Für Augen und Ohren: von der Spieluhr zum akustischen Environment. Objekte, Installationen, Performances (1980) [German]
Filed under catalogue, video | Tags: · electronic music, experimental music, music, music history, musical instruments, musique concrète, performance, sound, sound art
Catalogue for a large-scale exhibition of sound art and mechanical and electronic music devices. Curated by René Block and Nele Hertling for the Akademie der Künste, West-Berlin, the exhibition included seven large gallery halls of sound sculpture, early electronic devices from the 1930s and 1940s, and sound environments.
With essays by Dieter Krickeberg, Siegfried Wendel, Wolf D. Kuehnelt, Juan Allende-Blin, Billy Klüver, René Block; chronology by Helmut Danninger.
Edited by René Block, Lorenz Dombois, Nele Hertling, and Barbara Volkmann
Publisher Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1980
ISBN 3883319147
312 pages
Documentary directed by Detlef Michael Behrens, 1980
German language
33 min
Radio report (Charles Amirkhanian, KPFA-FM, 1980, EN)
Documentary: MP4 (107 MB, Vimeo)
Catalogue: PDF (88 MB, no OCR)
Klangkunst (1996) [German]
Filed under catalogue, video | Tags: · art, sound, sound art
Catalogue for the landmark sound art festival, Sonambiente – Festival für Hören und Sehen, held in August-September 1996 in Berlin.
The festival, “was part of the Academy of Arts’ tricentennial celebration and presented the most comprehensive survey to date of contemporary international sound art. During the four weeks of that festival, some 50,000 visitors experienced works by more than 100 participating artists at more than 20 venues in Berlin’s Mitte district.” (source)
Edited by Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Helga de la Motte-Haber
Publisher Prestel, Munich, 1996
ISBN 3791316990, 9783791316994
303 pages
via VP
PDF (69 MB, no OCR)
Video documentary (50 min, MOV, 115 MB), English transcript (PDF, both links updated on 2019-1-3)
For more on sound art see Monoskop wiki
Comments (4)Alan Lomax: The Land Where the Blues Began (1979, 1993)
Filed under book, video | Tags: · blues, folk music, music, music history
The Land Where the Blues Began is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). A self-described “song-hunter,” Alan Lomax traveled the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s and 40s, at first with his father John Lomax, later in the company sometimes of black folklorists like John W. Work III, armed with primitive recording equipment and a keen love of the Delta’s music heritage. Crisscrossing the towns and hamlets, jook joints and dance halls, prisons and churches, Lomax recorded such greats as Leadbelly, Fred McDowell, and Muddy Waters, all of whom made their debut recordings with him.
In the late 1970s Lomax returned with filmmaker John Bishop and black folklorist Worth Long to make the film The Land Where the Blues Began. Shot on video tape, the film is narrated by Lomax and includes remarkable performances and stories by Johnny Brooks, Walter Brown, Bill Gordon, James Hall, William S. Hart, Beatrice and Clyde Maxwell, Jack Owens, Wilbert Puckett, J. T. Tucker, Reverend Caesar Smith, Bud Spires, Belton Sutherland, and Othar Turner.
The Association for Cultural Equity’s Alan Lomax Archive channel on YouTube additionally streams outtakes from this film: other strong performances by Walter Brown, Sam Chatmon, Clyde Maxwell, Jack Owens, Joe Savage, Bud Spires, Napoleon Strickland, and Othar Turner. Turner is also in Gravel Springs Fife and Drum on Folkstreams.
Alan Lomax’s book by the same title won the 1993 National Book Critics Award for nonfiction.
Film by John M. Bishop, Alan Lomax, Worth W. Long
Produced by The Mississippi Authority for Eduational Television & Alan Lomax
58 minutes, Color
Original format: 3/4 tape, 1979
Book publisher The New Press, New York, 1993
ISBN 1565847393
539 pages
Film (streaming on FolkStreams.net)
PDF