l
s

helium-filled VEE
balloons & hexagrams
monitor winds, ambience / Sonia Sheridan's 1960s Generative Systems
/ Giant IVORIES / free
radio blimp radio / laser drawings on cloud bottoms / 2007
leif BRUSH
2, 3
compliations
5
Out To
The Stars, Into The Heart Kosmophone
& Terrain Instruments
email
MFA concepts,
projects & soundworks, School of the Art
Institute, Chicago, 1970 - 1972
Sound Course: Audible Constructs,(networking annoncement,
article, syllabus)
1970-72syllabus
Audible Constructs poster
SAIC
roof,
Chicago
John Smead, Les Doyle, Leif Brush,
Dennis Kugler, Ed Heffernan and Seton Coggeshall were on the SAIC
roof.
Vee
balloons carried FM transmitters aloft while FM receivers below
listened to the various sound layerings. This SAIC building was centrally
located between Lake Michigan and the two mile long building facades
lining Michigan Avenue. Orchestra Hall was diagonally across from
The Art Institute main building's lion pair.




An
interactive dance by Goodman Theatre students preceeded the launch
of helium-filled balloons carrying an altered load: the pop painting
had to be reduced considerably for it to lift away. Permission
was given from O'Hare Airport officials during this late morning
time. It was expected to head out over Lake Michigan, it did,
and was later recovered in South Dakota.
Second story roof is left below: (photo
looks east: the tip of one tower is seen on the lower roof)
Here these roof configurations,
as depicted in the r. drawing, employ galvanized steel strands,
windmonitors and windslicers which serve as combined triangular
and rectalinear sensing planes. As sounding inputs, all arrays
intercept blustery winds from Lake Michigan. These meandered,
often times rebounded from nearby Loop buildings, served as sound
sources to the Arp synthesizer, student ears and cassette/reel-to-reel
recordings, and input for Greedy Suckers band responses. 


Horizontal galvanized
steel strands of the sensed wind monitor covered the E-W length
of this upper roof (left) where its top faces East; skematic context
of SAIC roof (right, shows windslicers (bottom) and 1/2 hexagram:
a guyed rectangle from three roof towers d_c xN. xS.E..
galvanized 22 gauge steel
wire being used here as microphone (and input to Greedy Sucker's
ARP sythesizer, JPG, 2)
in SAIC McCormick Room 201 below
Leif Brush
(r) on SAIC roof with Tom Pritchard and shows the East-West strandage
details of the main monitoring wind plane installation: Hexagram.
16,18 & 20 gauge steel strands were used togethers with a
combination of crystal, magnetic transducers. Giving the Chicago
weather forecast for sailing on nearby Lake Michigan. Pictured:
that first 22 gauge wire you see was literally in LB's mouth as
these wires were all sensitive as any ribbon
microphone 2!
Overall the sound resulting was as if you were in a blackwhole,
where there are no acoustic walls. The spatial sounding results
were deeply moving when listened to via these headphones. Tom
talked along with LB but he was not close enought to the wires
for me to hear him.. Interestingly, an airplanes higher pitch
overhead was audible in the 'phones as were flys buzzing across
across and direct hits by other insects impacting these strands.
return
to data poetry same as 2007
roof top recording
Have a listen says Ed
Ed Heffernan (left) alerts the class that there's a
storm blowing from Lake Michigan toward the buildings lining Michigan
Avenue, richocheting above the SAIC roof and into the Hexagram
configurations.
Part of this is the combination of wires that cross
another portion of the same roof, and it is these collisions which
are being monitored in Room 201 below. This storminess above hgasand
the windslicers going out of control and setting up deafening
spikes on the community headphones.
John O'Buck Leif
Brush Matthew Kolasinski (wireless mic); reel-to-reel
4 track TEAC, console & amplifier;
INPUT SOURCES: roof HEXAGRAM and WINDSLICERS, FM
balloons aloft,
Greedy Suckers, ARP synthisizer, FM two-way balloon sound-bounced
relays
i
Audible Constructs Room 201 (drawing
picts of roof windslicers, etc)


Sonia
Landy Sheridan
2
Sonia jpg
from Google (Type
under search - sonia sheridan, sonia landy sheridan and/or jamy
sheridan )
John Dunn Gallery
Sonia and Leif in Wilmette basement comparing
print results
to
I shared Sonia's personal energy, inovation, telepathy
and technologies.
light
performance
Multi-colored laser sky
drawing concepts were executed in this lithograph where the spelling
of nasturtium on low cloud bottoms was to be combined and interspersed
with repetitive bursts of laser beams.

Conceptual drawing: anticipating audio/imaging sonogram
The lower surface
of the cloud base would be sequentially video scanned in red,
blue and green modulated audio&video lasers. Ground based
retro reflectors would collate, multiplex the composite, execute
a microwave satellite uplinking and demuxed in realtime via video/audio
synthesizer.
Giant IVORIES on
the Chicago River carried the Greedy Suckers band- who
made themselves available to Audible Constructs class students.
The G S FM radio transmitters broadcast ARP synth,w/their sound
to radios lining the shore walkways (of the sometimes dirtied
Chicago River).

BARBARA
CRANE "Chicago Loop" silver print, 1976
Chicago river, 1971

Eventually scheduled
to arrive near the North Pole, a pneumatic hexagram hovers over
the Chicago Loop recording layers of ambient sounds during early
morning before rush hour. Mayor Richard J. Daley 1 complains to
SAIC Dean Roger Gilmore: "...it was just too darn close to
the Bertrand Goldberg Towers (below in upper left image and in
Barbara Crane's right photograph)." IVORY
soap pollution is minimal and eventually reaches Lake Michigan
& most other P&G products are not as "pure"
BLIMP
R A D I O CHICAGO 1999
What is the BlimpRadio Network?
Blimp Radio is a psychedelic ride aboard the dirigible
blimp
"Freedom". We fly high above the city of Chicago irradiating
the
minds of those below with sights and sounds of Freedom. The crew
aboard the dirigible blimp Freedom utilize technology beyond the
means of our comprehension to beam this irradiation to people
in
Chicago, and to those around the world. This show features a
stream of unconscious flow that defies catagorization or
description. Join us every Thursday at 8pm CST.
Free Radio SAIC,
Chicago
2000
continues