Every year I do looptober, a challenge to try to create and post one short looping piece of music or sound every day in October. I’ve been doing it since 2018 and somehow never posted about it here. This post is a reminder to myself to repost more of my favorite looptober tracks. Here’s a few to start.
Inspired by Marc Weidenbaum’s post “Speaker Bag“, I went and collected some of my favorite wrapped speakers from previous projects.
Water the Sounds, 2017, with Anne Hollænder. We had a speaker on a stand at head height to play Anne’s singing voice, but it looked too technical until we wrapped it with white tyvek fabric, which converted it into a ghostly figure.
→ Video of Water the Sounds (2017)
Water the Sounds, the 2024 version. This time we wrapped the speaker in black synthetic fabric, and with the very stark lighting in the space, it almost vanished. In fact, you can’t even see it in the above photo – it’s in the black space to the left. It would often surprise visitors when Anne’s voice rang out.
With a little bit more light, you can see the speaker standing there behind the main installation. It really felt like having another person standing shyly outside of the spotlight.
→ More on Water the Sounds (2024)
For a performance with Foulbrood Orchestra (me, Thessia Machado, John Roach, and Concetta Abbate) I wrapped a speaker loosely in mylar foil, which added a wonderful fluttering or buzzing sound, depending on what sound was playing on the speaker. It was suspended from about 12 feet up so we could swing the speaker around and even over the audience’s head as it played.
The Water Stories exhibition at BioBAT Art Space got some coverage: Science meets art at NYC exhibit on water’s vital role amid growing climate concerns (NBC New York, October 16, 2024). You can visit the exhibit on Saturdays 12-5pm until May 2025 (or by appointment).
A nice mention of my piece with Anne Hollænder:
Another installation that leaned into the more spiritual aspect of water is “Water the Sounds” by Ranjit Bhatnagar and Anne Hollænder. The piece lets spectators pour seawater into a bowl, which activates analog instruments as well as haunting audio of Hollænder’s singing to the crowd during the exhibit’s opening.
Soterakis best described the installation as “having a soul of its own.”
Two events this weekend!
Saturday (June 8) is the opening of Water Stories, an exhibition at BioBAT Art Space in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. My friend Anne Hollænder and I are presenting a new version of our interactive musical installation Water the Sounds. The opening event is 5-8pm on Saturday, but if you can’t make it, the show will be up for almost a year. The venue can be hard to find, so check the directions!
Sunday (June 9) is Soundscapes, the annual celebration of sound art at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. Come out to see the latest sound sculpture commissions and visit the permanent ones like my Stone Song! Caramoor is a pleasant ride out of the city on Metro North, so you get to start at Grand Central Terminal.
Join me, sound artists Thessia Machado and John Roach, and violinist Concetta Abbate as we swarm from location to location in the vast, dark, and echoing ground floor spaces of the Brooklyn Army Terminal. The show starts around 5, but come early to explore the exhibition – there’ll be some delicious honey ice cream available to sample courtesy of B-Line Ice Cream, honey mulled wine, and some other bee themed takeaways. John has posted some previews of the performance on Instagram here and here. We’re all working on weird new instruments for this gig!
The performance is part of the exhibition “Embodied Futures and the Ecology of Care” at BioBAT Art Space in Sunset Park and is an extension of John Roach’s installation “Scorched Honey Archive” that explores the complex ecological role of honeybees and other pollinators. BioBAT has more information about the exhibition and more upcoming events.
Getting to BioBAT Art Space can be confusing, because the Brooklyn Army Terminal is a vast maze! Do not enter BAT from 2nd Avenue – take 58th or 63rd St all the way to the parking lot on the river, and you’ll find BioBAT’s entrance facing the river towards the south end of the gigantic building. (Google will tell you it’s in the middle, and Apple will say it’s the north end. Lies!) You can even take the ferry to Sunset Park / BAT and you’re almost there!
To learn how to work with clay, I’ve been copying ancient animals that I find on the web. These were made, with air-dry clay and acrylic paint, between November 2021 and April 2022. Here they are, arranged from youngest to oldest.
Whale effigy, Chumash, 1200-1600 CE
Rattle dog from Athens, 3rd century BCE
Horse, ancient Greek, Boeotian, 6th century BCE
Animal figurine, Late Mycenaean (14th–13th c. BCE)
Hedgehog on wheels, Susa, Iran, Middle Elamite period (1500–1200 BCE)
Spotted dog, Pakistan, Chanhu-Daro, 2600–1900 BCE
Boar, Tepe Sarab, Iranian Neolithic, 9th millennium BCE
A collaboration with Jamie Marie Rose!
Andrea Dezsö and I sent a postcard back and forth for a month, drawing on it each time.
I’ll post video here when flickr’s working again; meanwhile you can watch it on instagram.
Sam Underwood turned an old tape deck into a drum machine, so I turned my old dog into a drum.
I’ll post the video when flickr finishes updating their video servers. Meanwhile, you can watch most of it on instagram.
