Owen Marshall
Ph.D. qualitative researcher specializing in ethnography of science, technology, and society.
The Davis Infrastructural Listening Initiative is now accepting proposals for new sound works to be performed in a resonant outdoor hallway. Applicants are encouraged to approach infrastructure as instrument, accompanist, audience, etc.
Proposal deadline: October 20th
All inquiries: musicforconcrete@gmail.com
[UPDATED FLYER!] Excited to be teaching a course on sonification for UC Davis Science & Technology Studies // Data Studies this Spring! Here's the flyer, the image for which comes from this inspiring project http://soccos.eu/blog/detail/sonic-wilderness-micro-residency-hailuoto-23-30-august
Teaching a seminar on time this winter at UC Davis. Here's the flyer:
And here's the readings list:
Adam, Barbara. 2002. “Perceptions of Time.” In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Tim Ingold, 503–26. London and New York: Routledge.
Borges, Jorge Luis. 1962. “Funes, The Memorious.” In Ficciones, 107–15. New York: Grove Press.
Chiang, Ted. 1998. “Story of Your Life.” Starlight 2.
Cushman, Robert E. 1953. “Greek and Christian Views of Time.” The Journal of Religion 33 (4): 254–65.
Drake, Stillman. 1975. “The Role of Music in Galileo’s Experiments.” Scientific American 72: 98–105.
Elias, N. 1992. Time: An Essay. http://www.umlaufoviny.com/Liberec/CAD/texty/Elias_Time.pdf.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1939. “Nuer Time-Reckoning.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 12 (2): 189–216.
Flusser, Vilem. 2012. “Vampyroteuthian Existence.” In Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, 71–80. New York: Atropos Press.
Galison, Peter. 2000. “Einstein’s Clocks: The Place of TIme.” Critical Inquiry 26 (2): 355–89.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, 360–412. New York, N.Y.: Basic Books. http://hypergeertz.jku.at/GeertzTexts/Person_Time_Conduct.htm.
Gleick, James. 2016. “A Nonlinear History of Time Travel.” Nautilus, September. http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/a-nonlinear-history-of-time-travel.
Glucksmann, Miriam A. 1998. “‘What a Difference a Day Makes’: A Theoretical and Historical Exploration of Temporality and Gender.” Sociology 32 (2): 239–58.
Greenwood, Veronique. 2016. “How Sunflowers Follow the SUn.” The Atlantic, August. http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/why-sunflowers-follow-the-sun/497711/.
Ingold, Tim. 2000. “Work, Time and Industry.” In The Perception of the Environment, 323–38. London and New York: Routledge.
Jackson, Steven J. 2016. “Speed, Time, Infrastructure: Temporalities of Breakdown, Maintenance, and Repair.” In Sociology of Speed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Le Goff, Jacques. 1980. “Merchant’s Time and Church’s Time in the Middle Ages.” In Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Goldhammer, 29–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lefebvre, Henri, and Catherine Regulier. 1999. “The Rhythmanalytical Project.” Rethinking Marxism 11 (1): 5–13.
Lock, Margaret. 2004. “Living Cadavers and the Calculation of Death.” Body & Society 10 (2–3): 135–52.
Marx, Karl. 1867. “The Working Day.” In Capital, Volume 1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm.
Miyazaki, Shintaro. 2012. “Algorhythmics: Understanding Micro-Temporality in Computational Cultures.” Computational Culture, no. 28 September.
Munn, Nancy D. 1992. “The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 93–123.
Postill, John. 2002. “Clock and Calendar Time: A Missing Anthropological Problem.” Time & Society 11 (23): 251–70.
Sanger, Eva. 2015. “Obstetrical Care as a Matter of Time: Ultrasound Screening, Temporality and Prevention.” HPLS 37 (1): 104–20.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1986. “Railroad Space and Railroad Time.” In The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, 33–44. University of California Press. http://www.daaq.net/folio/bibliography/b_schivelbusch.html.
Spinney, Laura. 2005. “How Time Flies.” Guardian Unlimited, February 24. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/24/4.
Thompson, E. P. 1967. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past & Present, no. 38: 56–97.
Traweek, Sharon. 1992. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Treas, Judith. 2009. “Age in Standards and Standards for Age: Institutionalizing Chronological Age as Biographical Necessity.” In Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying Classifying and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life, edited by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star, 65–87. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. “Arts of Noticing.” In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, 17–25. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Wajcman, Judy. 2008. “Life in the Fast Lane? Towards a Sociology of Technology and Time.” The British Journal of Sociology 59 (1): 59–77. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4446.2007.00182.x.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language.” In Language, Thought, and Reality, edited by John B Carroll, 134–59. New York, N.Y: MIT Press and John Wiley & Sons.
Zalasiewicz, Jan, Mark Williams, Alan Haywood, and Michael Ellis. 2011. “The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no. 369: 835–41.
1. Connect a guitar to an amplifier with as long an instrument cable as is available. Turn the amplifier off and hide the guitar, still plugged in, somewhere out of the amplifier's line of sight. The amplifier should then be turned on and the settings adjusted until feedback is produced.
2. Bury an electric guitar in a (preferably wooden) box, facing upwards, with its cable running to the surface. Plug cable into an above-ground amplifier placed on or near the place where the guitar is buried in such a way that feedback is produced. Alternatively, the amplifier cabinet may be secretly buried by a third party, who may then invite the performer to locate it by using the guitar as a dowsing rod.
3. Anoint an electric guitar and amplifier with moose scent and place in the woods with an appropriate remote power source. Substitute animals and lures as needed.
“The sound of anything coming at you–a train, say, or the future–has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics, you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between it’s arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway, who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desire blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne.”
– (Angle of Repose pp. 25)
A quick experiment in phasing, and the materiality of digital audio, using two portable chant boxes (also called Buddhist jukeboxes). Each box contains the same set of loops and should work identically. However, because of discrepancies in construction, battery power, etc., each plays at a slightly different rate (and pitch). When loops are initiated together, these differences accumulate and the loops decouple from one another, producing a phasing effect à la Steve Reich. Gonna make another higher quality video w/ stereo audio one of these days. (Incorrect date in the video: Jan 5, 2016)
Some photos by Vicki Ly of me gesticulating at the Megapolis Audio Art Fest are up over here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/megafest/21801786640/in/photostream/
Note the Cigar Box Talkbox I made for the occasion!
"Neither symptom nor cure is worked out at the level of objective or positing consciousness, but below that level. Loss of voice as a situation may be compared to sleep: I lie down in bed, on my left side, with my knees drawn up; I close my eyes and breathe slowly, putting my plans out of my mind. But the power of my will or consciousness stops there. As the faithful, in the Dionysian mysteries, invoke the god by miming scenes from his life, I call up the visitation of sleep by imitating the breathing and posture of the sleeper . The god is actually there when the faithful can no longer distinguish themselves from the part they are playing, when their body and their consciousness cease to bring in, as an obstacle, their particular opacity, and when they are totally fused in the myth. There is a moment when sleep ‘comes’, settling on this imitation of itself which I have been offering to it, and I succeed in becoming what I was trying to be: an unseeing and almost unthinking mass, riveted to a point in space and in the world henceforth only through the anonymous alertness of the senses."
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2002-03-14). Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge Classics) (pp. 189-190). Taylor and Francis..
From English: If the area to which the law is to be applied is already determined in multifarious ways from the point of view of the law itself, then the law cannot contain within itself the complete rule of its own application.
To Arabic: إذا كانت المنطقة التي كان القانون يطبق بالفعل في تحديد متنوعة من الطرق من وجهة نظر القانون نفسه ثم القانون لا تحتوي على داخل نفسه حكم كاملة من التطبيقات الخاص به.
Back to English: If the area that was the law already specified in a variety of ways, from the point of view of the same law, then the law does not contain within itself the complete rule of its own application.
To Armenian: Եթե ազատության հրապարակը, քանի որ օրենքն արդեն տրվել է տարբեր եղանակներով, այդ տեսանկյունից նույն օրենքի, նշանակում է, որ օրենքը չի պարունակում ամբողջական իշխանությունը սեփական դիմումների.
Back to English: If the area because the law has already been given a different perspective of the same law means that the law does not contain the full authority of their own applications.
To Azerbaijani: Əgər meydanı, ona görə ki, qanun artıq verilmişdir, digər baxımdan, həmin qanun o deməkdir ki, qanun heç bir tam hakimiyyəti öz proqram.
Back to English: If the area, because the law has already been given a different perspective of the law means that the law is not at the mercy of their program.
To Belarusian: Калі плошчу, таму што закон ужо быў дадзены іншага пункту гледжання закона азначае, што закон не на літасць іх праграмы.
Back to English: If the area because the law has already been given a different perspective of the law means that the law does not at their mercy program.
To Bosnian: Ako zoni, jer zakon je već dao različite perspektive od zakona znači da je zakon nije u njihovoj samilosti program.
Back to English: If the area because the law has already given me a new perspective of the law means that the law is not at their mercy program.
To Bulgarian: Ако площ, защото законът вече ми даде нови хоризонти на закона означава, че законът не е в тяхна милост програма.
Back to English: If the area because the law has already given me a new perspective of the law means that the law does not at their mercy program.
To Catalan: Si la zona, perquè la llei ja ha donat una nova perspectiva de la llei significa que la llei no en la seva misericòrdia programa.
Back to English: If the area, because the law has already provided a new perspective of the law means that the law is not in his mercy program.
To Chinese: 如果该地区，因为该法案已经提供了一个新的角度来看的法律手段的法律是不仁慈的方案。
Back to English: If the region, because the law has provided a new perspective of the law means the law is not merciful programme.
To Croatian: Ako je u regiji, jer je zakon dao novi pogled zakona znači da zakon nije milostiv programa.
Back to English: If in the region, because the law gave the new law means that the law will not have mercy on the program.
Check out my Sociology Compass article "Synesthetizing Sound Studies and the Sociology Technology"
A piece on the history of pitch correction technology I wrote for Sounding Out!
Jagmaster -> Boss DD20 -> Korg MS-20 Mini -> Sovtek Mig 60 -> Sunn 410 cab. Photo by Nikki Sayward
Last Saturday I had the pleasure of taking part in the fifth ever biannual(-ish) Naked Noise improv event at the Ithaca Community School of Music and Arts. This time around it was curated by the capable folks at Ithaca Underground and involved a dozen or so musicians, most of whom had not met one another prior to performing two 45 minute sets. Shout out to Jon Eckhaus, Mario Gutierrez, and Ethan of Time/Being plus Annie Lewandowski of Powerdove, polymath Matt Saccuccimorano of Orbiting Art Ensemble, Chris Demetriou of Last Dot and the Kraken Quartet, Weston Czerkies of Sunken Cheek, Erik Johnson, Mike Amadeo of The RealBads and Misses Bitches, and Jasper Minson of You Still Have Friends. The incomparable Trevor Pinch also joined in on Minimoog and his own DIY synth.
Here's a recording of the 2nd one of these we did. (Keep in mind it's an attempt to capture, with one H2 field recorder, about a dozen musicians scattered around what's basically a recital hall with high ceilings.) ->
We've been doing this for a while. The show began when a three band bill with Sun Spells, Time/Being, and The Invisible Hand decided that, instead of playing regular discrete sets, it would be more fun to scatter around the room and have everyone play simultaneously for two hours. NN4 had two dozen performers and it was an awesome cacaphony. This time around it was positively tasteful. I probably wont be in Ithaca for the next installment, but I'm glad it's looking like this wont be the final installment.
ALSO: Earlier in the day as part of the Moog Exhibit at the Tompkins County History Center there was a DIY synth workshop with synthbuilder Taylan Cihan. I didn't make it, but it sounds like it was at least as awesome as Taylan's workshop for last year's DIY Electronic Music Symposium, for which I did a quick circuit bending and cassette tape loop demo.
