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SCANNER + TONNE. : sound polaroids
(bleep 18)
"At first the sound which accompanies
the installation images seems prosaic - street noises, the chimes
of Big Ben. After a bit, other, stranger sounds can be detected,
whooshing away like the cliches or 1960s electronic music..it
is a very good place to sneak a glimpse into a brave and very
strange new world."
Financial Times
Winners of the Imaginaria '99 art show at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts (ICA) in London with this project, Scanner + Tonne present
an adaptation of the work for CD.
Originally an installation, the artists invited people to suggest
points of sound interest in the city of London and collated together
the eclectic responses, such as:
"Mind the gap, please"
Trafalqar square
"At the 3rd stroke, the time sponsored by Acurist"
A double-decker bus when it's stopped at a stop light - it "surges"
and "heaves"
Both images and sound were recorded at these locations and this
data was then processed using software that converts the pixels
of an image into sound, giving the user the ability to paint with
sound and compose with light. Such a graphical approach suggested
the use of digital images taken across the city as photographic
sounds, or 'sound polaroids.'
Using a database of the original source material Scanner &
Tonne then actively took the show on the road and created live
performances following a similar system. Arriving a few days ahead
of the performance they digitally record the city with sound and
image, capturing a moment in time from an outsiders viewpoint.
This collected data is then transformed, arranged and processed
into the final presentation before the public. Every particle
of sound and image that is picked up, the signs of the city, is
incorporated into the show, projected around the space, generating
a new scenery, formulating a new context, imaginary, evocative,
yet familiar to the local audience. What they experience is another
type of view: the city seen by the artists.
What you hear is only a record of temporary moments. An additional
adaptation by New York based sound artist Stephen Vitiello offers
an insight into the sounds of Grand Central Station within the
frame of this project.
1999 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (Installation) Montreal
Canada
2000 Milano Italy
2002 Munich Germany
2003 Napoli Italy
Biographies
Tonne : G+Si
www.tonne.org.uk
The last three years have seen Studio Tonne develop and produce
controlled systems for sound and image interaction. Earlier work
includes visuals for Scanner, Springheel Jack, Pole and Monolake.
Studio Tonne now provides visuals for its own music, the first
release gained interest from Bip Hop (fr), Mille Plateaux (ger)
and Schematic (usa). The studio has tracks on the forthcoming
BiP_HOp Generation [v.5] , and a unique audio/cdrom enhanced release
is scheduled for early 2002 on BiP_HOp. Mille Plateaux released
'Uncoated' on their MP3 magazine in September 2001.
Studio Tonne has performed at the Splitski New Media Festival
(Croatia), Sonar (Spain), FCMN (Canada), Expanded Cinema (Italy),
Lovebytes (UK) and Steim (Holland).
In the studio Tonne designs its own sound software and toys which
allow music to be visually produced, Clicks + blips, splintered
beats and atmospheres are triggered by the visual activity of
the graphics.
G + SI : an image is created from the sound and vice versa.
Scanner
British sound artist, Robin Rimbaud - creates absorbing, multi-layered
soundscapes that twist technology in unconventional ways. His
controversial early work used scanned mobile phone conversations
which he wove into his soundscapes, thus focusing on the split
between the public and the private. As well as producing compositions
and audio CDs, his diverse body of work includes soundtracks for
films, performances, radio, and site-specific intermedia installations.
He has performed and created works in many of the world's most
prestigious spaces including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London,
Pompidou Centre Paris, Tate Modern London and the Modern Museum
Stockholm.
Selected recordings
2002 Scanner: 52 Spaces CD (British School of Art)
2001 Scannerfunk: Wave of Light by Wave of Light CD
Scanner/Alva Noto: Uniform (SFMOMA) CD
Scanner: Case CD
2000 Scanner/Shea: Free Chocolate Love CD/LP
Scanner/DJ Spooky: The Quick and the Dead CD
Scanner: Diary CD
1999 Scanner: Lauwarm Instrumentals CD
Scanner: Cystic CD
1998 Robin Rimbaud: The Garden is Full of Metal CD
Scanner: Sound for Spaces CD
Scanner: Stopstarting CD
1997 Scanner: Delivery CD/LP
1996 Scanner: Sulphur CD
Scanner: Accretions CD
Scanner/Krokers: Memetic Flesh
1995 Scanner: Spore CD/LP
1994 Scanner: Mass Observation CD/LP
1993 Scanner 2 CD
1992 Scanner 1 CD
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Extract from Restart: New Systems in Graphic
Design (Published in the Summer of 2001) Thames & Hudson.
By Emily King
Various projects - sound toys, music visuals,
interactive installations 1998-2000
The concern that runs through the work of Tonne - the experimental
alter ego of the graphic designer Paul Farrington - is the relationship
between sound and image. The traditional meeting between the two
has been on the covers of CDs (and before that on the sleeves
of vinyl records) and it was the disparity between the cover and
contents of most commercial CDs that prompted Tonne to explore
ways in which sound and image could be bound together more closely.
In Tonne's work image does more than simply illustrate music.
Rather, he creates visuals that are directly generated by sound
or that generate sound themselves. These pieces - sound toys,
installations and live music visuals - link noise and image in
a manner that renders them completely inextricable.
In each of his projects, Tonne adopts a system through which to
match the audible to the visual. In his last year as a student
at the Royal College of Art in 1998, he created a set of experimental
screen environments called Audible Communities. Entering an Audible
Community, users are allowed to generate an audio/visual environment
in which simple graphic forms and free-floating words and phrases
- chosen to be elliptically descriptive of the piece itself -
are partnered by pleasing, minimal sounds. Since then, Tonne has
developed these ideas to create a series of imaginative sound
toys which encourage playful interaction. Similarly playful are
Tonne's experiments with theramins, a musical instrument which
generates noise in response to movement. In his final year show
at the RCA, Tonne created a space which contained three theramins,
each connected to a computer screen.
As they approached the piece, visitors became aware that their
movement in the vicinity of these instruments controlled both
the sound in the space and the images on the screens. In the case
of relaxed participants, the outcome was a dance duet between
human and computer.
Tonne has expanded upon these themes in his collaborations with
the experimental sound artists Scanner, Pole and SpringHeel Jack.
Accompanying sets by these artists at the Sonic Concrete event
held at London's ICA in March 1999, he moved beyond traditional
club visuals - suggestive imagery, made beforehand and projected
alongside music - to create a set of visuals that were directly
responsive to what was being heard. Since that event, Scanner
and Tonne have collaborated frequently, both on live performances
and in the creation of interactive audio/visual installations.
Becoming Scanner + Tonne, amongst the duo's joint projects was
the exhibit Sound Polaroids, shown at the ICA in October 1999.
For this project, Scanner + Tonne asked members of the public
to nominate important sites in London and then made digital sound
and image recordings at the most popular of these locations. Returning
to the studio, they processed these audio/visual recordings in
a manner that made them mutually responsive - images would generate
certain sections of sound and sound would prompt the appearance
of certain images. A complex and highly technical business, Scanner
+ Tonne have argued that the aim of this exercise was to "re-assemble
the fragments of a city into a language born from its wow and
flutter".
The interaction of sound and image in the Sound Polaroids project
is the outcome of the machinations of Scanner + Tonne's software
- in this case Metasynth V.2.5. The assumption of the piece is
that the product of this software program will reveal something
significant, possibly some underlying truth, about the information
with which it has been fed. Related assumptions are at work throughout
Tonne's project and the matching of sound and image through the
intervention of computer software raises questions about the nature
of that intervention which cannot be ignored.
There are no absolutes in this kind of activity; the pairing of
sound with image is entirely dependent on the predilections of
the software program in question. This being the case, how do
you assess whether the relationship between particular sounds
and images makes sense? As Tonne himself has pointed out "it's
not science"; the success of these pieces lies not in whether
the matching of sounds and images make demonstrable sense, but
rather in whether it makes experiential sense. If it works for
you, then it works.
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