As popular sound art
As scientific data
As environmental recording
As New Age music
One of the neat things about hearing them again is that now I have a greater understanding of acoustics and I can really hear how the whales are using the ocean in the same way as yodeling uses a valley: “playing” it, sounding it out. The ocean is part of the whales' instrument as it were. Whale song co-evolved with its material medium. So in effect whale song really is ambient art, in itself.
There are notable songs about whales and so on since the 70s. But I wanted to mention two that stand out, as they're attempts to make a human instrument sing like a whale. I'm thinking of:
David Gilmour, psychedelic guitar solo in the midsection of the side-long Pink Floyd song “Echoes” (Meddle, 1971); surely Pink Floyd listened to Songs of the Humpback Whale (1970), interested as they were in environmentality and in sound-effects.
Steve Hillage, guitar in System 7, “Miracle (Orb remix)” (1991). This is a wonderful tune if you can find it. Steve Hillage is the lovely old hippie from Gong.
Nice pic of Detroit (home of the immortal Derrick May, who is on this recording)
This is from Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972).
7 comments:
Hi Tim - I'm enjoying this thread... Echoes was a formative recording for me (though I came to it a few years after Dark Side of the Moon, being a bit too young to greet it upon arrival), as was Gong a formative band (when I discovered them on the local alternative, really alternative, radio station). There are a lot of underwater qualities about Echoes, even though Pink Floyd is usually thought of as 'spacey' rather than 'oceanic'; the only band that's come close to duplicating that oceanic quality in recent years, I think, is Godspeed You Black Emperor, who were very worth seeing when they were still performing together. Though I suppose The Orb and some other techno units do 'oceanic' as well... I've been listening to Hillage's Rainbow Dome Musick recently - which is less oceanic as it is aquariumoid (and it gets too New Age-tinkly after the first several minutes).
As an electronic music composition student in the '80s, I went through an underwater phase when I made pieces including a long multi-tracked guitar comprovisation called "Blue Whale Death Chant", an undersea ritual opera called "Vodonalia" ("vodo" from the Slavic words for water), and a sound-video piece called "Aquarium Age". Maybe I'll dig these out someday from the reel-to-reel archives... Keep well,
Adrian
That sounds great Adrian. I really enjoyed hearing your music recently so do please dig them out if you can...
I find compelling the increase in your ability to, let us say "read" whalesong through your understanding of acoustics. It puts to the test the implicit logic behind Wittgenstein's "If a lion could talk, we wouldn't understand it" and also gives an interesting twist on Davidson's thinking about the indeterminancy of translation, that all language must be translatable.
Because you were able to achieve a greater effectiveness in comprehension of what whales were doing through an increase in your understanding (experiential and conceptual) of acoustics itself, it suggests a kind of sub-linguistic, affective mutuality that underwrites all environment/being cognitive exchange.
Hi—that's a very interesting point. I too have been wondering how to think about this level. Do you have a sense of how to proceed?
Hey Tim,
I think what it means to "understand" in philosophy has ot undergo something of a radical reordering, and personally I find that Davidson's principle triangulation and charity, though designed for a very human orientation has its roots in strong affective coordination between species (and really environments), precisely what happened when you came to "understand" what the whales were doingn with song. I've gone in this direction theoretically some:
I address the question of "understands" and Wittgenstein's Lion here: http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/anselms-proof-of-god-wittgensteins-lion-davidsons-belief/
And I wrote at length on Wittgenstein and Davidson in the connection with reading animals (and environments): http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/the-trick-of-dogs-etiologic-affection-and-triangulation-part-i-of-iv/
But really succinctly, there is a fundamental power of affects to traverse across bodies, fields, organization that ground even the most abstract of our interpretations of the world (Deleuze and Guattari are good at this in times), and is here that we must start.
Tim, have you seen Marcus Coates' work 'Follow the Voice'? - check out the uncanny identity Whalesong/Asda Toilet door.
http://www.shift-time.org.uk/events/marcus-coates.shtml
+thanks for collapse link !
-robin
"Jonathan Leviathan", by Art Davenport, is a fantastical tale about a fisherman and a whale, and the flights of fancy upon the open sea.
Please visit the website, and click on the music streaming player at the bottom of the page to locate and play "Jonathan Leviathan".
You won't be disappointed!
www.ArthurDavenport.com
Post a Comment