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X-unPub

july 2, 2022


During the week of June 20th, a group of twelve artists/students of the Experimental Publishing (XPUB) mastercourse of the Dutch Piet Zwart institute (which houses the international master programmes of the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam) came over to Paris to set up in the Salle 6 (also called 'Salle Marionnette') and the Salle 2 (commonly known as the 'Salle Arts Plastoc') at La Générale Nord-Est, where the group finished working on their 'Sound Publishing' project.

Starting early April 2022, every week, the XPUB-ers edited and published the result of different sound experiments, resulting in weekly sound publications, that are composed 'by means of themes, working infrastructures, public environments and variable editing relationships, in order to challenge the classical patterns of publishing and production hierarchies'. As they like to phrase it: 'each of our publications is a work in progress and each process an end in itself'.

XPUB notation

XPUB Générale
The XPUB team inside and outside the Salle Marionette at La G

The XPUB course 'focuses on the acts of making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital networks'.

This should ring a bell, as it obviously may be counted as one among several possible phrasings of the (or at least a) focus also of our ongoing series of un-Public performances, despite the fact that both 'projects' at first encounter would seem to be pretty far apart: born in different worlds, separated by a prefix?

mr.liliAll of this the more reason to make the XPUB and unPublic merge: into an X-unPub, on the early evening of Wednesday June 22, 2022, in the La GĂ©nĂ©rale's auditorium, where we were joined by Mr. Lili, aka Kam Seng Aung, a violinist and sound artist from Myanmar, to form—with 14 sound making participants—the largest 'unPublic ensemble' to date.

Besides, occasionally, their voices, the XPUB players used the items in the collection of small instruments and sound producing objects that they had been using for the sound publication they were working on, completed by their laptops, other i- and e-Things and some percussion instruments available in La G's auditorium.

In order to provide some guidelines and structure for the playing together in this 81st edition of unPublic, we imagined the floorspace of the auditorium to be covered by a large ellips, around which the 12 XPUB players were placed, like twelve hours placed around a clock face.

uP 81 - setup

In one of the focal points of the ellips sat Mr. Lili. In its center, we placed the Zoom recorder that would record the unPublic performance with both its front- and rear-stereo microphones. I took up the second focal point.

In the following table you find the list of XPUB-players, the instruments they used and the spots (the 'hours') at which they were seated ( * ).

0Mitsa Chaidamaracas, bells, drum, voice
1Carmen Graydrum, bottle, maracas, bell
2Erica Gargaglione(little) drums, bells, flute
3Kimberley Cosmillaflute, (little) drum, xylophone
4Coconutnanoloop, flute, hands, voice
5Chaeyoung Kimchae
6Ål Nikdj mix & voice
7Miriam Schöbcracklebox, stylophone, bottle, voice, body
8Gersande Schellinxzither, voice
9Supisara Burapachaisribastl kastle drum, bastl kastle v1.5
10Emma Pratoxylophone, harmonic voice
11Jian Haakediy breadboard synth, scratch box

uP 81 - La G

To steer the playing, I made up a list of 30 'clock-spots'. Each 'clock-spot' consists in a pair of numbers from 0 to 11. The original list was generated randomly, and then adjusted by hand in such a way that each of the 12 numbers occurred an equal number of times, namely 5.

(2,3) → (0,3) → (9,1) → (4,11) → (4,10) → (8,1) → (3,9) → (7,10) → (2,1) → (7,6) → (2,6) → (4,3) → (0,1) → (10,5) → (11,7) → (3,5) → (7,0) → (8,6) → (8,9) → (7,0) → (4,8) → (10,9) → (5,6) → (9,0) → (11,5) → (11,10) → (1,4) → (2,11) → (2,8) → (5,6)

Think of the first one as a number pointed at by the short hand of a clock, and the second one as the number pointed at by the long hand. ( ** )

uP 81 - clocks

During the performance that list of 'clock-spots' functioned as a primitive score. Assigning to each pair a duration of 2 minutes, with the aid of my iPhone's timer I pointed out each next 2 minutes the corresponding pair of players (by placing a black, respectively yellow, metal stool next to them), in the order given above. Thus the imaginary hands of a watch—a short one and a long one—erred between 30 randomly picked clock-positions, and we became Masters of Time... for as long as it lasted... 😉

The following photo shows the (2,3) clock-spot.

uP 81 - La G

The instructions given beforehand to the players were as follows: « the two players indicated by the numbers in a clock-spot are urged—though not obliged—to play during all of the corresponding two minutes. All other players may either play or not play during these two minutes, but the 'clock-spot players' are supposed to take the lead. Mr. Lili and Har$ are free to play or not play at any given instant of the 30 x 2 minutes. After the final 2 minutes have elapsed, all playing may stop. »

uP 81 - La G

Thus we did, and thus was done, for a little more than 60 minutes, in La Générale's auditorium on June 22nd 2022, roughly between 18h30 and 19h30.

uP 81 - La G



Postscript ('-Time', for 14 players)

Here is how, given the necessary means and the space, I imagine developing the above 'sketch' for a music into a composition for an ensemble performing the piece for an audience that surrounds the music, a piece that would function as a dual to 'Time-', for 12 upright piano's, which is a composition of music that surrounds the audience.

The ensemble of 14 musicians will be seated in an oval configuration, precisely as we were in the 81st unPublic in La Générale's auditorium. The selected 'clock-spots' would, though, not be limited to the 30 used at La G, but the piece will encompass all of the 144 possible pairs of whole numbers from 0 to 11.

The players are placed within a rectangular open box, whose four walls are transparent sheets/screens upon which, during a performance of the piece, the (or an) image of the current clock-spot is projected, randomly erring between the 144 possible integer pair positions, with animated transitions (of the clock-hands turning back- or forward from the hour corresponding to the one integer pair to that corresponding to the next). Finally, imagine that box placed inside a boxing ring in a sport stadium, so that the audience is seated around the ring as if it were attending a boxing match...

Unlike at La G, though, (most of) the music in this full version will be written out beforehand, for each of the twelve 'hour' musicians, as well as for the 'focal points'. However, the 144 'clock-spots' will be projected on the box' walls in a random order, an order not known beforehand by the players, and different at each performance of the piece, as the order will be re-determined for and hence proper to each performance ( *** ). Also, the durations of the individual 'clock-spots' will not be the constant 2 minutes as in the uP #81 recording. They will vary. Still, a typical performance, from start till end, should last relatively long. Not sure about precisely how long yet, but probably somewhere between 3 and 4 hours.

Thank you for your attention.

notes __ ::
(*) I originally intended to attribute the hours randomly to the players, and had prepared a bag with twelve little folded papers upon which I had written the numbers from 0 and 11, for them to draw from. But when we entered the auditorium, the group somehow spontaneously sat itself down in the configuration given in the table, and I then decided to keep it that way â˜ș. [ ^ ]
(**) There is written 'a number pointed out by the short hand' because, and especially at half hours, the (integer) number pointed out by the short hand of a clock is somewhat ambiguous: e.g., at half past two, the short hand 'points at' the number 2 as much as it 'points at' the number 3. [ ^ ]
(***) Given the 144! (which is about 5.55 × 10249) possible different orders, the probability that for a given performance the random order obtained will turn out the same as an order already used in a previous performance is unimaginably small, hence equal to 0. [ ^ ]


Read about unPublic on the SoundBlog:

(2023, november 3-..) - Ethereal Reverberations. A Decade of unPublic (« Dix ans qu'on fait la musique sans public ») (uP#100)
(2023, august 20) - Three days of residency at Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels (uP#65, uP#93, up #94)
(2022, september 2) - Three Musketeers Musicking Maastricht & La Générale (uP#86, up #87)
(2022, august 4) - Berlin: Zero Cohesion (3) (uP#84)
(2022, july 24) - Berlin: Zero Cohesion (2) (uP#83)
(2022, july 11) - Berlin: Zero Cohesion (1) (uP#82)
(2022, july 2) - X-unPub (uP#81)
(2022, march 13) - "Manifeste" (uP#80)
(2021, june 13) - Die Stillgestandenen (The Stillstands / Standstills / Stillstanders) (uP#67)
(2021, may 02) - Playing Apart Together: Chuncheon↯Paris (uP#73)
(2018, november 02) - "Five years stuck on my eyes" (Lustrum Non Publicum) (uP#56)
(2018, september 01) - t'Obsolete or not t'Obsolete ... [iv] (uP#54)
(2018, august 13) - Rage, rafts & refugees (uP#49, uP#50)
(2018, august 10) - t'Obsolete or not t'Obsolete ... [iii] (uP#45)
(2017, june 11) - Moving out, of, on ... [ii] (uP#42)
(2016, june 10) - unPublic #18 - 대부도 (Daebu-Do), 14 June 2015 (uP#18)
(2016, may 07) - In Praise of Slowness (uP#21)
(2015, july 15) - Bridges, troubles, water (uP#19)
(2015, april 14) - Mal-là--colisé dans l'espace et dans le temps (uP#16)
(2014, august 02) - Appearance and Reality (uP#8)
(2014, march 08) - "12 - 11 - 9 - 10 - 3 - 6 - 7 - 1 - 2 - 8 - 4 - 5" (uP#5)
(2013, december 31) - Candles, Cassettes & Champagne (uP#4)
(2013, november 23) - unPublic 1, 2 (sauf riverains) (uP#1, uP#2)


Read about unPublic on Medium:

April 16, 2022 - Playing Apart Together (uP#66-#69)
March 17, 2022 - All delusion is expansive (uP#80)
November 10, 2021 - The Future always was Yesterday


Read about unPublic in Gonzo (Circus) [Dutch]:

Gonzo #143, januari/februari 2018 - Met kop noch staart: muzhakdag! (uP#48)
Gonzo #139, mei/juni 2017 - De waan, de wil, de weg


Read about unPublic elsewhere:

Plus-X-Creative, january 2022 - Playing Apart Together
Electronic Cottage, november 2018 - unPublic - 'Five Years stuck on my eyes' -sketch as a memoire


To listen, download & support, visit unPublic @ Bandcamp.



SoundBlog entries around and about La Générale Nord-Est:

(2024, march 9) - Orlando & Artaud wed bound at La Générale, even
(2022, september 2) - Three Musketeers Musicking Maastricht & La Générale
(2022, july 2) - X-unPub
(2021, june 13) - Die Stillgestandenen (The Stillstands / Standstills / Stillstanders)
(2021, february 21) - Lento (slowly)
(2018, september 01) - t'Obsolete or not t'Obsolete ... [part iv]
(2018, august 13) - Rage, rafts & refugees
(2018, august 10) - t'Obsolete or not t'Obsolete ... [part iii]
(2018, july 21) - t'Obsolete or not t'Obsolete... [part ii]
(2018, april 10) - La Générale Nord-Est (PAMP18-1)
(2017, august 19) - t'Obsolete or not t'Obsolete ... [part i]
(2016, august 04) - Nicolas Collins - 2 April 2016, La Générale
(2015, july 15) - Bridges, troubles, water - unPublic #19
(2014, april 08) - La physicalité du son. Tome 1.
(2013, december 13) - Candles, Cassettes & Champagne - unPublic #4
(2010, december 29) - Obsolescence
(2010, august 14) - "And what about Yi Sang?" (읎상 Ă  Paris [iv])
(2010, june 29) - Ceremonies (Yi Sang 읎상 Ă  Paris [iii])
(2010, june 25) - Read me a poem, Yi Sang! (Yi Sang 읎상 Ă  Paris [ii])
(2010, june 13) - Yi Sang 읎상 à Paris [i]
(2010, january 13) - Art fleas (puces de l'art)
(2009, july 20) - General Acoustics
(2006, august 14) - placard : la générale (Belleville)


tags: unPublic, XPUB, La Générale

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