TRS 15

is happening this evening, my final show, a friend will join me, we'll play some original stuff, a live mix of things, indeterminate descriptors unite us in indistinctness

TRS 14

last week joined by a friend, played some stuff

TRS 13

was a couple weeks ago

TRS 12

Gregory Whitehead vs. Brian Joseph Davis w/ Theodor Adorno for the firt 20 some minutes, then Charles Amirkhanian's Text Sound Piece, Rotomotor by Anton Bruhin and ending with Crickets.

TRS 11

So it turns out you have to arise at 4 AM to actually hear my show anymore. But that's probably for the better; the stuff I'm playing and mixing together makes so much more sense then, it's quite an enveloping hour.

This morning you heard John Baldessari singing Sol LeWitt, Hallgrimur Viljalmsson's Serenade for six German Sirens, and some Meredith Monk.

TRS 10

So maybe I'm getting lazy, but the show's are getting more fun. I've kind of given up on some aspects of it... tonight, though, I bring you DJ Food's Raiding the 20th Century in its entirety. I'll throw in some other garbage to top it off but TRS 10 is all about the noise collage.

TRS Number 9 Hijack LIVE

I am playing the HIJACK. It is about me. People talking about me for an hour. Twenty-six artists talk about one other artist for one hour. So it is about me but also about artist talking about art off the cuff. I am calling it hijack because it is a precursor to my show opening this Friday evening at Public Space One (7PM). The show is called Interior Artifacts: Documents from an Excavation. It is about me as well. There is a lot about me going on here. I hope by dwelling on this subject of myself I am able to dwell on other people as well.

TRS (#8) 3-24-09 : Free Radical Radio

This week's show was a live mix. It featured some of my own audio tracks (wheel of fortune clips, a stuttering obama, and b-songs from my ipod) and others I have played before on the show... Seth Price video game trax, B Gysin, WSBurroughs, Dick Higgins, and some ethno-poetry off UBU and some other stuff as well. If you're interested I can direct you in the right direction, and I think this is the route I'll take from now on... no more listing everything meticulously. Anyway I was quite proud of this "cut-up/cleansing show" and now feel prepared for hijack. If you'd like to listen to what you missed you can follow the title of this post to the hour broadcast preserved forever at internet archives. Thanks for listening.

Preparing for Hijack

Hello. This week I am preparing for hijack. Hijack will happen next week. For this week, I am preparing. I have a host of rituals. I must transform the airwaves to prepare for hijack. Hijack is not this week but the next. I have already purified this space with too much D Antin. Now I must prepare this purified space for hijack and make sure we are pure. Hijack is next week. For this week (in preparation): Free Radical Radio.

TRS (#7) 3-10-09 : The Complete Normed Vector Spaces Show featuring Char Banach & David Antin

Okay, so if you've been listening lately you've been witness to my obsession with David Antin... lasts week's show may have been a bit hard to listen to with the sporadic pops and crackles, so I've brought Mr. Antin back for the later half of this week in a better recording from Studio 111 at UPenn (a discussion they freely disperse (at least for educational means) on their website)...

But the main attraction this week is my interview with Char Banach (whom I've introduced in the post below)... I am playing a distilled/remixed 24 minute version of our conversation... I could have filled the hour with our talk and I thought I would given the delight of our interview, but when it comes down to it, I just have trouble listening to myself for such a length... I have done my best to give Char her due... she sings a couple beautiful songs in the clip I have included and a couple more are available in animated form on youtube (again: see post below)...

So that's this week's show... I will return in two weeks with a "radio essays" show...

Next Week: The Complete Normed Vector Spaces Show

Featuring Char Banach, and math quotes from wikipedia: "Since the norm induces a topology on the vector space, every Banach space is necessarily metrizable and metrizable spaces generally have very interesting properties."

Like I mentioned before, Char Banach is an intermedia turned designer grad at the SAAH... She sat down with me this week to discuss art, academia, the dilemma of being an introverted radio show host, and the joy in the spontaneous creation of song.

Below is a selection of her video work. Tune in next week to hear these songs and more on That Resounding Sound...

TRS (#6) 3-3-09 : Hellbird

The theme of this week's show is Hellbird because that phrase awoke with me one morning this week and I wanted to spice up my titling a little.

In honor of Hellbird, I will be playing a David Antin talk (given at SUNY-Buffalo in 2003), entitled "War" which will cover a significant duration of tonight's program.

"War" (and some more of Mr. Antin's work) can be linked to here, here, or here on ubuweb.

Next week I will be collaborating with Charmaine Banach (UI SAAH Grad Intermedian turned Designer) who will be talking about life as a catalyst and singing soulful ditties about household appliances.

"Burn This Motherfucker Down"

That is the theme for this week although I will not be saying that word on the air, nor using it again whenever I address the theme for this week. This blog is rated T for strong language.

TRS (#5) 2-24-09 : Songiness

Okay this week I'm having fun... intergrating Brain Joseph Davis as the fabric that holds my "songiness" theme together and bouncing these fried tracks off more or less listenable stuff from Madlib to Monkey Chants to Talking Heads to a plundered Micheal Jackson... it's just an experiment...

1. Lady Be Good - Ella Fitzgerald - from the Ubuweb : ethnopoetics... check the link for some words about scat, Louis Armstrong, and a connection between jazz and dada
2. Brian Joseph Davis - from Ten Banned Albums Burned Then Played (a contemporary sound project which is just as it sounds) - Stravinsky
3. Madlib - from Beat Konducta vol. 5+6 two tracks, back to-back (a twofer Tuesday ha!): 1) Infinity Sound & 2) Sacrifice
4. Ketjak : The Ramayama Monkey Chant- (9 minute excerpt) - also from ubuweb : ethnopoetics (I liked how this fit with the skipping, repetitive nature of B.J. Davis "burned albums"
5. Brian Joseph Davis - Ten Banned Albums Burned Then Played - Sex Pistols
6. John Oswald - Plunderphonics - Micheal Jackson "Dab"
7. Sonic Youth - Goo Interview Flexi - from disc 2 of the Goo reissue
8. Brian Joseph Davis - Ten Banned Albums Burned Then Played - The Beatles
9. Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) - from the album Speaking in Tongues
10. Morales-Taniel_Sin-Cabeza_15-Movimiento-sexual (I don't know where I got this [I thought ubu] but I can't find it again and I don't know anything other than the file's name, sorry)
11. Negativland - Richard Nixon Died Today - from the album Thigmotactic
12. Brian Joseph Davis - Ten Banned Albums Burned Then Played - First Family/Louie Louie
13. New Humans - You Must Be Free - from album New Humans
14. Brain Joseph Davis - Ten Banned Albums Burned Then Played - 2 Live Crew
15. David Dondero - Song for the Civil Engineer - from the album The Transient

Hopefully soon I'll have the podcast as a feed... until then, any interested parties can click on the title of each week's show (ex. TRS (#5) 2-24-09 : Songiness) and find it logged on Internet Archive. Thanks for listening.

Next Week: Song Show

I will actually play songs in next week's show. It should be musical. And songy.

TRS (#4) 2-17-09: Repetition

This week's show was created in a collaboration between Eric Asboe and myself. Eric is a local writer/artist who I had the good fortune of meeting last fall. I invited him along to an Anat Pick reading at the Dey House and since then our common interest in sound art, ubuweb, and (for lack of a better term) "the contemporary art practice" has congealed into a rewarding communication of which this week's show is one result.

As well as suggesting all the pieces played on this week's show, Eric is also performing work from his series Mornings (2008-2009). Of his work (or maybe, just in general) he says, "Dada sound poetry asks the listener to reconsider the traditional meanings of language through an evacuation of sense. The repetition in these pieces also challenges traditional meanings of language but by evacuating the sense from language that is readily understandable, even simplistic."

This is idea we are interested in when we say we are interested in the idea of repetition. Thanks for listening.

1. Eric Asboe - Excerpts from Mornings (2008-2009) "May"

2. Robert Ashley - She Was A Visitor

3. Janek Schaefer - Love Song

4. Alex Bag - "Call Me" - Excerpted from "Untitled Fall '95"

5. Eric Asboe - Excerpts from Mornings (2008-2009) "November - December"

6. People Like Us - An Induction is a Draft is a Gust of Air - (this links to their video)

7. Eric Asboe - Excerpts from Mornings (2008-2009) "May"

8. Robert Ashley - She Was a Visitor

9. Janek Schaefer - Love Song

10. Alex Bag - "Call Me" - Excerpted from "Untitled Fall '95"

11. Eric Asboe - Excerpts from Mornings (2008-2009) "November Through December"

For more information about the show read further.
To tell your story write: instituteofstorytelling@gmail.com

The theme of this week's show is repetition

copy that

TRS (#3) 2-10-09: Boundaries

Boundaries... storytelling... from within the institute we broadcast our tales even as the tales we tell broadcast our buildings... oh, I'll quit being so enigmatic and just say: welcome to this week's show.

1) The first 7:11 excerpted from Vito Acconci's Bristol Project (I've been waiting to play this awhile and if you're getting up at 4 am this will probably lull you right back to sleep but it promises a nice nod back off to...) The entire piece is nearly 50 minutes; a quite lovely, audio glimpse "that informs" (sorry, art school verbiage) Acconci's later work...

2) "Interior Conversations #1" - This week features UI sculpture graduate student Erica Damman, as she discusses windows in the air, doors through trees, and her work in the Institute of Storytelling...

3) Kenneth Goldsmith, excerpt from Traffic (from a 3-28-07 reading at Moma) (12:14)

4) JohnEKilowatt performs "Panther Rabbi" (6:20)

5) John Cage and Rahsaan Roland Kirk "Sound?" will fill out the remainder of the hour... I feel a little guilty about putting such a long piece on the air (and for saturating my show with John Cage in the early goings) but I think this is justified because his ideas are such a fundamental backbone for the ideas I am after in this show on a weekly basis, but also specifically this week's "boundaries" slant. This piece is brilliant, it's actually a film, the link for the film is above, you should watch it. (26:37)


I want to especially thank Erica Damman for her collaboration this week and support of this radio show/project in general. In our conversations leading up to this week's "interview" she spoke of the following poem... Her piece (see photo below), named after it's title, is located at the new U of I Studio Arts building and I've included the poem because this is the internet and information wants to be free:

Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.


---------


And on a trivial note: Nemerov was brother to the late, great photographer Diane Arbus... thanks for listening...

This week's show: The Boundaries of Storytelling

This week we'll delve into a subject larger than we can possibly handle... the boundaries of storytelling. We may feature more than our usual amount of talk as I converse with some local avants about putting glass in fences and windows in the sky... we'll hear a reading by an odd fellow who thinks he may just know the perfect ritual for extinguishing the sting of broken hearts... and we'll back all this up with some breath-taking beats (the writer kind) and broken video game soundtracks... stay tuned.

TRS (#2) 2-3-09: Nothing (or a Running Joke About 4.33)

Hello and welcome to this week's edition. By now you've surely found that I like to blog more than I like talking on the air... this week we move into our prerecorded format... and when I say "we" I am talking about me three times: there is the live "me" in the studio (just because it's prerecorded doesn't mean it isn't live (or does it?)), there is the field reporter me (you'll hear my interview on nothing with UI Professor David Dunlap), and there is the third me I haven't yet discovered (this me, the blogger me, perhaps, the John 2.0)... I am dumping M.T.sun or any of its incarnations because it just doesn't work on RADIO...

This week's lineup: ( or an awkward progression into something):

1) People Like Us... "Nothing" from the Abridged Too Far
2) Yoko Ono... "Snow is Falling All The Time" from the publication Aspen
3) John Cage... "excerpt of an interview" from Norton Lectures
4) Meredith Monk... "RALLY"... from Airwaves
5) Yves Klein... "excerpt from Monotone Symphony" event on a historical evening
7) Brian Joseph Davis... "Elua" a "cover of Sony's best song"
8) bpNichol... "Dada Lama" from Ear Rational
9) Christian Bok... performs "Ursonate" by Kurt Switters
10) Siegfried Fink... "Metallophonie" from Sound Sculptures

and I tagged track 5 from DJ Spooky's Rhythm Science on at the end to fill the hour... it contains some Gertrude Stein for good measure...

Thanks for listening.

Also I would like to extend my thanks to David Dunlap for the 1st official interview of TRS... (sound clips interspersed)... and for his conversation regarding Travis FREEMAN (an artist who attempts "nothing" with much more success than I...) and Alva Gene Dexhimer... TRS is a proud sponser of the Men's Cold Pork Drawing Club even though we are 2/3 vegetarian.

Notes have been noted: for next week The Boundaries of Storytelling

Nothing

This weeks show is about nothing. And it is in production.

Reminesce Return Remix Recycle Refreakout

That resounding sound is being put together again for next week's "episode" and I wanted to take a moment and reflect on what happened this past week:

1) I went to bed at 9:45 and lay there awake until 3 when I decided to cut my losses, shower, and go do my show.

2) The show went live on time. I played most of what I said (missed the last two Tape Beatles bits).

3) I spit some talk over the microphone doing my best to sound professional, doing my best to sound like I knew what I was doing.

4) I broadcast in the dark. I arrive to an empty studio, I hum lullabies to a sleeping city, I leave an empty studio.

5) I buy milk at Kum & Go, return home and read the Shape of Time until sleep takes over at 6 AM.

6) I dream about the shows to come and how I will take more control in crafting this hour.

7) I meet with production people. I begin to craft a denser, more elaborate, more literate show. I email friends with the link to this blog. I am looking for collaborators, I am looking for stories, I am looking for the institute of storytelling, I am whispering charms to this city while it sleeps and building promos for this show, this station, this city.

8) I am looking for a microphone. I have just the place.

9) I am blogging about it.

The adventure continues, the production produces vibrations and these reverberations chime like bells. Bells questioning their sound. Bells ringing to ring. Ring bells ring.

The sound comes from the center.

TRS (#1) 1-27-09: "J.E.Tsun says Hello, no disclaimers, no excuses, sound is cited"

"Hello I am your host J.E.Tsun," I may start by saying something of this sort. On here, though, within this blog's code I'm gonna keep it kind of bloggy (read = unprofessional) and just wax on the fax yo.

This evening (or tomorrow morning if your that type of person) I will be introducing the show to the world (or the few sleepless souls orbiting the Old Capitol) and I'm basically shooting for a technically sound show. I'm going for a decent flow, no gaffs, no meltdowns, no, actually... I'm setting the bar even lower: I will declare victory if I get to the studio in time.

But insecurity and self-deprecation aside, here's the playlist:

1. I will start things off with bpNichol's, Pome Poem (as blessings for the show). It's from his Ear Rational, 1982, more info available here: www.ubu.com/sound/nichol.html

2. William S. Burroughs - Recalling All Active Agents (www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html)

3. Track 25 from DJ Spooky's Rhythm Science, artists on the track listed as: Oval vs. Yoshihiro Hanno, Oval vs. Main, David Shea, Marcel Duchamp, track name: "April (remix] + SDII Audio Remplate + Satiricon + Some Texts From L'Infintif"... The album is part of a book produced by Mediawork/MIT Press 2004

4. Christian Bok - Intro & Chapter A from Eunoia... www.ubu.com/sound/bok.html - If you don't know about this book check out the link. Each chapter is limited to the vowel of its title... I will be featuring the whole book over the course of this show... I can't wait til we get to U...

5. Duchamp reads "The Creative Act" - www.ubu.com/sound/duchamp.html

6. "Unclean" by Psychic TV from The Dial-A-Poem Poets album Better An Old Demon Than a New God... www.ubu.com/sound/demon.html

7.James Joyce - Anna Livia Plurabelle (Finnegans Wake) > London, 1929 - www.ubu.com/sound/joyce.html

8. And look what I found on UBU... Iowa City's own: The Tape Beatles... 4 tracks (in order aired: Beautiful necessity, Education of the will, The man of to-morrow, Body of his desire) from the album Good Times (www.ubu.com/sound/pw/good_times.html)

Two thoughts on background talk music (there must be a radio term for this filler)... anyway, I'm thinking either Seth Price's Vid-Trax Continuous Mix (40 minutes of video game soundtracks) or viral symphOny by Joseph Nechvatal (which is rather harsh at points, but what the hell).

A note on resources: you may have noticed my links all have the same base web address... ubu.com... Ubuweb is an internet archive of most of the historical and contemporary "sound" work I will be playing on this show. I built this show mining UBU, this show is totally dependent on UBU, this specialty show exists from the blood of UBU... KRUI has no afliation with UBU and I am comfortable using them as a resource because that's what they are there for, to make available what is otherwise obscure or defunct. Here see for yourself: www.ubu.com/resources/index.html... my favorite line from their dictum is this:

Totally independent from institutional support, UbuWeb is free from academic bureaucracy and its attendant infighting, which often results in compromised solutions; we have no one to please but ourselves.

I, too, have no one to please but myself. I am here out of delight. One hour of sound. That is the point of That Resounding Sound!

Comments welcome.

Manufacturing the Thick Sound Hour (Notes)

Here I am showing all my cards, holding them up to the mirror of empty exhibitionism (for my own pleasure), trying to progress my thoughts by spitting them out into uncharted cyberspace (as uncharted = unread).

1. The beginning hours of the show (and by beginning hours I am talking about the first couple weeks as I am programmed for one episode per week) revolve around influences. I suspect much of DJ Spooky's Rhythm Science in early stages, because it brings some palatable sound scapes/beats to the forefront while interspersing historical sound work; it is already a clever remix. There will be some John Cage (no 4.33, sorry), perhaps interviews, I'm also interested in Roni Horn's Saying Water, although I'm not sure where that fits right now. Oh, it's kind of ridiculous to name names here... I basically wanted to mention Rhythm Science because it is within its spirit that I am pursuing this endeavor.

2. From here I hope to draw some narrative/form into the hour, and the "theme" I'm circling is the raw production of art. This moves the context of the show into two simultaneous threads: conversations on the production of art and the actual product of that production. In other words, the show on some level is about producing the show, but on another about making anything.

3. All music, songs, noise, interviews, everything will be thoroughly credited and accounted for (obvious, but just for the record).

4. One particular theme I'm interested in is "boundaries." The current for this show will revolve around how we find what we're up against as it pertains to the production of art. For this show I will be interviewing a U of I artist who cut a window into a fence.

5. Other themes I'm playing with: infinity, imaging, and ice.

6. As the show is being built from the bubbles of time, the resonating reverberations will congeal and the will of words will become solid before returning to air.

Transparency in Production OR Start Simple OR How I Got This Show And What I Plan To Do With It

Name of show: Avant Air or …THAT RESOUNDING SOUND!
My intention is to use and explore the database of sound art/poetry/cultural audio to create a unique radio hour with fellow University of Iowa art students. One possibility would be to have a guest each week from the graduate college in the SAAH. This guest would be someone with interest in sound art/poetry, but more importantly, a desire to produce an aesthetic hour of remixed sound and would help me create the week’s show…

Please tell us about your experience (if any), such as prior radio work, relevant to your areas of interest.
I am entering my final semester as an MFA candidate in photography, but with a keen interest in sound art/poetry. I have hosted several shows in the past, mostly as a rotation DJ at other college radio stations (see next question). I also have several personal projects that revolve around sound (and sound for video) and I very much see this as an opportunity to create and present a remix of sound culture expand the conversation with other grad students/artists surrounding sound art/poetry.

Why do you want to work for KRUI? What do you expect to gain from working at the station? What skills make you a good candidate for working at KRUI?
Like I said above, I have worked as on on-air DJ at two previous college radio stations (KTEQ and KBHU in the Black Hills region of SD) and am excited at the opportunity to be again involved in radio. I have enjoyed the programming at KRUI since I came to Iowa City in 2003 and believe in the role of community based radio. With the specialty show I am proposing, I hope to explore the genre of the art/sound/noise poetry, as well as the notion of artistic collaboration, and extend that exploration to the community.

In your opinion, what are KRUI's roles in the community?
I believe your question contains it’s own answer. A locally based radio station with a wide selection of diverse programming has the power to bring people together in a certain atmosphere and enhance the local culture. The show I’m proposing would be unique to college radio in that it not only presents historical and contemporary sound “footage,” but showcases local/university artists utilizing their coherence in crafting an object (in this case, a weekly hour of radio airtime).

What's the show about?
The show I’m proposing explores avant garde movements in sound from sound poetry to sound pieces from the art world to experimental noise. It will incorporate the knowledge of current artists/grad students (as guests or collaborators) working in sound. Using the large archive of UBUWeb (http://ubuweb.com/), its tangents (Penn Sound, Artmob), and the ubiquity of cultural artifacts (such as movie clips) that can be easily turned into mp3s or other “streaming” audio as a starting point, I intend to create an hour show each week that explores historical to contemporary sound practices within the framework of two working artist’s (myself and guests) tastes.

A note on UbuWeb: UbuWeb is an open source sound/art collection, a gathering place for many limited and rare recordings. Through Ubu and the possibilities of its archive, I hope to put together an appealing show for a culturally sophisticated audience based on avant-garde sound recordings and historical movements (for example: dada sound poetry).

What types of music will you be playing?
In exploring the reaches of avant garde practices in sound, the show will run the gamut from historical to contemporary recordings. So a typical evening could see a playlist that ranged from James Joyce reading Anna Livia Plurabelle to a bpNichol sound poetry to DJ Spooky remixing William S Burroughs with dialogue from a Tarantino movie (abiding FCC regulations, of course) playing off the DJs “narrative” (if you will).

Where does this show, in your opinion, fit into KRUI programming?
I think the specialty show I’m proposing is a culturally relevant negotiation between literature, art, and sound. I believe this would attract an audience interested in the historical as well as contemporary aspects of this field, but it would also invite an audience hungry for an invigoratingly avant (if you will, again) produced hour of sound. By producing the show in collaboration with local artists, the material broadcast becomes an ephemeral “sound sculpture” and the notion of radio progresses.

Playlist Sample. We ask that you provide and sample setlist of the music that you would play on your show. It's important to not only have enough music for your show, but for us to have a good understanding of the types and genres of music that you will be playing over the air.

1. Hugo Ball - Karawane
2. Phillip Glass – Nova Convention
2. James Joyce – Anna Livia Plurabelle
3. bpNichol – Pome Poem (http://www.bpnichol.ca/media/audio/bpnichol_pome_poem)
4. Erik Satie
5. Anat Pick – Live from Shambaugh house (second half of recording at http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/archive/record/anat_pick_and_alina_nelega_reading/)
6. Sonic Youth - Audience “DJ Spooky Remix”
7. Charlotte Moorman – Answering Machine: Lennon, Cage, Yoko Thanksgiving
8. Jackson Mac-Low – The 8-Voice Stereo-Canon Realization of The Black Tarantula Crossword Gatha
9. interspersed with dialogue from Chris Marker’s Le Jetee
10. William Carlos Williams – The Defective Record
11. John Baldesarri – Second Language, Trying For The Worst
12. Dan Graham – My Religion: Extract from a work tape: Ann Lee
13. Gertrude Stein – If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso
14. Christian Bok – excerpts from Eunoia
15. Kenny Goldsmith - Traffic
16. a dialogue from Alphaville
17. Yo La Tengo – Black Flowers
18. The DJ(s) read from Spaghetti Dreadful by Gustave Morin
19. Sten Hanson – My Galloping Heart
20. Vito Acconci – The Bristol Project