CURATORIAL

In this section, the MACBA explores the complex map of sound art from different points of view through a series of curatorial programs. After the program presented by Barbara Held and Pilar Subirà, in which we explored various ideas relating to transmission as a means of creative expression, we now begin a series called VARIATIONS, curated by Jon Leidecker.

"Variations" is a formal term used to describe music compositions that are based on a pre-existing piece of music. Starting with the precedents set by Charles Ives and John Cage, VARIATIONS presents the principal milestones of Sampling Music, looking at examples from 20th century composition, popular art and the mass media, and the way all of these currents converge today.

As art and industrial practitioners formally map out the discipline, hip-hop's discovery of digital sampling technology in the mid-80's provided a reintroduction to its original roots in block party DJ collage.

This layered 60 minute DJ set by Jon Leidecker underlines the history of those classic works of electronic and concrète music which sought to mimic and extend the voices and sounds of our pastoral landscape.

An overview as the art music tradition of collage music is joined by the popular culture tradition of hip-hop, which would establish many of the same aesthetics and practices solidly in the mainstream.

In the seventies the avant-garde finally crosses the line into wholesale plundering of commercial pop music, and the pop disciplines of disco and dub become increasingly comfortable with manipulating released music into new forms, narrowing the divide between art and pop practices.

The second episode of this series presents an overview of the sixties, starting with the world music collages of Richard Maxfield, Teiji Ito and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and following through to the impact of John Cage and Marshall McLuhan on the Beatles.

As recording supplanted sheet music in the 20th century, the presence of communal influence became unavoidably obvious once again as composers began to use recordings to make new recordings. From the beginning, recordings have been instruments.

Collaboration by philosopher and pioneer of mini FM radio, Tetsuo Kogawa, and sound artist Yasunao Tone, based on an email exchange on radioart.

Brenda Hutchinson converses with San Francisco composer and performer Jon Brumit about the thread of "collaborating with strangers" that runs through their work.

The recording, as memory/archive, as instrument, as transcription of a perfect performance, and as sound art using field recordings.

Transmission Art encompasses a diversity of practices and media working with the idea of transmission or the physical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum. These practices are generally participatory live-art or time-based art, and often manifests as radio art, video art, light sculpture, installation, and performance.

This programme transmits "Pillars", a new piece for radio by Robert Ashley, pioneer of opera-for-television and the use of language in a musical setting.

We investigate concepts of time, non-linear and non-Western, the latency of transmission or the use of acoustic and electronic delay, daily rituals and nature, a recorded slice of time and networked collaborations.

Musical, sociological, biological explorations of how our minds and intuition translate and transmit music.