Soundscapes: Atlantikwall

Sounds of World War II Bunkers by Nick Sowers

Athanasius Kircher SJ - 'Musurgia Universalis', 1650.

Online at the University of Strasbourg


"Kircher's best-remembered work is also his second largest. Musurgia Universalis is an exhaustive compendium of musical knowledge at the transition point between sacred renaissance polyphony and secular Baroque music. Much of Musurgia is dedicated to a survey of contemporary music, including the first published mention of the baroque 'doctrine of the affections' in which music is ideally analogous to human emotions. Many surviving compositions by Frescobaldi, Froberger and other baroque masters are due to Kircher's extensive transcriptions and reproductions of scores in Musurgia. Kircher speculates on the music of early cultures and reproduces a melody he claimed to have seen on a manuscript in Sicily dating back to ancient Greece, making it (if authentic) the oldest surviving example of musical notation. A large part of the book is devoted to the history of instrumentation, including the anatomy of voice and hearing, and an extensive theory on acoustics entitled 'Magia Phonocamptica, sive de Echo', in which he described sound as 'the ape of light'.

FUTURISM & DADA REVIEWED 1912-1959

LTM Recordings

Our CD anthologies Futurism & Dada Reviewed and Voices of Dada feature historic archive spoken word recordings by key Dada artists as well as a small number of more recent recordings, and are widely acknowledged as definitive. The Festival Dada Paris CD features unique recordings of music perfomed at key Dada events in Paris between 1920 and 1923. All CDs are mastered and packaged to a high standard, with booklets containing archive images and detailed historical notes.

Intonarumori

Here is a brief video showing an instument originally designed by Luigi Russolo called the Intonarumori which has been re-created by Nicolas Bernier creating some fantastic sounds.

nicolas bernier | boîte. | excerpt from Nicolas Bernier on Vimeo.

Martin Messier + Nicolas Bernier | La chambre des machines from Nicolas Bernier on Vimeo.

Here are some very professionaly made intonarumori by Wexel:

Old Videos of Kelvingrove Bandstand

Footage from SCRAN



Edited video from youtube

Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901

Jesse Owen

In 1936 Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler was using the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. He and other government officials had high hopes German athletes would dominate the games with victories (the German athletes did indeed achieve a top of the table medal haul). Meanwhile, Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of "Aryan racial superiority" and depicted ethnic Africans as inferior. Owens surprised many by winning four gold medals and consequently shattered Hitler's preached values.


This goes to show that some of the most successful methods of breaching oppressive regimes have been through actions rather than words, as is the case with the black liberation movement of Jazz.


It may have been possible for Hitler to limit black people's rights but as is clearly demonstrated here, no matter how many material possessions you might take away, it is not possible to extract a persons skills or memories which are some of the most powerful and invisible weapons of them all.

John Heartfield

John Heartfield was a pioneer of modern photomontage. Working in Germany and Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, he developed a unique method of appropriating and reusing photographs to powerful political effect.

Heartfield devised photo-based symbols for the Communist Party of Germany, allowing the organization to compete with the Nazis' swastika. His images of clenched fists, open palms, and raised arms all implied bold action and determination. In the image above, a disembodied fist becomes a radio antenna for a Communist-affiliated station in Czechoslovakia that broadcast into Fascist Germany.

'The Voice of Freedom'
in the German Night on Radio Wave 29.8, (1937)

Heartfield unleashed his sharpest satire on Hitler's Führerkult (cult of the leader), the basis of German Fascism. These montages parody Hitler's most iconic poses, gestures, and symbols to create the impression that one need only to scratch the thin surface of Fascist propaganda to uncover its absurd reality.

Adolf, the Superman, Swallows Gold and Spouts Tin -
(AIZ (July 17, 1932), vol. 11, no. 29, p. 675)

In this cover for the AIZ, Heartfield used a difference in scale to dramatize Hitler's relationship to Germany's wealthy and financially supportive industrialists. The leader is seen as a puppet whose now-infamous gesture reads as the acceptance of monetary influence.

The Meaning of the Hitler Salute, Little Man Asks for Big Gifts -
(AIZ (October 16, 1932), vol. 11, no. 42, front cover)

Cabaret Voltaire & DADA

Cabaret Voltaire was the name of a nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland. It was founded by Hugo Ball, with his companion Emmy Hennings on February 5, 1916 as a cabaret for artistic and political purposes.

The cabaret featured spoken word, dance and music. The soirees were often raucous events with artists experimenting with new forms of performance, such as sound poetry and simultaneous poetry. Mirroring the maelstrom of World War I raging around it, the art it exhibited was often chaotic and brutal. On at least one occasion, the audience attacked the Cabaret's stage. Though the Cabaret was to be the birthplace of the Dadaist movement, it featured artists from every sector of the avant-garde, including Futurism's Marinetti. The Cabaret exhibited radically experimental artists, many of whom went on to change the face of their artistic disciplines; featured artists included Kandinsky, Paul Klee, de Chirico and Max Ernst.

Dada Manifesto (1916, Hugo Ball)
Read at the first public DADA soiree, Zurich, July 14th (1916)

Myths, Heroes & Legends

The term "myth" refers to a story that attempts in more or less symbolic form to explain the mystery of the origins of the cosmos, the earth, and humanity; the theme of life and death; and the causes and meanings of natural phenomena. All of these have bewildered humanity since ancient times. Humankind uses myth as an attempt to express its relation to nature.

Originally, these stories were passed down orally from one generation to the next and, over a span of several centuries, underwent many changes. The ancient world attributed the Iliad and the Odyssey—two epics considered the earliest and greatest works of Greek literature—to Homer. Homer is believed to have been the first poet to record these myths into written form, in approximately the eighth century B.C., thereby preserving them for future generations.

Many generations and peoples after Homer have continued to look at these stories because they address issues common to humanity. These tales were told to explain the surrounding world, human behavior, and problems common to all societies. In addition to explaining natural and religious origins, myths also provided humans with a history of their people and their neighbors. For the Greeks, myths shed light on aspects of their lives and how they had become who they were.

The materials in this curriculum focus on Greco-Roman mythology in antiquity and its significance for later Western art and culture. There was a fundamental difference in attitudes toward mythology during these two periods. Whereas in antiquity mythology was inextricably linked with religion and daily life, in post-antiquity, mythology primarily became a source of inspiration for a variety of themes in art and literature. The diversity and universality of these themes, combined with the inexhaustible metaphorical possibilities of the ancient myths, ensure the survival of mythology in Western art up to the present day.

The Abduction of Europa

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, 1632

Heroes

The idea of the hero was perfected in ancient Greece. For the Greeks, heroes existed on a cosmological level between humans and gods. According to the poet Hesiod, heroes were a godlike race of humans who had lived in a previous age. Although they themselves were mortal, the heroes attracted the attention, and often the protection of, the immortals. In another tradition, heroes emerged when gods and men were still living together as a generation of children of half-mortal, half-divine parentage

In their strength, their passions, and their achievements, the heroes far surpassed ordinary humans. All heroes are nevertheless mortal and in time confront their mortality. Yet even in death a hero may surpass ordinary peoples, for the glorious deeds that have brought him to his death may also bring him everlasting renown. Some, like the great hero Herakles (whom the Romans called Hercules), actually became gods after death. In ancient Greece, heroes had religious cults associated with them and were able to intervene in human affairs, possessing a status similar to that of saints in Christianity. Over the centuries, the definition of a hero broadened to include any human who displayed great strength and courage.

Statue of Hercules (Lansdowne Herakles)

Roman, about A.D. 125

Gods
Gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome have provided the subject matter for much of Western art. For the Greeks, there were 12 main deities (all related to one another) who lived on Mount Olympus, where they observed the progress of mortals. Aside from these major gods, the universe was filled with innumerable minor deities. The Romans, in turn, merged many of their native gods with those of the Greeks.

Since antiquity, stories of the ancient gods and goddesses, such as Zeus, Aphrodite, and her son Eros, continued to be depicted, even while they had lost their religious significance. In the Renaissance, a classical education was required of all learned gentlemen; knowledge of Greece and Rome demonstrated one's knowledge, taste, and status. A universal language of images was reborn, but often with new allegorical and intellectual meanings.

Minerva
Joseph Nollekens, 1775