DERCK LITTEL

MUSIC

TEXTS

WORK

This event takes place in a domestic setting, a private place, meant as a reconfiguration of an everyday situation that aims to strike a balance between an open-ended score and the performers interpretation of the simple instructions.

 

The location I rented is divided in 2 spaces: a kitchen and a living room. Cooking provided new Electro-Magnetic Fields [EMF] for the participants to interact musically with, thus forming a duet between the 2 spaces. The guests use my own designed Sniffers, Gruska's Elektrosluch and other small devices to audify the present radiation and change the sounds.

 

There is one conclusion: EMF's are everywhere.

 

Over all this work can be seen as sono-relational art. [Nicholas Bourriaud]

 

You could say that I'm merely mediating a sound experience in a social setting.

 

Rirkrit Tiravanija, icon of Relational Art says: ‘The task of the artist is to become a conduit for this social experience, where it is not important what you see, but what takes place between people’.

Sound Event, Ennismore Gardens, London, April 2018

SOUND COOKING

 

 

Exploring Electro Magnetic Fields[EMF] places you in

an ambient sonic array, an unnoticed but structured arrangement of frequencies, in which radiation provides information about the environment, since all electrical devices emit EMF.

 

This radiation is made audible with a portable tool I designed, the SoundSniffer. Combined with a vibrating vest to capture the physical dimension of sound, it is meant to be used during a walk to listen to, and interact sonically, with electrical objects in our environment. A score of the suggested tour guides you, pointing out objects of sonic interest such as card readers, security cameras, street lights, parking meters and so on, to provide a hapto-sonic experience.

SONIC-TOPOI

Interactive installation, Royal College of Art, z2018

 

 

The 14 active computer-speakers are only powered with a self made power supply in DC and have no sound going through. What I'm after is the ground noise, 50 hz hum, that nobody wants normally. That is all the output.

By grounding the plugs in different way's the hum can be amplified and sometimes changes pitch a little. But is terrible out of tune anyway.

During the performance I use the noise as compositorial element and improvise to it on the cello.

Conceptually the work was made for the 'Night of the Broken Glass' but applies to a larger frame. The anthropomorphic set up points to any similar situation where people could have a voice but remain silent with consonant hum. The grey speakers represent both the masses and a graveyard.

KRISTALLNACHT

Sound performance, Royal College of Art, 2018

 

 

The video probably needs no explanation. We are completely dependent of our electronic system and addicted to the social networks it enables. We worship WIFI.

Sound Performance, January  2018

WIFI DANCE

Sound performance, White City, London, 2017

 

 

In the center of the BBC Imperium twists and turns

a small robotic globe, apparently lost, clumsy bumping into obstacles and people while it emits hundreds of snippets of sounds from radio stations. The work reduces the BBC World to toy dimensions and addresses in a comical way issues as globalisation and identity. Global networks are fine as long as they are British..

BBC WORLD

STAIRCASE

 

This is a site specific work, based on the spatiality of the building, the RCA campus at Kensington London. It uses recorded sounds from the staircase in the building that are played back on the different floors in an ambisonic [rather chrono-sonic] way. The sounds are played in

a 'breathing' way 'moving' through all 5 floors. Like this the staircase becomes the respiratory system of the building, enabling Information and interaction between the different levels.

 

Fluxus artist La Monte Young said: 'Isn’t it wonderful if someone listens to something he is ordinarily supposed to look at?'

Interactive installation, Royal College of Art, 2018

VAN MIERIS

 

This performance in Paleis Van Mieris in Amsterdam is based on the interaction with the space and acoustics of the building. I play twice a cello improvisation at location and overlap the replay of the first recording as being played back in delay by the building. For this I used PZM microphones to record the acoustics of the space.

 

With this video I try to find a balance between sound and image, paying attention not to emphasize on either one. When the viewer starts to get focussed on the visual part, the 'action', the performers step out of the screen, shifting the concentration to the empty hall and finally I blacken out the image entirely in order to shift to the sonic part completely.

Performance, June, 2015

THE WALL

 

Installation 'the Wall' was made for my graduation in 2015 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. It consists of

a construction of 4 acoustic panels who mimic live with a machinic breath, a composition actually, made with 45 different pipes and ventilators.

The created sounds are 'ventilated' around the participant in the centre of the construction by quadraphony.

 

When listening to these sounds we start slowly to adapt our own pace of breathing to the meditative hypnotic suggestion and synchronize with the machine. Unconsciously and even unwillingly: the machine influences and takes over on the humans most elementary level: his respiration.

 Installation, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, 2015

Soundsculpture, Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, July, 2015

PERFORMANCE AT TNT

 

This video is a registration of a live concert at TNT building in Amsterdam, may 2014, for the celebration of Rietveld's 10 years DOGtime. Together with Robin Koek, we integrate the sound of home made instruments, cello improvisation, field recordings and live electronic improvisations.

Live performance, TNT building, Amsterdam, 2014