Getting into Flow

I’m driving down to Tacoma on Friday to take part in Flow: Flow explores ways to integrate, embody, and enact intersections between art and ecology through direct engagement with matter and materials such as dyes, pigments, and mycelium, multi-sensory guided walks, reflection on positionality and place, and critical examination of language and classification’s role in creating a sense of place and displacement. Guiding themes and questions include:

I’m leading a positionality workshop on Saturday morning. I was supposed to be co-leading it with the lovely and generous Natalie Baloy, but they are having a child on that day, so too busy… :) I do have their text and prompts and while I am honored to present in their stead, I am also having hesitation at the thought of performing their words without them. I woke up this morning imagining the workshop and I had sonic objects around me, I played samples of sounds, I was sitting on the moon couch blanket. I also thought I could use the blue tooth speakers I have for the radio station so I can sit on that silver circle untethered, except of course if I want to run a slide show, which of course I do. I could run a slide show with anything though, an I-pad or a usb stick. I just won’t be able to control it. It can give me cues.

Moon couch in process. Thank you Abigail for sewing my design for me!

Questions that the symposium poses….

  • What is the role of the artist as healer and maker in navigating this current moment?

  • How can approaches to reparative work and re-imagining be taught through creative practices?

  • How can place/land based knowledge teach us how to connect and build relationships?

  • How do we practice remediation and utilize loss? 

While I love the collective weaving idea, it is something new… I do have some materials… But instead, we will weave something with sound. Where to start: Objects need to be collected. I have a few items. Maybe I can make all the platonic forms. I need more gold leaf! Then I will connect the objects to Resolume or Ableton. If I choose to use Resolume I’ll need a long HDMI cable.

Materials list:

  • moon blanket, pillows

  • Long HDMI, long ethernet

  • JBL speakers [charge them!]

  • Objects: 2 gold leafed, 2 silver and 2 graphite painted rocks, icosahedron, bark, pinecone, ring, plant plus hot glue gun and conductive paint for icosashedron

  • computer, charger, dongle, ex-drive

  • Zoom, tripod, chords for two mics (dynamic), plus my cordless headset mic, plus for zoom to computer. TEST THE BLUETOOTH TONIGHT!

  • headphones

  • triangle, chimes, drum

  • 2 mics [I’m trying to decide if I want to use my headset mic for this one. Seems like a good idea so that I can touch objects and mix my sounds, so one regular mic and then my headset mic… I’ll run everything through my computer and out to my JBLs. Of course I’ll need to test this all out Wednesday night!]

Now in terms of the words, I need to look up WWNBS and merge it with Natalie’s text. I also want to strip it down and also lighten it up somehow. It gets so heavy, white people rolling around a room, seeking redemption, forgiveness, some kind of release from the world we find ourselves in, the world we created. I can’t let it get to new agey without adding some humor. So now that’s the plan. A sound-bath, positionality somasonic workshop.

Steps:

  • gather sounds for objects (11)[build icosahedron in the hotel room, test and practice Friday night]

  • gather objects, paint and prep and wire them up

  • wire up a TB [need 11 ring terminals!]

  • get blanket

  • Rewrite text [I’ll have the text on my computer. I want to know it but I also want to have it and be able to riff off the text depending how things are going. Also I can project the questions on the screen… if there is a screen!]

  • Make a slide show to give me visual cues

  • Practice tonight and Wednesday

  • what to wear???? something comfy yet casual and timeless. jeans and a black tee. Do my nails, fingers and toes.

  • bring coffee brewing kit, drinks

Eclipse, Exit, and Surge

Last entry was over 5 weeks ago. So much has happened since. Some pictures to tell the story.

The annular eclipse in Oregon was something to behold. I wish I could see the next one. It’s in April and it will be the last we can see in the states until 2044. I may try to make it. I know someone who is going already so could just tag along. It’s certainly something that’s best shared.

SO much work went into the installation at the blue room as part of Exit Bellingham. I really don’t know how it turned out since I left town before the festival began. The videos I’d put together didn’t make it up as planned, but I generated so much work and ideas grew out of the collaboration that I can’t be to sad about it. More info about the festival can be found here: https://www.bellinghamexit.com/

The installation consisted of 5 asteroids and one moonlette, a replica of the Voyager 2 satellite, a moon couch, a biosphere (my 10’ icosahedron that showed at Jack Straw in Seattle, now with its own connectors), a 10 foot tall string curtain as projection screen… I’d also planned to project on numerous surfaces including the moon couch, string curtain and windows, but alas, not all worked throughout due to technical cliches. I hope to reinstall the set somewhere soon to document fully.

Surge installation happened the day after I installed the sculptural elements for Exit. Woof. At first I was not very happy with it but I’m starting to like it more. It’s not as dramatic as the jack straw installation. At JS I had the privilege of having a black box all to myself, but here I can test out how to make something like this work in a group show, in a more pedestrian gallery. I’m getting a lot of great feedback, which surprises me somehow. But I am starting to believe them. I have tweaks in mind, that I’ll add the next go around. I’m really excited to play with the data and the video more… once again this is just the first version.

I need to find my way back in there, after hours or before open to film with more controlled lighting.

Now, I’m working on a performance for next weekend for Flow… I have some ideas but I’m torn. Make something new or work on something that exists. I’m am feeling drawn to make some sort of collective weaving, but I’m not sure it will work. Then there’s my collective sound workshop using sonified objects. Hmmmm. I have to think on it and decide TODAY.

I’ve learned so much in the last month. Catching my breath today. Trying to listen to my wise self to know what comes next. Shhhhh. I’m listening.

Astroids and Voyager for Exit Festival

I’m one of 3 lead artists working with Bellingham Theater Works for the Bellingham Exit Music Festival! Of course it’s happening when I’ll be hunting the eclipse! Real quick, I am transforming the Blue Room into the Moon Emporium (Nancy’s idea). I’d prefer to call it something like interstellar lounge but who cares. I’m having a blast making replicas of astroids and learning a lot more about Earth’s neighborhood. Need to make a list of the astroids to be built.

  1. 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua or Scout in Hawaiian, this astroid is from another solar system!

  2. Psyche

  3. Eros

  4. Itokawa

  5. Bennu

  6. Asteroid Didymos and its small moonlet Dimorphos

And next week, the Voyager 2.

Also working on a new icosahedron for Surge at MONA. Opens October 14th. This is the project I’m working on with Andy Bunn. Excited how it’s going. It’s a redo, but something new.

Visualizing the data

Next steps in the process include transcribing the data points into musical notes. With the help of Dr Bunns app, I already have a line chart so just tossed together a little graph and added frequencies on one side and years on the bottom.

400 hundred years of tree ring data.

Once i have a visual, I’ll find the notes and start playing around with patterns to pick some chords. Already I can see these spikes followed by less intense periods. I can also see the frequencies are rising over time. Cool. I wonder what middle C is on an electric guitar?

Bits and pieces for show coming up...

Working on a show remotely is challenging but it reminds me of Giuseppe Zambonini’s point in “Making in a time of necessity,” that adversity, and I am paraphrasing, adversity is the mother of invention. I’m also reminded of Frank Zappa and his group the Mothers of Invention, a collage storm of jazz rock if I’ve ever heard some.

The project is all about place and site, but I’ve been away, so a few weeks ago I was reminded of some wonderful work my pal Renee A Rhodes made back in the early 20-teens. Being super smart and prophetic, she used Google Earth to make movies taking us places we couldn’t really go. This was actually prior to the drone epidemic. I needed to get close to Mount Baker while working in Lake Tahoe. And I also now appreciate the disparity, the failure of the technology to really take me there. It echos the fact that our instruments pale in comparison to the ecological knowledge present in the trees. So let the glitch in.

I’m particularly into the deep bass from 2:13 to 2:30. Still learning to fly GE [Google Earth], but I feel that this with the addition of live action footage I will get next week… this is getting thick.

This is just a test! I am still trying to figure out how to translate the data manually. Dr Bunn made the amazing app that transforms tree ring data into sound and visual wave forms. I decided to narrow the frequency to match the musical range of an electric guitar. Next I need to figure out how I want to translate the data into musical notes. This may require some adjustments, multiplying the whole lot by a number to get it up to between 82.41 and 987.77. That’s the next step. Then it’s time to look for patterns and anomalies because if you are paying attention, anomalies are seeming to become the new patterns.

Last bit Jack Straw

I still need to go through the video from my last day at Jack Straw but here’s an excerpt. I am pleased with the way it finally came together. I also have a first draft mix of the tunes we made in the Data Sonification workshop I lead in Seattle. It’s pretty amazing what we were able to create! I’m so grateful to have had such curious and generous students. It’s called 76Cascades, since we decided to look at data from 1776, taken from tree rings studies in the Cascade Range.

I’m still working on final mixes from the installation. Meanwhile, my radio station is in the Western Gallery, part of the current show. You can hear and learn more here.

And I am excited that FOREST TIME WATER will continue to evolve, this time for the SURGE exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Art in La Conner, WA, in October 2023.

Updates!

This happened! It was great. A raft of articles followed the project launch, plus two segments ran about the radio station and my students’ project Music for Animals, on KNKX radio in Tacoma. We are still talking about doing another episode, maybe in the spring. Currently we are off the air as we restructure our programming and schedule. But we’ll be back, with new live broadcasts and a project by students from Whatcom Middle School! And the whole set up will be installed in the Western Gallery as part of this years Faculty show. So stay tuned.

My piece at Jack Straw is finally up and running properly. What an education! I learned so much about wiring, Ableton and I finally sonfied some data and it’s inspired me far more than I imagined. I really feel that when I play the data points it’s like I am hearing the forest. The chords are all 4th and 5ths and sharps. So jazzy then moody. Like nothing I could have put together myself. I’m really hoping to show the work again with new data and a more dialed in set up. Those projectors are just hanging by a thread. I’m really grateful for the support of this residency. It’s brought me back. Covid took all my creative energy and redirected to my teaching. Now, I’m busier than I’ve been in years!

I’m playing this show next week @Make.Shift.Art.Space with a few really wonderful, generous folx. And playing at Jack Straw on 3/3/23. More updates to come!


Music for Animals, E1

Hello there Kiddos. This is Sound.out.Radio. I’ve got a real treat for you all today. Welcome to our first edition of Music for Animals. And I don’t mean just animals. We’ve got music for moss, moon jellyfish, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, ghost pipes, and of course the usual suspects, bats, raccoons, wolves and grey whales, new tunes from some beautiful human beings.

First up we have sound poems by Ryan Fisher, who was inspired by bats, Max Marsh giving us some sonic insight into moon jelly fish, Grace Wark’s soundscape dedicated to bleeding heart plants, followed by Suzy Moss on what else, moss.

Wow, where am I? Sounds great so far. We just heard a few more from Journey Rain-King Howden and her hummingbird soundscape which featured some fantastic guitar, Alia Masonsmith asking all the questions to salmon, Gabe Rubanowitz on his relations to black capped chickadees, and Lani Suyama atmospheric sounds on phytoplancton, that provide 50 - 80% of the worlds oxygen! Tiny and mighty.

Let’s round out the mix with a few more starting with Georgia Van dines ode to the tree frog, Tilly Bishop on the banana slug, Georgia Gehard’s watery work on the octopus, Steph Lasater’s surprising piece on the Wolf, what was once native to Washington state and is making a comeback, Aiko Enomoto’s soundscape about our raccoon cousins, a sound poem about ghost pipes by Nevin Wolfe-Sallouti, and finally, a remarkable piece about grey whales and the African diaspara by Hadley Hudson.

Thanks everyone for your research and creative work on this first episode of Music for Animals. Listen for it late, 2AM and 5PM almost everyday. Till next time, just listen…..

SOUND-OUT Radio

My horoscope says DO IT! I’m doing it! Some time back I shared news about a sound project I’ll be making for the Western Gallery here in Bellingham. Over the past 9 months however I’ve struggled to land on an idea for the sound element. Having something looping over and over was feeling sort of boring, annoying. Then I started thinking about streaming sound that was changing. Hmmmm, what well that’s just like RADIO! And have I not secretly wanted to be on the radio since I was a kid with my Sony cassette tape recorder? Well YES. I next wondered if there was a precedent for this idea, a radio art discipline? Heck yes there is. I’m reading up on it and it’s a rich, rich history. I’m especially inspired by KunstRadio’s manifesto that I will rewrite here:

http://www.kunstradio.at/TEXTS/manifesto.html

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF RADIO ART

  1. Radio art is the use of radio as a medium for art

  2. Radio happens in the place it is heard and not in the production studio.

  3. Sound quality is secondary to conceptual originality.

  4. Radio is almost always heard combined with other sounds - domestic, traffic, tv, phone calls, playing children etc.

  5. Radio art is not sound art - nor is it music. Radio art is radio.

  6. Sound art and music are not radio art just because they are broadcast on the radio.

  7. Radio space is all the places where radio is heard.

  8. Radio art is composed of sound objects experienced in radio space.

  9. The radio of every listener determines the sound quality of a radio work.

  10. Each listener hears their own final version of a work for radio combined with the ambient sound of their own space.

  11. The radio artist knows that there is no way to control the experience of a radio work.

  12. Radio art is not a combination of radio and art. Radio art is radio by artists.

The thing is that it doesn’t need to play anything all the time. Silence is sound. It gives us time to listen to the world around us. I feel like I’m falling in love. Now I’m writing a grant to get some seed funding. Stay tuned!

Jack Straw Media Gallery Artist Residency 22/23

This is so serious, I’m drinking black coffee. YES! Thrilled to announce I’ve been awarded an artist in residence at Jack Straw in Seattle. I’ll be continuing to work on Forest Time Water, my sound sculpture that’s going to play sound and data all about water, time travel, love, and of course, trees. I have a Summer Research Grant from Western Washington University to work on it, to learn the DAWs I’ll need to work with to incorporate data sonification.

I was talking with my 86 year old mother the other day about it and really simplified it for her. It’s like an instrument you can see through and step into and when you touch it, it plays sounds of water. She really liked that. Something about making your mom get your work, that’s pretty rare and special, especially as an artist.

I’ve got an event coming up in a few weeks with my students at the Bellingham Alternative Library! It’s a screening of their work, interspersed with live performance. It’ll be a good opportunity to test run some new ideas. I feel that there is such an absence of media, performance art in this town. Pictures on the walls, kinetic metal sculpture, so predictable. We need more weird. If I have to bring it, so be it! I have plenty to go around.

WOW in Lake Tahoe 2022

It’s official! I’ll be bringing Woodworking for Women to Tahoe this summer! So thrilled to be teaching at Sierra Nevada College, which is now part of the University of Nevada, Reno. Dreamy. And they will be putting together an exhibition of work by visiting artists, so I get to share some of my newer pieces.

So here’s my blurb:

W♀︎W, Woodworking for Women

In this introductory woodworking class, organized with women in mind, students will learn the foundations of designing and building functional and sculptural object in wood. Artist, eco-feminist, Sasha Petrenko will lead this 5-day workshop where students will learn to carve by hand and construct functional objects and sculpture, all in a supportive, inclusive environment. Lessons will include wood identification, hand carving, lamination, joinery, jig making, laser cutting and nontoxic finishing. Optional readings will support class discussions and presentations on ecological art practices for artists and craft people.

July 18 - 22, 2022 Sierra Nevada University, University of Nevada.

And now for some images to boost this post!

New Year | New Work

The show at the ALTLib was INTENSE! Never have I ever employed so many cords. The set up was physically a feat and even with 90 minutes I was breathless when done. Audience participation is what made it. Here are a few pics below. What did I learn? I want to streamline my rig. What are the essential elements? I need to be able to float into the space, drop my kit, sound check and go. I learned a lot.

Since then I’ve been a lot of places! Reno, Jackson, Big Sky and Bend. It was so cold, below freezing most days and subzero most the time in Montana and Wyoming. It didn’t start out snowing but by the second week it seemed to be snowing all over the world. Even when we got back home, to Bellingham, at 75 feet above sea level there was a foot of snow on the ground. Once it warmed up the snow disappeared from my driveway but Mt Baker was blanketed. Last Sunday was the best.

Sunshine on Mt Baker

In other news, I’ve been selected to be a Sustainability Fellow at Western Washington University and I was awarded a Summer Research Grant to work on my somasonic sculpture about water. I think the work will use snow fall data from Mt Baker and Tahoe. I’m trying to learn Max right now and Reaper! Max looks amazing but so complex. Still it’s the app for data-sonification according to my Music department friends. Plus I love the learning process. As a beginner, we have less expectations and sometimes really amazing things can happen. Which reminds me of the mantra I used to get me through my first year here. No expectations: Do your best and you’ll have no regrets. Thinking about that now as I move into more uncharted territory.

Zoom Spoon Carving class, 2022. Thankfully, the last remote teaching day….hopefully, of the quarter.

Somasonic Liberation at the Alternative Library 12/10!

Doing it again folx. Somasonic Liberation is coming to Bellingham, Friday, December 10th at the Alternative Library. This performance I’m thrilled to have secured a percussionist to accompany me as I lead the lucky audience through deep listening sessions, inspired by Pauline Oliveros, and end with a collective jam session.

Radical artist, writer, performer, and former student of mine, Ruby Rae Jones will also be performing as well as a friend of the Library’s so it should be a great night of sonic exploration and participation. Join us!

Western Sound

About a year ago we were all stuck inside, apart. It was strange and new and very challenging. As artists, and educators, we were reinventing our classes to a new normal. I wanted to produce an opportunity for my students to make art and share art with each other and the public. With help, I designed and built an outdoor sound art installation above an alley way in downtown Bellingham. My students collaborated on the soundtrack and for 2 months the sounds streamed out and surprised passersby with sounds from the landscape, spoken word, guitar riffs. Eventually the set up failed. It was a very rainy winter. But it was time to make something new for spring by then so we packed it off the roof and turned to the new. For me, it was an awakening. And I’m at it again!

In process, speaker housing #1 for new outdoor sound art install

Remastering my welding and plasma cutting tech. Getting better. Glad I bought the 12 gauge plate. Gives me more wiggle room on the joints. But my goddess! The grinding. Make it stop! It hurts! Doubled it up with ear plugs and headphones which helps a lot. Going back up on the roof tomorrow to get dims and design stands. The Director requested bluetooth enabled speakers. I abide but I am also skeptical. Testing today. Leaving the speakers on as I go into to cut. Do the speakers shut down after several hours? Will the bluetooth go out, in a storm? Certainly when the power goes out. Good thing is, this project is taking place here, at Western Washington University, so I can hop back on the roof to troubleshoot.

2 speakers! Double the fun!

I’ve also been working on sonifying my sculptures. Managed to turn some bronze and aluminum bits into a midi keyboard. Next, make a sampler instrument. And after that start devising a strategy to sonify data sets describing environmental change in forests of the Pacific Northwest.

MEMT

Sunshine_Surprises

Sunshine_Surprises

MagicEarthMotherTongue

Fall is typically a time to go inward. Dig deep into the dark soils enriched by summers fallen fruit. Summer skin fades. The flesh forgets the feeling of warm breezes so soon. How the air seemed to envelope us in an easy embrace. Golden brown limbs, dusty trails, hot blacktop and eventually smoke. Too much smoke so we left the mountains. But this fall, this time feels amplified. Not a time to reflect. In other words, I’m so busy!

  • A new performance at the Western Gallery in Bellingham!

  • A new outdoor Sound Art commission

  • A symposium MagicEarthMotherTongue: Language for a New Ecology

I will try to use this platform to record all the activities relating to these 3 assignments. The first is the most pressing in that it arrives on October 20th, 2021. My plan is to create a collective musical performance. Here’s the blurb put out by the museum, which I actually wrote myself.

Screen Shot 2021-10-03 at 9.31.16 AM.png

October 20th 5PM

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

I will… lead participants through a collective performance experience. We will explore our fear, anxiety, curiosity through a sonic somatic public ritual resulting in a collective aural catharsis. Music may be a natural byproduct of the event.” Okay.

To that end I have been studying Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations and Brian Eno’s Sing-a-Longs. Content is forming in my mind. Equipment may include the following:

  • Drums

  • Guitar

  • Pedal Board

  • 3 Bronze pieces hooked up to 3 Touch Boards

  • 4 Microphones on stands

  • 2 Kustom Speakers

  • Yamaha Mixer

I plan to read some of the text from Enos and Oliveros or transcribe it into my own words. But I especially like what Oliveros says about healing: “Healing can occur… when [1]individuals fell a common bond with others through a shared experience [2]when on’s inner experience is made manifest and accepted by others [3]when one is aware of and in tune with one’s surroundings [4]when one’s memories or values are integrated with the present and understood by others.”

Part of me is thinking of having something prerecorded. Part of me is thinking I should have a drummer. Part of me is thinking NO I am doing this one solo. This is a first iteration and I need a clean slate to really feel it out, what works, what doesn’t. A lot still to figure out!

Pedal board in progress

Pedal board in progress

While I was preparing for the Western Sound commission I needed to practice up my welding skills so I made myself a new pedal board… and got a new pedal!

My new Rainbow Machine… its inter-stellar. Just learning how to use. This is the team!

My new Rainbow Machine… its inter-stellar. Just learning how to use. This is the team!

Feel good about the job so next I started working on the speaker housing for the Western Commission. Still have much to do but so far it’s working out.

The speakers will sit horizontally so they are longer than they are tall and I plan to paint them white!

The speakers will sit horizontally so they are longer than they are tall and I plan to paint them white!

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Wesleyan Zoom Performance

It went pretty well though I am not certain, I am pretty certain that was not my core audience. But I am relatively pleased with the experiment. I turned Lessons from the Forest into a live performance. It can be better. I have so much to learn. Always. I’d like to get a handle on my BOSS looper so I can loop vocals and or guitar, bass. Here’s the video the video I shared with the audience. It needs work still. And I need to redo my vocals which have been turned down in this vid.

I’d like to try something like this again, the live performance, live cinema process. Now it’s time to get back to work, school and that sculpture I’ve been trying to finish since pre-COVID. Oh yes, I got both my shots, and I’m teaching both my classes F2F. Feeling good.

WEBSITE REBUILD PLUS WESLEYAN PERFORMANCE

Excited to be part of this symposium on multi-lingualism. Will be performing something new with something old, a mash-up of sorts. Also, in the process of redesigning my website to showcase new upcoming things that excite me further like classes at Cabrillo College this summer and a new Sound Art class at Western. All for now! Caio!