Teepee Sound Space

[David Jennings]

I've been talking to Dougald about using one of the spaces at the festival as a kind of chill out area (horrible term, but you know I mean), with some suitably themed sounds.

This came about from listening to John Cage's diary "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)", a long (5 hours) series of brief impressionistic anecdotes, stories, jokes, reflections which touches on many Dark Mountain themes and thinkers (mushrooms, governance without government,international collaboration, Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Duchamp and others whose inclusion under a DM umbrella we could debate at length).

What I'm aiming to do is to have a low profile sound system in the teepee (photo above) that runs throughout the day, playing a mix of the John Cage diary and other pieces in the acoustic ecology tradition, plus Jem Finer's 1,000-year-long Longplayer piece.

There's no electricity in the teepee, so we're using my 30 year old battery-powered music system plus cheap MP3 players. The current playlist is below, and here are full details.

If you feel like helping me make this a better space and better experience, things to think about might be:

• what's wrong with this plan? save me from finding out the hard way
• can you bring any rugs or soft furnishings to make the teepee more cosy
• can you spare an MP3 player that we could use while mine is recharging? Please only cheap ones so that (a) no one thinks it's worth stealing (b) if someone does steal it, or break it, you can bear the loss with a shrug. I can send you the sound files (under 500 MB) to load on your player, but please bring some means of recharging it.
• do you want to add or subtract anything from the playlist? let's have a chat

You may spot that all of this careful planning is subject to being undermined by anyone who wants just to pump out their own selection of Soft Cell's greatest hits simply by substituting their own MP3 player for mine/ours. Such is the nature of open systems...

 

Playlist

John Cage Diary Part 1

Longplayer excerpt 1

John Cage Diary Part 2

The Sounds of Harris & Lewis (recorded by Greg Wagstaff) disc 1

John Cage Diary Part 3

The Horse was Alive, The Car was Dead: Sounds, stories and people of the Lea Valley, East London (recorded by Peter Cusack) Part 1

John Cage Diary Part 4

Longplayer excerpt 2

John Cage Diary Part 5

The Sounds of Harris & Lewis, disc 2

John Cage Diary Part 6

The Horse was Alive, The Car was Dead, part 2

John Cage Diary Part 7

Longplayer excerpt 3

John Cage Diary Part 8

Duration: 10 hrs 20 mins

More details of all pieces at the end of this doc

[Roger Adair]

 

My suggestion for the chillout play list would be

"Everything that Happens will Happen Today"

by David Byrne & Brian Eno.

[David Jennings]

Thanks, Roger, do you mean the whole album of just the title track? Is there a Dark Mountain connection as you see it?

[Douglas Strang]

Hi David,

 

Seems like a good plan and a great playlist.

 

Dougie

[Roger Adair]

I would say there is David. 

 

Nothing but Flowers is pretty cool as well.

David Jennings said:

Thanks, Roger, do you mean the whole album of just the title track? Is there a Dark Mountain connection as you see it?

[David Jennings]

Now attached a near-final version of the notes to go with the sound space (one thing I've hoping to add is a copy of one page of the Cage Diary). These will be available in the space.

[David Jennings]

Hi Roger,

 

I've nearly finalised things (the logistics of copying files round more than one player, plus my other commitments in the next few days mean there is a bit of lead-in time), but I will try and include Everything Happens. It may be the only piece on the playlist that you could call a song, but that's fine. See you in the teepee!

Roger Adair said:

I would say there is David. 

 

Nothing but Flowers is pretty cool as well.

David Jennings said:

Thanks, Roger, do you mean the whole album of just the title track? Is there a Dark Mountain connection as you see it?

[Roger Adair]

ok David, not to worry if it is too much hassle since spontaneous suggestions

are much easier to make than to act on! Your playlist certainly sounds.

 

Look forward to seeing you in the tepee too.

 

Roger

David Jennings said:

Hi Roger,

 

I've nearly finalised things (the logistics of copying files round more than one player, plus my other commitments in the next few days mean there is a bit of lead-in time), but I will try and include Everything Happens. It may be the only piece on the playlist that you could call a song, but that's fine. See you in the teepee!

Roger Adair said:

I would say there is David. 

 

Nothing but Flowers is pretty cool as well.

David Jennings said:

Thanks, Roger, do you mean the whole album of just the title track? Is there a Dark Mountain connection as you see it?

[David Jennings]

New (final?) version of the notes now attached -- to be printed and laminated tomorrow, I hope.

 

Roger, though it's not mentioned in the notes (because it's considerably shorter than the other pieces) I have added Everything Happens (the track) to the playlist.

 

If you (anyone!) have an MP3 player (any brand, as long as it plays MP3s!) that you're willing to bring along and leave playing in the teepee while my player recharges, please let me know and I'll send instructions on how to load the playlist onto your player before you come.

[Roger Adair]

I'll give it a shot David

 

I have unearthed an MP3 player abandoned by my daughter which says 512MB which

sounds like an awful lot of memory to me. The question is of course is it enough?

 

It runs on one AA battery so you do not have to plug it into a USB to charge it. 

 

I am just completing a pretty heavy duty bit of work on the computer at the moment

so I will become more with it over the next few days before I head off for London on Thursday.

[David Jennings]

As an inveterate tinker, I've tweaked the notes a little further. Definitive version now at http://alchemi.co.uk/archives/docs/UncivilisationNotes.pdf