I am extremely pleased to make available ballastnvp048, Adam Sonderberg: Page F (c-100 cs)
The two sides of page f, “installation” and “composite,” use personal archival
material to explore therapeutic counseling.
Patient
/ client confidentiality is the utmost concern for counseling professionals,
and the sound screen machines placed outside office doors are a ubiquitous
feature in many facilities; they help to ensure privacy to those in-session via
a veil of white noise.
I
consider side 1, “Installation,” the more voyeuristic of the two pieces,
“placing” the listener in an approximated waiting room. Adam’s mix of white
noise, encroaching incidental environmental sounds, and voices creates a space
where privacy issues loom large: what is the difference between hearing and
listening? What is the human desire to piece together a satisfactory narrative
when that narrative is concealed? What resolution, satisfaction, or insight
does one hope to uncover by linking the elements to produce—accurate or
otherwise—a narrative?
The
“Composite” side explores this question further and manipulates the experience
more directly: the legibility of the voices is reduced and brought into
greater focus through discreet processing; the chorus of white noise
aggressively denies disclosure. This side, for me, creates an environment
not unlike Z’EV’s uns project where “information,” almost reluctantly, presents
itself: the listener must willingly bring engagement to the experience and, at
the same time, be comfortable fending for themselves.
In his review in Vital Weekly, Frans de Waard noted, The
level of conceptology is quite high here, and as such, I retreat to
another level. Regardless of the concept, do I like what I hear? Yes, I
do, even at the full 100 minutes. Or rather, maybe, because it is so
long. Both sides have a tremendous amount of white noise, and
somewhere, far away, there are voices. It is as if the microphone is
three doors down from the waiting room, and someone made a lot of
trouble picking up these sounds, pumped the sound a lot but never
bothered to remove unwanted white noise. This is fascinating stuff, so
I imagine some people will find this highly annoying. Also, I am unsure
if one should play this at a low volume or crank it up high to make the
best experience. I kept it on a normal level, did some chores around
the house, and found this quite the surreal soundtrack for such tasks.
Edition of 21 copies in a white, windowless c100 cassette housed in a hand-typed and stamped
outer o-card, an opaque white case, with a hand-typed, signed and numbered
j-card, plus two inserts including notes from Joseph Clayton Mills.
$17 ppd in the united states: overseas, please get in touch.
