jimtrue.com : school : MUH1110 : Assignment Six: Pauline Oliveros
Posted by Jim True on October 11, 2004 12:01 AM. Last Updated October 22, 2006 9:23 PM
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"Sustain a tone or sound until any desire to change it disappears. When there is no longer any desire to change the tone or sound, then change it." "Listen to a sound until you no longer recognize it." (EST Web Magazine) "Deep Listening is exploring the relationship among any and all sounds. Hearing is passive. We can hear without listening. This is the state of being tuned out - unaware of our acoustic ecology - unaware that the fluttering of a butterfly's wings has profound effect near and in the far reaches of the universe." (Pauline Oliveros Foundation) These 'Sonic meditations' and 'Deep Listening' philosophy are just a finger dipped lightly below the surface of the deep, resonant spirituality and connection with sound found within Pauline Oliveros.
Pauline was fascinated by sound at an early age, raised in rural Texas and most likely sung to sleep by the sounds of crickets and nature. It was also during her early years that she learned accordion, which perhaps is why she stuck with it as her primary musical vehicle. Attending college in the early 60's, Pauline was influenced greatly by the free jazz and minimalist movement that was popular in the day, but she looked deep beyond the surface of this growing musical trend. Sound, or more appropriately Sonics, was her primary focus in all of her music: the persistence of a tone, the sounds in-between a tone and the sounds that are above the perception of regular human hearing. Working in the early days of tape recording, sampling and playback in the studio, she felt the studio processes available to create interesting modulations of sounds needed to be available to the live performer, to provide that same creative and improvisational sound in front of audience. Driven by this need, she pioneered the Expanded Instrument System (EIS), a "continually developing electronic sound processing environment designed to provide improvising musicians control over various interesting parameters of sound transformation ... including delay time, delay feedback, pitch transformation through delay time modulation, ambiance, and spatial placement." (EIS, Pauline Oliveros Foundation). This system allows the performer to transform the sounds as it's being performed and before it hits the ear of the audience, or even while it's being heard and reverberated around within the acoustics of the playing space.
One of Pauline's most interesting artistic endeavors was the Deep Listening Project. Looking for a novel way to explore her interests in group improvisation, reverberation and 'drone' music, Pauline discovered a natural reverb location for performance: a buried, abandoned two million gallon water tank, dubbed the 'cistern chapel'. The open empty chamber provided a natural 45-second reverberation, which meant sounds would reflect against the interior of the chamber, overlapping in random and unusual ways. Pauline with her accordion, a trombonist and an avant-garde vocalist with his collection of non-mainstream instruments including an Australian didgeridoo and a variety of conch shells, spent five hours in the chamber, creating the first of many recordings that the band would produce, creating sounds that defy explanation, deny convention and challenge the listener to truthfully 'listen deep'.
Resources:
"Pauline Oliveros Interview" EST Web Magazine. Accessed 10/10/04.
http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/oliveros.html
'The Expanded Instrument System' Pauline Oliveros Foundation. Accessed 10/10/04.
http://www.pofinc.org/EIShome.html
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