Focus Pull (2020)
For Richard Teitelbaum
Two-channel audio for headphones, 11’28”.
(Note: The clicking is part of the audio and is an artifact from the processing.)
Focus Pull is an investigation into prosthetic listening. The technical apparatus is a high-gain field recorder sending audio into parallel spectral amplitude filters. The first filter passes frequencies greater than X, while the second filter passes frequencies less than Y. Spatial left/right are replaced with macro/micro (louder-than-X/quieter-than-Y) channels, which are controlled and recorded in real-time, then edited for gain structuring in post production. These layers of listening and manipulation intrinsically introduce layers of delay that imply space in the recording that is not directional but temporal.
In the beginning, the left ear hears only the most prominent frequencies, while the right ear hears only the most liminal ones. As the piece progresses, the thresholds of each filter move towards each other revealing a familiar scene: the sounds of my neighborhood, from my back stoop. The filters reveal local traffic, the natural environment, and the private moments of neighbors on the street and in the playground around back. The apparatus is a way to escape isolation. An attempt to be in the world without being in the world. The process makes me wonder if listening becomes surveillance when it extends past biological limitations.
In the process of making the piece, I’m thinking of editing as recording, as remembering. Revisiting material re-creates both its past and present configuration, its abstract and concrete forms. The macro filter, which filters out liminal sound, reminds me of the abstract knowledge of form. Sounds washed of specificity, cleansed of source, yet still familiar. The micro filter tethers to an opposite sense of sonic memory, the specificity of the broadband noise that defines a space.
Focus Pull is a personal attempt to inhabit the fullness of my local environment with the tools that I have available. I’m trying to explore new ways of listening by using tools that, to borrow a term from cinema, pull focus on the contours of sound that lay just beyond my personal space. The piece is dedicated to Richard Teitelbaum, who first showed me threshold music and taught me the value of intense stillness.
Two-channel audio for headphones, 11’28”.
(Note: The clicking is part of the audio and is an artifact from the processing.)
Focus Pull is an investigation into prosthetic listening. The technical apparatus is a high-gain field recorder sending audio into parallel spectral amplitude filters. The first filter passes frequencies greater than X, while the second filter passes frequencies less than Y. Spatial left/right are replaced with macro/micro (louder-than-X/quieter-than-Y) channels, which are controlled and recorded in real-time, then edited for gain structuring in post production. These layers of listening and manipulation intrinsically introduce layers of delay that imply space in the recording that is not directional but temporal.
In the beginning, the left ear hears only the most prominent frequencies, while the right ear hears only the most liminal ones. As the piece progresses, the thresholds of each filter move towards each other revealing a familiar scene: the sounds of my neighborhood, from my back stoop. The filters reveal local traffic, the natural environment, and the private moments of neighbors on the street and in the playground around back. The apparatus is a way to escape isolation. An attempt to be in the world without being in the world. The process makes me wonder if listening becomes surveillance when it extends past biological limitations.
In the process of making the piece, I’m thinking of editing as recording, as remembering. Revisiting material re-creates both its past and present configuration, its abstract and concrete forms. The macro filter, which filters out liminal sound, reminds me of the abstract knowledge of form. Sounds washed of specificity, cleansed of source, yet still familiar. The micro filter tethers to an opposite sense of sonic memory, the specificity of the broadband noise that defines a space.
Focus Pull is a personal attempt to inhabit the fullness of my local environment with the tools that I have available. I’m trying to explore new ways of listening by using tools that, to borrow a term from cinema, pull focus on the contours of sound that lay just beyond my personal space. The piece is dedicated to Richard Teitelbaum, who first showed me threshold music and taught me the value of intense stillness.