The Lament Project

My latest piece "Time" was created specially for the Lament Project. To hear it go to http://www.integr8dmedia.net/viralnet/2008/laments.html.

The Lament Project is Viralnet.net’s new online project for 2007-08.

The project began in early 2007, and it grew from our desire to produce an online work that could respond to the public and personal anxieties that we experience in today's hyper-commodified culture.

We thought that the best way Viralnet.net could cut through the visually dominant spectacle of the corporate media's packaging of suffering and conflict, would be in a personal and visceral way, using sound.

The lament is one of the world’s oldest musical and poetic forms for expressing sorrow and mourning. It is a form that is found in both eastern and western cultures, in classical traditions as well as contemporary genres. It has evolved over the centuries in the west informing various idioms along the way, from rural folk ballads to urban blues. Its source is a primordial sound that comes from a place deep inside the soul of the individual.

The Viralnet.net curators invited a variety of performance, electronic, acoustic, noise, spoken word and visual artists to contemplate the meaning of the lament and to submit a personal interpretation, one minute in length.

Even though there are many traditional laments to draw from, Viralnet.net encouraged the artists to invent new and personal interpretations of the form and to explore the full range of possibilities, spanning the humorous to the serious. Except for the one-minute length requirement, there were no preconditions or rules that the artists needed to follow in creating their laments.

The Curators

Cindy Bernard
Kathy Brew
Tom Leeser
Beth Rosenberg
Martha Wilson

Recording of the Eiffel Tower

On Friday, September 28, 2007 the international sound based artist, China Blue captured Gustave Eiffel’s unique steel design in sound.  These historic acoustic recordings document the sound and vibrations of the Tour Eiffel’s 2,500,000 rivets and 18,038 pieces of steel weighing a total of 7300 tons. She registered the sonic environment of the approximately 30,000 people who visit it daily, as well as the machine room’s enormous gears and motors that carry the visitors up and down the tower.  From the ground to the crown, she sampled the actual vibrations of Mr. Eiffel’s monumental design, one of the “seven wonders of the world,” highlighting the unique but ignored beauty of Paris' iconic structure.

For more detailed information about the project and to see the pictures and hear the sound files, go to the link above.