurzeln im aktuellen Kontext haben, bieten eine künstlerische Imagination der letzten Epoche der Urgeschichte. Das akustische Erlebnis der CD SITULARIA – Klänge aus der Hallstattzeit wird durch ein mehrseitiges Booklet, das einen Überblick zur eisenzeitlichen Musikgeschichte bietet, vertieft. Der wissenschaftlich fundierte Text wird von zahlreichen Abbildungen begleitet.

Kuivila notes that at the time of the interview Lucier was interested in sonic effects at the edge of musical focus. Childs and Lucier discuss synthesizers as a form of technology; instrumentation as culture; Sonic Arts Union and Europe; brainwaves and echolocation; art in environment; acoustics and engineering. Lucier introduces the Indonesian view of art; occult and alchemy; Pauline Oliveros and female wisdom; Mao; choral directing; ethnomusicology; politics. He talks about his piece I Am Sitting in a Room; mixing cultures; Native American chant; his work in the ONCE group; transformation; speech and stuttering; Cardew on Cage and Stockhausen; and The Queen of the South.