Norbert Moslang + Andy Guhl – Sound Shifting
Voice Crack was a Swiss noise duo consisting of musicians Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang. They formed in 1972 as a free jazz outfit, but abandoned that format in the early ’80s to experiment with what they called “cracked everyday electronics,” which consisted of small, cracked open appliances rigged up with amps. This set-up produced sounds that could turn on a dime from a sparse clatter to an all-out noise tsunami.
The Sound Shifting book documents a sound art installation constructed by Norbert and Andy at the 49th Venice Biennal in 2001. It’s composed of a lengthy series of full-page bleed, closely-cropped blurry abstractions captured by a digital camera. Although one would never know just by looking, the subject of the photos highlights all of the hustle and bustle of traffic on the Canale Grande, one of the many busy waterways of Venice, Italy. Likewise, the CD is filled with nearly an hour’s worth of skittering, reverberated drones and occasional noise outbursts captured by an underwater microphone at the same location.
What it all amounts to is a very thorough site-specific audio-visual document that doubles as a two-part treat for lovers of grainy minimalism. In fact, in a way, the photos look more like elegant, abstract paintings than anything that came from a camera. The book comes complete with the aforementioned CD, plus an additional 24-page booklet of notes and photos all housed in a hardcover with a glossy finish that looks kind of like some sort of weird 1970s textbook. Buy it if you can track it down.
Publisher: Memory Cage Editions Catalog Number: ISBN 3-907053-21-4 Format: Book + CD Packaging: Hardcover Pages: 90 Country: Switzerland Released: 2001 More: Amazon, Discogs, Forced Exposure, Last.FM, Official, YouTube
Text ©2009 Arcane Candy
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