Sound Poetry
Sonotexts
W. Mark Sutherland
(2011, Electronic Music Foundation, New York, New York, SOCAN)
"This fascinating selection of "sonotexts" by Toronto based artist W. Mark Sutherland, who acknowledges Bob Cobbing as his mentor, may well mark a critical development in the life of sound poetry."
Julian Cowley, The Wire
Sonotexts (Electronic Music Foundation, New York, New York, 2011) is a collection of thirteen electronic sound-poems juxtaposing analogue and digital technologies, and consists of two audio CDs — Concrete Sonotexts and Synthetic Sonotexts. The Concrete Sonotexts CD features seven live performances in a recording studio. It is predicated on the concept of isomorphism, the concrete sonotext being the actual sound of the texts' material/physical form, shape, or structure. The six Synthetic Sonotexts on the other hand, are digital isometric translations featuring a one to one correspondence between mathematical sets, page/score/poem/texts using synthesizers and computers.
For more details about the Sonotexts please refer the twenty-four page pdf-booklet below. The booklet features an essay by University of Concordia Literary and Media Professor Darren Wershler entitled “New Machines for the Locomotion of Time” as well as photographs, visual poems, scores and comprehensive liner notes by W. Mark Sutherland.
SONOTEXTS (PDF download)
Static Poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0QGfu5hhJE
Cross Rhythm and White Noise
W. Mark Sutherland and Nobuo Kubota
(2001, CD, The BarKing Boys Music Co. SOCAN)
This recording project is a collaboration between Nobuo Kubota and W. Mark Sutherland. Recorded 2000 - 2001, it features improvised duets and solos that explore, question, and extend the sonic relationships between different manifestations of human utterance, music and sound. Using vocables, speech particles, mouth mechanics and body sonics with rhythm, pitch, texture and duration, the duets and solos on this CD are a hybrid of sound poetry and music.
Cross Rhythm and White Noise CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfOjOqo8FM
Cross Rhythm and White Noise video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJCUxbBaUrs
Sonologic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hSKNrr0A0
Vice Versa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaHiz0B51e0
Character Bytes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbia3cyCiVI
Silent Treatment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lStUF2VAAek
Slowpokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9zzfYRhLw
Oral Cavity
W. Mark Sutherland
(1996, CD, The BarKing Boys Music Co. SOCAN)
Recorded between 1994 - 1996, Oral Cavity is a compendium of vicious little mantras inspired by Erik Satie’s Vexations and musique d’ameublment, Luigi Russolo’s L’arte dei rumori (Art Of Noise), the spirit of Dada (more Huelsenbeck and Tsara, than Schwitters and Ball). There are hints of John Cage (chance operations, The Fontana Mix), Brion Gysin (permutational poems), and Steve Reich/Philip Glass (repetition as a form of change). This project harnesses recording technologies (multi-track recording, digital delays, voice processors, etc.) to poetic and musical conceits (rhythm, texture, sound/noise/music, onomatopoeia, speech particles, phonology, etc.). Text - sound texts were developed prior to each recording session, all performances and repetitive phrases are in real time, and with the exception of the tracks On Dissecting The Larynx and Stasis, no tape loops are used in this production.
Oral Cavity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvAhTISXWA
Earsight (Mouthpiece): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiQNP9cBHdM
On Dissecting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrcUQrM0aH4
Germ Intervals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T21_75-4V1k
Burroughs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrjGs3aVXCQ
Expensive Vowels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79uWNRWeJPs
Notes And Songs From The Pan American Highway
W. Mark Sutherland
(1992, CD, The BarKing Boys Music Co. SOCAN)
This work is a fictional narrative constructed from the fragments of lyric poems written in the late 1980’s. It is a 29 minute journey along the Pan American highway beginning on the northern borders of Guatemala, and traveling through Central American. This surreal journey ends somewhere in Panama. Two actors read the poems over a soundscape of music and audio samples in a manner similar to a “radio play”. Originally recorded in 1991, Notes and Songs has been exhibited as an audio - visual installation piece in the exhibition entitled Crossroad at the Clarington Gallery (Bowmanville, Ontario), and as part of the exhibition To Hear Is To See (ACC Gallery - Weimar, Klanggalerie - Berlin, Germany, Kammgarn - Forum Vebikus, Schaffhausen, Switzerland, St. Polten Sound Tower, Austria, YYZ Gallery, Toronto, Canada).
Notes and Songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJPFTyXouFY