Contact
Spagirus at chaosmagic.com
Name
Greg Elliot
Bio
I have been working in the area of experimental musick for 8 years. After working mostly with others for a few years in ‘bands’ I began creating works on my own using various modalities of DSP processing. My first album, Entelechy Sow (self-released), was the beginning of my processed field recording compositions, which is my main mode of working. My second album, Ever Now Those Before (released on Maritimefist Glee Club), was the result of my computer based composition skills being more fully honed. I continued working with DSP and field recordings with three more albums (The Remaining Leaves Were Not There, A Leaf On Plastic, and Lose The Mind Altogether; all self released). More recently I became interested in what has come to be called ‘databending’. This process has much in common with my field recording work (only raw data is the source, rather than an audio recording), and thus feels quite natural to me. The product of my databending work has culminated in the album Unmuted Transmutations, which was a recent project where I used data from computer files of creative works (image, text, and programming code) produced by friends of mine. I have done most of my creative work while going to school in Norman, Oklahoma. However, I recently moved to Austin, Texas to find more performance possibilities than were previously available and to be in a more artistically congenial atmosphere.
Artistic Statement
I have stated my working methods, and the basis for my interests in using those methods. However, ultimately I am making musick as an offering to potential listeners to give them something aesthetically invigorating and useful. I want to provide an audial experience for people that is both a practice in attentive listening (which can serve as practice for attentiveness in all areas of life) and provides something that they can continue to revisit while discovering something new each time. I use current technology and explore the interplay between randomness and control because I think these are the best ways to produce sound that is subtle, nuanced, and interestingly challenging. I seek to produce sounds that will help listeners grow and enrich their lives in some way. By providing sound with minute variations to pay attention to I am inviting people to participate in an exercise in listening and a space that has qualities that may not all be noticed on the first or even second listen.
Software used
Jeskola Buzz Machines, Pure Data, Synth Edit, Audacity, Ableton Live 3.0, Cool Edit
Method
I use three main methods in my work; processed field recording composition, databending (which I normally execute by opening non-audio files as audio in cool edit and then arrange and process the resulting sounds or by using digital files as source data in PD), and real time digital processing (with a laptop) of external audio input. At this time I am methodologically interested in the interrelationship between varying levels of artistic control. In the case of my processed field recording compositions, I have no control over the specific character of the sounds recorded (other than choosing what to record or what recordings to use from others), but full control over the final composition and the digital processing parameters. With databending I do not control the data itself, but I do control the structure and color of the data based sounds in the piece. I never use just any data with this method. I normally use visual and written creative works done by people I know in the form of image, text, and programming code formats. I compose my databent pieces in such a way as to reflect the original work that the piece is built from, while still trying to let the voice of the data itself come through. I usually do real time input processing in collaboration with others in an improvisation context. However, I do ocassionally process the sounds of synthesizers on my own, but still in an improvised manner. In this mode of working I do ultimately have full control, but since I am improvising in real time, I am forced to make decisions so fast that some amount of control is sacrificed. With all of these methods there is a layer of sound that I had no hand in making, and then there is a layer that is fully the product of my artistic decision making process. One could say that I am not fully interested in randomness (ala Cage) nor fully interested in composition (ala pick any figure from the western tradition of music), but in what intricacies of sound may emerge from the interplay between the two.
Audio
License: Creative Commons: Attribution-Sharealike
Expel Copula
Like A Young Sapling Bending
In The Ligament
Footpaths From Tomorrow
Cracks In The Puddle
Coniunctium Animorum
Upspamcut