Sound Thresholds: April 2012 workshop at Le Quai, Mulhouse, France

In April 2012, I will travel to the Alsace region of France to lead a 5-day workshop at Sonic, the sound design module of le Quai, École Supérieure d’art de Mulhouse.

« Sound thresholds : indoors and outdoors » « Seuil de son: à l’intérieur, à l’éxterieur»

This workshop will explore the overlaps between outdoor and indoor sound, both how we make it and how we receive it. We will start with sound recording excursions to the environments around Mulhouse, as well as the inner sound environments of the studio. Particpants will work in small groups to develop sound pieces for presentation, using a combination of their recordings and sounds made live using a variety of means.
Participants will be encouraged to seek sites that blur the line between indoors and outdoors: crumbling buildings, tents, patios and other thresholds. Weather and other factors permitting, the final pieces will be presented in these unusual places.

The Unheard World: Workshop at University of Massachusetts, Boston

In October 2011, I led a workshop at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I worked with media arts undergraduates from a class run by Prof. Cat Mazza of the Visual Arts Department. We focused on the aesthetic uses of microphones as instruments. We also worked directly with contact microphones and small battery-powered amplifiers, using them around the campus in a variety of settings.

In preparation for the class, I built several small piezo-electric contact microphones, which became the property of the class.

Among other things, students amplified and performed the sounds of a concrete and steel stairwell on campus.

Listen to the full audio recording of the stairwell sounding:


The student on the left applies a contact microphone to a metal strut in a hallway on the UMass Boston campus, while his classmate on the right operates a battery-powered speaker to amplify the vibrations.


A student nestles a microphone among the leaves of an outdoor potted plant.


Dropping gravel on an amplified wooden board clamped to a contact microphone.


Discovering the hidden sounds of the pier and harbor.

Suggested reading/listening for “The Unheard World: Microphones and Listening.” This is an informal list to get you started, arranged somewhat intuitively. 

 

R. Murray Shafer

  • The paper-passing exercise was drawn from his book A Sound Education.
  • The Soundscape is his best-known work, and lays out his philosophies.

 

Annea Lockwood: check out CDs The Glass World and A Sound Map of the Hudson River.

 

Pauline Oliveros

  • Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice and Deep Listening Pieces

 

John Cage

 

Pierre Schaeffer – French composer who coined the term musique concrète for music composed of recordings of objects and environments.

- Étude aux Chemins de Fer (1948), music made from recordings of trains. The earliest example of musique concrète.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9pOq8u6-bA

 

Voice Crack: cracked everyday electronics

 

Jana Winderen: Norwegian nature recordist and composer, makes extensive use of hydrophones. http://www.janawinderen.com/

 

Toshiya Tsunoda: Japanese artist who works extensively with contact microphones, recording vibrations in solid matter, often at maritime locations.  http://www.frameworkradio.net/rootedition.html#tsunoda

 

New England Phonographers Union: An open group of people interested in field recordings and the use of unprocessed field recordings in performance.   http://nephono.wordpress.com

 

Michael T. Bullock (hey, that’s me):

Audio recording by MTB; video and stills by Cat Mazza.

Developing a networked haptic interface for telematic performance, RPI 2008

One of my teaching opportunities at RPI was working with Prof. Curtis Bahn and a group of students to concept, develop, and prototype a networked haptic (touch) interface for performers. The students were undergrads and grads from a variety of departments: Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Electronic Arts, and Architectural Acoustics, to name a few.

Students brainstorming

Students brainstorming

Prototyping

Breadboard prototyping

More brainstorming

More brainstorming

A wearable prototype

A wearable prototype

Blowing A Round: Indeterminacy for High School musicians

I wrote “Blowing A Round” to perform with advanced wind instrument students of high school age. It was commissioned by the Communnity Music Center of Boston, and realized by their Advanced Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Janet Underhill. The piece involves a level of indeterminacy and improvisation, and my role in rehearsals involved some discussion with students about their freedom of choice over pitch, timbre, rhythm, and volume.

You can download the text-based instrumental score: PDF

Creative Commons License
Blowing A Round by Mike Bullock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Radio Show for Team:Afield on ResonanceFM

My radio show for Framework on ResonanceFM, part of the Team:Afield series, 2010

Composed of field recordings from various points in New York and France. Composed at the request of Patrick McGinley of ResonanceFM.

Prequel

Prequel, 2007-2009

A electracoustic piece I made for an installation at the Sonic Fragments conference at Princeton University in 2008. Participants used mp3 players to listen to Prequel in the basement at the Woolworth Music Building at Princeton, as part of a walking tour of pieces intended for specific places on the Princeton campus. Based on a cassette recording of a solo piano piece I composed while at Princeton in 1994.

Later installed as a listening station piece for the show “Lost & Found” at the Nave Gallery, Somerville MA, 2009.

The Please: multimedia at Issue Project Room, 2010

The Please at Issue Project Room, 2010

The Please is:

Linda Aubry Bullock: guitar
Brendan Murray: drums
Michael T. Bullock: bass

Accompanying video/audio composition by MTB, with additional sound and video from B. Murray and L.A. Bullock.

The Please at Issue Project Room from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.

Empty Cinema

Empty Cinema
2011
loudspeakers, projection

One channel video projection, two channel audio, thrift store loudspeakers. Video clips of empty back rooms are projected into the corner of another empty back room, creating a dislocated feeling. Disjointed piano sounds emanate from mismatched thrift-store speakers, creating a distant, distorted sound reminiscent of the tinny speakers at drive-in theaters. The speakers are not hidden but rather are placed deliberately in the frame of the projection, as the only “characters” in the otherwise empty images.

Empty Cinema from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.

 

Speaking Drawing

Speaking Drawing
2008-2010
Woofer, India ink, watercolor paper

In “Speaking Drawing,” a series of watercolor paper cards and 2″x3″ art boards are placed in a large loudspeaker lying on its back on the floor. A very low, slowly changing tone is played through the speaker, causing the objects to bounce and shimmy around inside. I then drip India ink on the papers and blocks and attempt to draw on them as they quiver uncontrollably. Also available on the modisti network.

Speaking Drawing from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.

 

PONDER 1 & 2

PONDER 1 & 2
2008 and 2009
With Michael Pestel, Bryan Eubanks, Andrew Lafkas, Vic Rawlings, Linda Aubry Bullock, others

PONDER is a full-day festival of performance and site-specific works taking place in and around the Prouted Pond and Barn in Middlebury, CT, and hosted by Michael Pestel. For PONDER 1, I joined Eubanks, Lafkas, and Rawlings in creating long-duration performances of up to 6 hours, as well as continuously running sound installations. My installations included several small solar-powered droning devices that floated on the pond; and a Max/MSP-based system that recorded sound from inside the barn and replayed it through transducers attached to the barn’s windows.

For PONDER 2 we were joined by Linda Aubry Bullock. Together we created a sound installation in which an electric blower motor resonated an 8-foot wood organ pipe. Field recordings were also played into the pipe via a small speaker. The combined sound was gently amplified.

Auditory Thresholds [2006]

 

Auditory Thresholds
2006
Audio transducers, hemispherical speakers, LEDs
Performance/Installation presented at student art show, Department of Electronic Arts, RPI

In Auditory Thresholds, windows become listening devices. We gaze through windows as if they are not even there; sounding the windows brings their structure to life. Audio transducers are attached directly to the aging glass in the Civil War era hospital building that now houses the RPI Arts Department. Passive looking devices become active, vibrant sonic sources.

Using a standard MIDI drumpad trigger – a grid of 16 continuous-pressure sensors – I direct the flow of my sound sources (field recordings and synthesis based on these recordings) from window to window. I must maintain constant pressure on the pads to keep the sounds moving. In its original form, Auditory Thresholds was an extended duration performance/installation lasting 3+ hours.

transducer attached to window

Selected recent performances

Fort Point Channel

Fort Point Channel, 2010

A portrait of a commercial shipping district in Boston.

 

Installation pieces by rise set twilight

 

Installation pieces by rise set twilight:
multimedia duo of Mike Bullock and Linda Aubry Bullock

The BSC “Manual” book and downloads

I’ve been a member of the 8-piece improvising ensemble The BSC since its inception in 2000. It was founded by Bhob Rainey in Boston, and though several of us (including Rainey) have moved to other towns, it’s still a group closely associated with the Boston area’s fertile experimental music scene. Finally, after 11 years and only one full-length release, The BSC comes on strong with three – three! – new releases spanning most of the band’s history, accompanied by a book full of essays and drawings. One of the recordings is a collaboration with Pauline Oliveros, which I organized in 2009 while I was at Rensselaer.

The book features an essay and an analysis by me, as well as several of my drawings. It also contains essays by Rainey, Ben Hall, and Aaron Philip Tate, and prose poetry from Damon Krukowski, of Damon & Naomi.

You can order Manual on Bhob Rainey’s Bandcamp page. The book is available for a limited time only as a hardcover (8 copies left as of this posting), but is also available as a PDF download, and you’ll be able to get it as a paperback once the hardcovers are gone. The music is available as a lossless download, or if you get the hardcover you can also get a limited edition CD-R.

Some recent releases

MORE NEWS 2012

NEW WEB PROJECT: shadowselves
- Shadowselves is a creative clearinghouse for a variety of sound, visual, and writing projects, to be presented online and in limited,physical artist editions. Up now: new music from Citizens for Confetti, the solo voice project of Linda Aubry Bullock, and more. Soon: A sneak peek at two long-awaited recording sessions: MAWJA at STEIM in 2007 (featuring Mzen Kerbaj and Vic Rawlings) and Twilight of the Century. Also reissues of out-of-print titles by both artists as well as from the dear, departed Chloë label (2002-2008).

COMING Spring 2012 on Vinyl:
- Figures Without Ground, limited edition vinyl LP on Ramekin, a project of Sedimental Recordings.

NEW RELEASES:

The Eastern Realm
3″ CDr with handmade sleeve, limited edition from TaqueOT [Ukraine]

This review from Dumpster Diving Blog (Russia) is worthy of quoting in its entirety:
“M. Bullock is a dab hand at creating minimal and abstract sound that seems to easily reproduce and redevelop itself. Deep commutated and at times crooked vibes develop themselves and the external environment for their own activity. Off-color collage of sounds is firstly well pencilled and wrapped up in a wanton grotesque liquids but then it turns into a slow stream of pedant noise that forces you to dip your hands in your own warm inside… Noise’s valetry ring the bells… Glyphic/diabolic work.”

Mild Disappearances
CDr on Songs From Under the Floorboards, a division of Intransitive Recordings

Howard Stelzer calls it “Five slabs of grimy subterranean rumble.” Read label boss Stelzer’s review and order a copy at www.intransitiverecordings.com. Limited to 100 copies.

Accordion to Bass, duo with Pauline Oliveros.
Cassette tape from Cassauna, a division of Important Records. At least 2 runs have been SOLD OUT for a little while. This one was hot!