What are the inside and outside of sound and listening? What are the pathways that lead from one to the other? How can perceptual habits be challenged? How can music deconstruct and reconstruct its conditions? How can the distinction between music and noise be further challenged? How can listening be conceived beyond the traditional divisions between subject and object?
For this SSTRAPP three-day weekender, Inigo and Maeve are joined by Lee Fraser, who is a sound artist, composer-performer, and transdisciplinary theorist. This is the second of two workshops surrounding the publication of Ghost Semantics, which was co-edited by Inigo and Lee, and accompanied the release of Lee’s new album Scii Tenaph.
The title of the workshop is based on the piece that Lee wrote for the book, which proposes a philosophical argument concerning the development of a ‘radical aesthetics’, based on an ‘unmooring of sensation from representation’, which Lee traces back to a deep history of somatic abstraction and links to a more recent history of psychoacoustics and the computer music tradition within electroacoustics. Fraser’s argument is that the lysergic potency of synthetic abstraction, released from the discriminatory gatekeepers of perception, is able ‘to facilitate next-level cognitive adventure in the acousmatic arena’ and to spin ‘the interior into a hallucinatory vortex of raw, immediate cognition’. The notion of liminality is also central to Lee’s work, and to all the texts gathered in Ghost Semantics, where the liminal concerns various thresholds of transformation, and where forms of listening or composition are able to critically traverse the multi-level complexity of auditory transformations. Following the usual SSTRAPP format Lee and Inigo will present some concepts, arguments, and questions each morning and we’ll spend a few hours collectively discussing those theoretical concerns, then we’ll make and eat some lunch before Lee and Maeve guide us through some practical explorations, helping us to spend the rest of the day getting our hands on with various synths and noise-makers, moving, vocalizing, sampling and improvising together in groups aimed towards a series of performances on Saturday evening. Then in the evening we cook and eat dinner, have a listening session in the dome or a DJ party in the recording studio. Lee will give a four channel presentation of his recent work.
Bidston is an anti-racist, trans-inclusive, intersectional feminist space where we welcome everyone who abides by this accountability agreement.
There are no requirements for attending, everyone is welcome, whatever their knowledge, abilities, etc., and the theory and practice should be accessible for those with no background in them.
We recommend arriving at Bidston sometime on Thursday so we’re ready to start working on Friday morning, but if you can’t make it then you can still join later.
It is possible to participate with or without accommodation. We will do collective meals together, which is also an optional extra cost. The cost for participating in the workshop are as follows:
Workshop fee: On a sliding scale from £20-£30 per day, or £60-£90 for the total three days. Please pay more if you can, the lower end of the scale is for those who really couldn’t afford it otherwise, the cost is very cheap for what you’re getting!
Accommodation fee: On a sliding scale from £30-£40 per day, or £90-£120 for the total three days. If you’re struggling financially, e.g. on benefits, get in touch and it may be possible to reduce the cost.Meals fee: £15 per day
If you’d like to join, please get in touch by sending an email to sstrapp@proton.me
