Summa: diary (September 21-27, 2024)
The blog is my response to a question no one has ever asked me.
September 21 (Saturday). 6.00 am. ‘Don’t look down’, she sang.
7,30 am: Proof of presence.
3.30 pm: A friend from Japan arrived by train. I’d first met her when she was a visiting student some years ago. We reunited in Tokyo last March. While she’d studied in Aberystwyth for only a month previously, it became her ‘spiritual home’ and I, her second father. In between sunshine and spasms of rain, and under umbrellas, we toured the castle and Promenade. In the background, cars filled with freshers ready to begin a new chapter in their lives, and stacked high with suitcases, coffee mugs, potted plants, and duvets, slowly snaked their way into town. In my day, there would also be a sizable boombox or hi fi among the belongings. Today, most students transport their music in their pockets. The new academic year had begun.
September 23 (Sunday). Equinox. 10.00 am: Before the predicted deluge, we travelled to the Bwlch Nant yr Arian Vistor Centre, kite center. Few others had risked the weather. Not a kite in sight. Twice a day the centre’s staff throw off-cuts of meat from the local butchers into the air to feed the birds. Quite a sight.
On to the Nant-y-Moch Reservoir, site of the largest hydro-electric scheme in Wales. On an overcast day like today, the landscape has a gently forbidding character reminiscent of the Scottish Lowland.
After lunch, my friend and I ascended Constitution Hill on the Cliff Railway. It’s Freshers’ Sunday. On this day, 42 years ago, I first arrived in Aberystwyth in readiness for my MA Visual Art studies at the, then, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. At the summit, freshers and their families took selfies against views of the sea, town, cafe, railway, and camera obscura. These photographs will be their embodied memories, when they look back at this day in four decades’ time.
September 23 (Monday). 7.30 am: Writing. On with the ‘small-rig’ and strand 2. This strand can accommodate up to four inputs. Presesently, four Skychord synth oscillators are being tested. I’d purchased these about a decade ago. Post-pandemic, the company doesn’t appear to be in business any longer. Neither does my trusted (if expensive) cable supplier, AwardSession. Post-Brexit, they could no longer source and import parts from Europe easily and cost-effectively.
2.00 am: In order to constrain the extent of the ‘small-rig’, a small substrate — upon which to arrange the effectors — was brought into play. This pedal-board frame was my ‘canvas’, in this respect. Notionally, several such ‘canvases’ (each independent of the others, and assigned to a specific strand, and having a distinct character) may make up the ‘small-rig’. The ‘canvases’ interact only when they meet together in the sound mixer. Thus conceived, the ‘small-rig’ is a modular system. The larger rig had no delimiting edges at the outset, which is why it grew and grew; it found its boundary in the process of being constructed. Jackson Pollock painted in this manner: he worked from the center of the canvas outward towards the edges, and only afterwards — when the picture was resolved — defined the shape and size of the frame.
September 24 (Tuesday). The ‘small-rig’: strand 2. Tested/passed.
Back to strand 1, to ‘nail down’ the effectors and test the whole. Tested/passed. 12.00 pm: On, then, to rationalising the mixer’s integrated external-loop facility. (This allows a single and a cluster of effectors to be either inserted or excluded without interrupting the signal chain.)
For this set-up, I’m using an Allen & Heath Xone:23C. 12.30 pm: Sourcing. ‘You can only spend your money once, John!’, my inner-financier reminded me. Stereophony can be an expensive curse. In any loop system, the ‘send’ channel must begin in stereo and the ‘receive’ channel must end in stereo. Which means that mono effectors have to be duplicated: one for the left side, and one for the right side, of the stereo signal. In this case, the external loop (strand 3) requires two mono equalizing pedals running in parallel. Thus the ‘small rig’ comprises three independent but linkable pedalboards, a mixer, a turntable, and a cassette player. Small and portable. The challenge that I’d set myself had been met.
6.00 pm: My Japanese visitor cooked a vegetarian ramen. This, and her tomato curry last night, made me nostalgic for her homeland, where my elder son is presently and I visited in March this year.
September 25 (Wednesday). 6.00 am: Writing. The fundamentals. What we crave. What are requisite for joy and happiness. What we wish to give with the same intensity as we receive. What, in their absence, callouses the heart, darkens the soul, deforms the conscience, and makes the cautious reckless.
8.30 am: Studiology. Mapping the scheme of the three strands. Nothing is settled until the ‘small-rig’ in its entirety is put through its paces. ‘What can go wrong?’ It’s astonishing what can (or appear) to go wrong, and what can perplex without measure. Testing and trialling continued throughout the morning and afternoon. Conceiving and assembling both the larger and small rigs has taken far longer than anticipated. However, it has taken two attempts to solve the same problem. The first failed but, in so doing, opened up possibilities that would not have been considered had I succeeded. Sometimes a project takes you where you hadn’t planned to go. But it’s where you needed to go. While the second was a success, I still want to reduce the rig further. In my mind’s eye, it should somehow all fit into a small suitcase or briefcase — like the type that spies used in the Second World War. Perhaps I should begin with the container, as I did with the pedal-board ‘canvases’.
September 26 (Thursday). 6.30 am: Correspondence and writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. On the learning curve. On the diagnostic chicane. On the remedial straight. 11.00 am: I said goodbye to my Japanese friend. This is the faded Metropolitan Museum of Art mug she adopted throughout her stay. Henceforth, it’ll always be associated with her.
11.45 am: ‘Back to it, lad!’ Power cable rationalisation and pedalboard finalisation. Trussing and securing.
7.30 pm: Eventide, looking Northwest.
September 27 (Friday). 8.15 am: When a pre-teen, I made imitation control panels out of white shoeboxes. They were inspired by the flashing, purring, and switch-bedecked arrays seen in British and American and sci-fi series, such as Dr Who (1963), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964), Star Trek (1966), and The Time Tunnel (1966). On the face of mine were many calibrated knobs and sliders, and dials with needles; these were either drawn with coloured felt-tip pens or cut out from card, and fixed with split-pin paper fasteners. To which were added toggled lights, made from torch [flashlight] bulbs painted in different transparent colours and powered by an Eveready PP3 battery. The components were bought from C Marks & Co, Newport, Gwent. A decade later, when I was an art student in that town during the late 1970s, I purchased disused circuit boards from the shop to serve as still lifes.
This was a toy of my own making — a fantasy box that enabled me to control nothing in the real world but everything in my imagination. None of the boxes lasted very long. All were taken to a hillside and set on fire. An act of ceremonial purgation, perhaps. I strongly suspect that my pedalboard and rig building since 2009 is rooted in this primal motive. Perhaps I’m now searching for a shoebox of sound. A musical box.
9.00 am: Studiology. Exploring ergonomics. Nothing is settled until the rig is put to use. Indeed, every decision I’ve made in relation to the ‘small-rig’ is conjectural until put into practice. The rig has potential (that’s to say, a power); the sounds have presence and vitality; and the whole is controllable and comfortable to operate. I need, now, to explore the sound-generating components one by one.
1.45 pm: I began with the suite of Skychord oscillators. This is the first time I’ve introduced these devices into a rig since the Live Art: dialogues workshop in 2011. This was a collaborative exploration of possible interactions between drawing and sound, acoustics and electronics, undertaken by Adam Blackburn (one of my PhD Fine Art tutees) and myself, recorded live in the School of Art’s Project Room. A little tidying away in the background.
See also: Intersections (archive); Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Facebook: The Noises of Art; X; Instagram; Archive of Visual Practice