Organized Sound

When I was watching the Fischli/Weiss piece, two elements of the sound really stuck out to me, texture and pacing. With the wide variety of sounds present in the machine, from dripping, scientific bubbling and foaming, to the shrieks of fireworks, and the gentle tap of tires knocking together, I found the pallet of sounds they used to be very dense. While it's minimalism didn't quite constitute the fullness of the potential noise orchestras we've read about, I feel like the breadth of the sound pallet was exactly the type of thing that Attali was thinking about. Indeed, much of the elements that were overtly scientific in nature (the various foaming, bubbling reactions that propelled the machine forward) gave me a boarderline acoustmatic listening experience - simply marveling in the sounds themselves.

The pacing I also felt was quite compelling. While the addition of a video element was helpful to me in reaching this conclusion, I felt that the length was spot on, even at half an hour. The various "instruments" all had a real chance to play themselves out and juxtapose between each other, while still allowing each to shine in a "solo" setting. I especially liked the use of tires and flames, and liked some of the structural elements of the piece, such as returning to the spinning bags which opened the machine later in the piece. The addition of the video element gave a great sense of suspense and expectation to the procession, especially with some of the slower pieces, like the swinging pendulum or the spinning bags. Seeing the next step plainly, while still being forced to wait for it to actually occur gave an interesting effect. I also felt like it spoke to the intention put into each individual component, with the bags being spun so tightly it would take a long time for them to fall, or setting the pendulum on a canted angle and forcing it to work its way around to cue the next piece. It gave a sense of composition to the noise.