Turn/Stile: Interpreting Udo Kasemets' CaleNdarON for a Single Turntable with Treatment and Surfaces
- Turn/Stile:Interpreting Udo Kasemets' CaleNdarON for a Single Turntable with Treatment and Surfaces
stile \stile\, n. [see style.] 1. A pin set on the face of a dial, to cast a shadow; a style. 2. Mode of composition. May I not write in such a stile as this?
—Bunyan
The "style" of today's turntablists is conjoined with the "rhythmatics" of music [1]. Pulsations of beats drive the flurry of scratching, cutting, juggling and beatmatching that defines the art of turntablism. Developed over the past 40 years, these practices play alongside a history of phonographic experimentation that remains buried in the record bins of history. In popular music milieus, today's turntablism often (and not surprisingly) overshadows the hidden history of over 100 years of phonographic experimentation. The link between early, avant-garde phonography and today's turntablism is, however, beginning to emerge: while popular styles focus on techno and the breakbeat, Kodwo Eshun's "futurhythmachine" is becoming remixed in the stile of conceptual-phonographic experimentation [2].
Artists such as Janek Schaefer, Philip Jeck, Martin Ng, Colin the Mole and Martin Tétreault have come to reinvestigate the performative potential of the turntable apparatus, utilizing skipping records, loops, contact microphones and custom-built phonographs (such as Schaefer's dual and triple tone-arm turntables [3]). Writers such as Eshun have explored the Afro-Futurist movements of sonically inscribing record-technology-as-concept: "conceptechnics." Yet despite the advent of hip-hop script-notations and technological "mods," contemporary phonography remains primarily segregated into non-interacting camps: hip-hop vs. techno-turntablists, mixers and selectors, phonographists and improvisers, and all their permutations. The author calls for a reintegration of the divisions of sonic history—a remixing of the experiments of yesterday's avant-garde, [End Page 75] incorporating its complex engagement with random-chance operations and interpretative scripts.
Turn/Stile is an account of the author's performative interpretation of Udo Kasemet's script CaleNdarON, realized with a single turntable, mixer, and cut, burned and marked vinyl records. As an account of practice and a narrative of interpretation, Turn/Stile connects contemporary experimental turntable techniques with the randomchance score of devoted Cagean Kasemets, thereby forming a "missing link" between today's DJs and yesterday's avant-garde.
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Art and War: The Role of Artists and Scientists in Times of War
We live in a time when war, far from being eliminated from the planet, is a continuing fact of life for many. Some wars are overt military wars; others are endemic situations of social and economic conflict.
What can artists and scientists do when there is a war? How can we be useful? How can we help to find solutions? How can we avoid the use of the military while at the same time protecting the lives of innocent civilians? What educational work can we do to avoid violence and war? Historically the work of some artists and scientists has been instrumental in shaping perceptions and initiatives.
Leonardo and LEA seek papers on the theme of Artists and War for publication either in print or on-line.
In Leonardo . . .
Leonardo Editorial Advisor Michele Emmer is the Guest Editor for this ongoing Leonardo publishing project, having published an editorial entitled "Only Bombs Are Intelligent?" in Leonardo in 2000 (Vol. 33, No. 2) and a call for papers on the topic in the same year. We continue to seek papers discussing these and other topics that address the role and work of artists and scientists in times of war for publication...
