Jeff Cloke NoiseFloor Festival Presentation - Summary
How The Wrong NoiseFloor Changed My Life
In this talk Jeff Cloke will describe how his composing and performing life was changed in 2002 after discovering a specific piece of music, and how it was changed again when the limitations of the requisite noise floor were understood.
Jeff Cloke has been involved with experimental music since the 1960s, and since 2002 has been fascinated by the sound of the space itself, as well as the sounds made in the space; an activity inspired by the composer Alvin Lucier. Although previously an instrumental improviser and composer, from now on he would concentrate on the process and soundscapes of Lucier's 'I Am Sitting In A Room' - a performance practice he termed 'Resonation'.
His first Resonation projects involved a microphone and delays, allowing sounds to be replayed into the space repeatedly so that they gradually reinforce themselves, creating an harmonic interaction with the space.
Resonation only works if the sound picked up by the microphone is just the previously recorded sound, modified by the resonance of the space. In other words, there must be no other deliberate sounds (eg from other musicians) and the background noisefloor must be low.
Although Resonation remains a perfectly viable performance practice for concert halls and large, silent, resonant spaces it is not suitable for more noisy settings, nor (significantly) for ensemble performances.
Between 2005 - 2008 Jeff worked to develop a laptop setup using the same Resonation principles, but allowing faster responses and the ability to perform live sampling and processing of other musicians and poets as well as dealing with the sounds in the room - in other words, to accept a higher social noisefloor. His new system is called Reson8.
For this NoiseFloor Festival talk Jeff will describe Resonation and Reson8, with examples, and explain the benefits and limitations of each.
Jeff performs regularly with Reson8, and occasionally with Resonation - the noisefloor determines what is possible.
