<Headspace> : : audio for headphone listening [v.2.0]

to accompany

‘Get out of the room. Get into my head’: Headphones and Modern Audile Technique

an essay by Charles Stankievech

01 Alvin Lucier	I am Sitting in a Room (single loop for headphones)
02 Alvin Lucier	Sferics
03 Bernhard Leitner	HT_A
04 Bernhard Leitner	WLB
05 Pan Sonic	Lountain
06 Ryoji Ikeda	C7 :: Continuum
07 Ryoji Ikeda	+ / -
08 Stephan Mathieu + Ekkehard Ehlers	Blue Baby 1
09 Björk + Akira Rabelais	Bath
10 Fennesz	Rivers of Sand
11 Fennesz	Transit
12 Bruce Nauman	Get out of my mind. Get out of this room.
13 Christof Migone	Excavation
14 Christof Migone	Sexualized
15 Janet Cardiff	Villa Medici Walk (Audio Walk)
16 Hildegard Westerkamp	Whisper Study: For Two-Channel Tape

Notes compiled with addenda by Charles Stankievech

For further info contact: thecryingroom@yahoo.com

01 Lucier, Alvin. I AM SITTING IN A ROOM (1970):

Sound Installation: where the voice is continually re-recorded in a room to reveal the architecture's acoustics properties, resulting in a sonic palimpsest of the resonant frequencies of the room. Original recording on Lovely Records 45 minutes. Here I have only included one loop articulating the isolation and lack of architectural acoustics when using closed chamber headphones.

02 Lucier, Alvin. SFERICS (1980):

Sound installation and recordings of ionospheric disturbances, for large-loop antennas, tape recorder and playback system. Also setup as an installation in the desert where people listened with headphones to battery powered receivers. DXing the Kosmos

03 Leitner, Bernhard. HT_A (2003):

04 Leitner, Bernhard. WLB (2003):

Audio CD: <HEADSCAPES are works specifically created for the interior of the head. They can only be experienced with earphones. The head is here conceived as hollow volume, as a globe-like receptacle for time-based acoustic-geometric spaces. Sensing, hearing space in motion within the resonant inner space of the head. Hearing, contemplating the interior, the inside –however unfathomable it may be.>

05 Pan sonic LOUNTAIN (1997)

Audio CD: Reset.

06 Ikeda, Ryoji. C7 :: CONTINUUM (1998):

Audio CD: Interior space metabolized. Interior space punctured. Laennec revisited.

07 Ikeda, Ryoji. +/- (1996):

Audio CD: <A high frequency sound is used that the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance.>

08 Stephan Mathieu And Ekkehard Ehlers. BLUE BABY 1 (2001)

Audio CD: Tone insideout.

09 Björk + Akira Rabelais. BATH (2005)

Soundtrack and Audio CD: The Weight of Oranges.

10 Fennesz. RIVERS OF SAND (2004):

Audio CD: Architectures of the emotion run throughout the entire body.

11 Fennesz. TRANSIT (2004):

Audio CD: Borders disintegrating: political and spatial.

12 Migone, Christof. Sexualized (1990)

Radio Broadcast and Audio CD: <Excerpt from Describe yourself (1990), live radio piece as part of the weekly two-hour radio art program Danger in Paradise (CKUT-FM, Montreal 1987-1994). An Attempt to define the radiophonic body by asking listeners to describe themselves. First released on Hole in the Head (Quebec: Avatar/Ohm éditions.)>

13 Migone, Christof. Excavation (1996; edited 2004)

Audio CD: first released on Hole in the Head (Quebec: Avatar/Ohm éditions.)

14 Nauman, Bruce. GET OUT OF MY MIND. GET OUT OF THIS ROOM (1968)

Audio Installation: Get out of my mind. Get into your head.

16 Janet Cardiff + George Bures Miller. VILLA MEDICI WALK (2001)

Audio Walk: Perhaps a way to engage Cardiff and Miller’s work—and headphone listening in general—is with Lacan’s l’extimité. Developed in the later phase of Lacan’s writing, the idea of the l’extimité continues the importance of the voice in the psychoanalytic tradition since Freud first outlined the foundations for the “talking cure.” L’extimité is a neologism by Lacan that combines exterior and intimacy. Linked in his seminar VII with the german term das Ding, Lacan defines the concept as that “something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me.” This phrase could be used to describe the fundamental listening experience wearing headphones, but a phantom voice inside the head suspended by headphones is the ideal example of this strangeness. (Headphones meaning ‘head-voice’ or ‘voice in the head’ etymologically (‘phone’ Greek for ‘voice’)). In an impossible space that links the exterior with the interior via the topology of a möbius loop, the subject listens; or shall I say the outside is on the inside of the listener? The difference between contained and container slides, as does the difference between you and I. We easily identify with our phantasies once we have become the Hollow Men making room for an other. Janet’s words commands us to listen, and touched by a phantom intimacy we do. “Listen to me” Janet’s voice seems to beg, and already having donned headphones I “always already” have obeyed before even hearing her voice. I listen carefully, “The Other collects [her] whole body in [her] voice and announces that I am collecting all of myself in my ear.”

15 Westerkamp, Hildegard. WHISPER STUDY (1975-79)

Audio Tape: <Whisper Study started out as an exercise in exploring basic tape techniques in the analogue studio of the 1970's and using the whispered voice as sound material. Eventually, it become a piece about silence, aural perceptions and acoustic imagination. Whisper Study explores the place or moment where sound ends and it image begins. > [Does a soundscape exist without headphones?]