duration, streaming and the studio as instrument

duration: this becomes increasingly important especially in relation to art as everyday life. art can be considered limited in its temporal frame yet life is continuous. many artists want to confuse or blur the difference between art and everyday life, often creating pieces that are long and have a challenging duration. ‘the dream house’ (1979) by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela – a sound and light installation that has been running since the late 70s. it not only challenges how long a piece of art can be, also as you move around the space the sound properties are constantly shifting asking what is this sound – does it have to change, be bought and sold? here, it can stay the same and exist in this place like and with its architecture.

streaming: the use of technology also expands the notion of duration. can give you a sonic super-abundance of sound/music, anything you want but the artists narrative can get challenged as you can play in any order. you don’t get the front and back of an album but usually just the front and therefore none of the other information (metadata) the artist wanted you to know . this might effect knowing the context of the music and where it came from. in the past, music was layer manually in the studio, now it can be done as a cut and paste for sampling.

the studio as an instrument: began and blossomed in the 1970s Jamaican record studios – King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry began recording and experimenting in the studio by taking out or adding on tracks of echo boxes and delay units etc. i.e. the musicians have left and i continue to make music in the studio with this material using subtraction and addition of elements.

autotune: created by Andy Hildebrand to correct notes of tune. began as corrective but turned into expressive and creative as it creates melodic movement and electronic sounds that mixt with the natural voice. Hafida the Moroccan wedding singer uses autotune to great effect with traditional melodic singing.