Performing with a Tractor - Youtube edition

My friend Greg (of The Bridge PAI) directed me to this performance of "Sweet Georgia Brown" and a tractor. Sweet mechanical sounds + fancy chord progression!

Buckingham 5 on radio aporee

I just posted a recording of Buckingham 5 on radio aporee, a web-based archive of soundscape recordings linked to Google Map. Super cool website. My friend Lou-K who introduced me to it keeps S.S.R, a blog of soundscape recordings from various street corners and public spaces in urban and rural East Asia.

site number 2?

I always imagine this project to be taken on the road, or on the track.

A little while ago, I discovered another potential site for this project to be realized. Across the street from the Amtrak station in downtown Richmond is an open space newly renovated by the city government. With beautiful, modern blue lights, against Richmond's post-industrial concrete-laden landscape, this no-traffic bricked zone sits under a few super highway bridges. A tremendous volume of highway and train traffic all intersect at this point throughout the day and night.

Here're couple of pictures of this site:

visual component

A friend of a friend proposed some great ideas today - Anson Parker, a local artist who builds sculptures out of train and railroad parts wants to contribute to the evening by building a sculpture on-site during the performance. I would imagine that the sound of welding metal pieces would create interesting texture to the live improvisation.

Anson also mentioned that it would be cool to involve some graffiti artists. This reminds me of an older idea I had: I originally think that a performance in front of the graffiti wall under the Belmont Bridge would be a great site for the performance. Unfortunately, the sound of the train doesn't project well there. But this is not to say that live graffiti action can't happen while the improvisers make sounds. I need to find some clean walls and ask some graffiti experts to be on board. Any takers?


This is the graffiti wall under the Belmont Bridge close to the train station. Does anyone know who tagged it?

train images

I took a few pictures of Buckingham 6 last fall. Beautiful trains!






My friend Don at the BB Charlottesville station shared this one with me.

call for interest

I wrote a letter with the intention to call for individuals and organizations to get involved in the project. My hope is that we can generate enough community support to convince the train company to collaborate with us in making the event happen. Below is the letter. Feel free to copy and distribute it to friends who would be interested in participating. Thanks!

-_---_--_-_-__---_-----_-__--_-_----

Hi,

I'm organizing a collaborative project featuring live sounds by the Buckingham train family. The process of the project is detailed by my blog Train Sound [trainsound.blogspot.com]. The project's goal is to organize a real-time performance involving musicians who will improvise on-site with a Buckingham train at the Buckingham Branch Charlottesville station near the downtown mall under the Belmont Bridge. The performance will be documented to form the "ImprovTrain" series.

As of now, I'm working on generating individual interest and organizational support. So far, several musicians from experimental music group HzCollective [hzcollective.com] and faculty and graduate students at the McIntire Department of Music at University of Virginia, as well as art gallery and community arts group the Bridge [thebridgepai.com] and grassroots music media group Monkeyclaus [monkeyclaus.org] have shown interest and support. Also, a local music journalist who writes for the local arts paper the C-ville [c-ville.com] and keeps a blog about Charlottesville indie music has shown interest in covering the project.

The next step is to convince the train company to collaborate with us. I would imagine that this not an easy task considering issues of liability related railroad hazards. I hope that with enough community support, from individuals and organizations, we can make this happen.

If you’re interested in participating in this project in some way, and if you have any specific skills or social connections you can contribute, please contact me at wendy.f.hsu@gmail.com. Or if you have any questions or concerns regarding the project, write me.

Thanks!

wendy

a note on supporting individuals and orgs

So far, I have talked a number of musicians, artists and organizations who have shown support and interest in the project. Among them, Greg Kelly from the Bridge PAI has expressed much interest and commitment to get involved. The Bridge PAI has a gallery space on the Belmont side of the Belmont Bridge, under which is the Charlottesville station where Buckingham Branch rests and passes through. The Bridge, with its mission statement to strengthen and enrich community through collaborative interactions in the arts, has sponsored many socially progressive programs and artistically innovative projects in the Charlottesville community. This month, the Bridge is hosting a series of sound-related events for Audio January. Greg asked me to incorporate the field recordings of Buckingham 5 into the playlist of sound pieces exhibited in the gallery space during its opening hours. [It'll be interesting to hear the recorded sounds of a Buckingham train in the gallery space and then walk across the Belmont Bridge to hear the actual source of the sound coming from a live train.]

Peter Agelasto from Monkeyclaus have expressed interest in documenting the event and posting and archiving and streaming the media (audio and video, most likely) on the Monkeyclaus website. His vision of synching up real-time community events with the online community of artists and their artistic material has, I think, lots of potentials for liberating effects: for individuals who want to take control of their own media and images from the bottom up.

John Ruscher, otherwise known as the blogger Nailgun who maintains the most updated and comprehensive list and report of indie music happenings in Charlottesville, digs the project idea. John is also the writer for the music column Feedback for the C-ville, a local arts paper. He will cover the event in his column and will post about the event on his blog.

Lastly, HzCollective, whose mission is to foster a local community of experimental/avant garde/improvised/noise musicians and enthusiasts in Richmond and Charlottesville, will be directly involved. HzCollective, of which I'm a part, will contribute artistically and logistically to the project. The collective will be responsible for promoting and contacting other musicians and local press.