s1156008 12 Hour Noise JDA Winslow

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The broadcast starts at 7.49pm BST 15 October. The opening shot is of me and Chris standing by the screen making noise with the tabs of our beer cans. Behind us are: 1. Keyboards (two) 2. Amplifiers (four, of varying sizes) 3. Contact Microphones (two, one made by me, one bought by Chris) 4. Hydrophone (made by me) 5. Electric Guitar 6. Effects Pedal 7. Sequencer The aim was to make noise from 8pm to 8am. We had made the decision to do this piece after spending time playing with two of the amplifiers, the sequencer, the effects pedal and the guitar. We recorded the composition we made at that time. The recording was around 150 minutes. The recording stopped when the laptop we were recording onto ran out of battery. After this we both agreed that we had enjoyed making noise. We discussed the possibility of making noise for a long period of time. I think our hope was that the longer we made noise the more we would deviate from our normal understanding of sound. 12 Hour Noise was based around our interaction with a number of objects in the room. The idea was a midway point between Bruce Naumanns 1966 work Manipulating The T-Bar and Douglas Gordons 24 Hour Psycho (1993). The link to 24 Hour Psycho is mostly durational- the title certainly drew from it, the promise of a long period of time seemed important. The link to Manipulating The T-Bar comes in that the basic premise for both pieces is the exploration of a defined space using a set number of objects.

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...to create an alternative economy of images, an imperfect cinema existing inside as well as beyond and under commercial media streams. Hito Steyerl (2009)
The piece developed in two stages, the initial stage being the decision to make noise and the next stage being the decision around what we should do as we were making noise. The improvisational nature of the piece made it seem natural to broadcast, rather than record, it. Having a live audience present in the room for twelve hours would have been difficult, especially as we did not obtain any sort of permission for the performance. We decided to livestream the event from a laptop. The event would be free to watch and would not be heavily promoted until the event itself started. On the afternoon before the event we put up some posters and created a facebook event. Livestreaming meant there would still be an audience but they would not be obliged to stay within the physical space for the duration of the piece. We were doing something that was outside mainstream media. We were doing something that was outside the gallery. The highest number of viewers we had at any point was 8. The lowest number was 2. I am writing this maybe a month after it was broadcast. The spreecast has been viewed 1077 times. I think I felt no real pressure to perform, as if I was just warming up. The first couple of hours were mostly just about adapting to the environment we had created.

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art assumes a parasitic character. Inasmuch as it now appears itself as reality Adorno (p65, 1991)
The form the piece took was defined by Spreecast. We did not produce video art or noise art but spreecast art. We did not produce spreecast art. We produced a spreecast. The need to broadcast it was defined by the internet, was defined by the opportunity to broadcast it. It is difficult to say how much of this came about as a conscious choice. The method of broadcasting was determined by what was available. Spreecast is interesting in that it creates a new form of culture. A spreecast is not solely a livestream, text and the possibility of any viewer broadcasting means it creates a new, unique form of culture. Increasingly we are able to create culture in whatever form we want, for example a spreecast or a youtube video or a photo on facebook or a blog on either wordpress or tumblr or blogspot or to express things succinctly in one hundred and forty characters using twitter. Twitter contains information I will find useful. There is so much internet. I am trying to find myself. I use google. There I am. Panic Over, Calm Down. I am mildly famous on the internet (I know because I have written it in the about section of my facebook profile). Everyone can make culture. Everyone is making culture. I am making 12 Hours of Culture. Stop it! I am drowning in culture :(.

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...understanding its elements in their specificity without making formal hierarchies over whether one sound is more valuable than another, knowing that we are always going to miss something, makes demands upon us to be as perceptive as possible. Mattin Noise Vs Conceptual Art (n.d.)
It is important to note that 12 Hour Noise was not just about the sound. Around 3 hours in Chris pulled in an overhead projector from the corridor. We switched off the rest of the lights. For me this was crucial, the dramatic lighting made the whole thing feel more theatrical as well as lending it a visual edge. The piece was not broadcast in a clean way. Outside interference was welcomed. Viewers could talk to each other using the chat function. People could also join the broadcast using their webcam. There is a clear visual split within the format between video and text. Text dominates around 50% of the viewing area. The screen showing the room within which we were performing is relatively small. This was maybe the appeal of noise, the spreecast felt like shouting in a room where everyone was shouting. The audience was generating noise. It felt fitting that people were probably not concentrating on the spreecast, that even if they were the spreecast was not just us. Creating a studio quality recording of the piece would have gone against what we were trying to achieve. Any attempt at complexity, at making one sound more precious that another, was lost through the transmission of the piece.

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Noise exacerbates the rift between knowing and feeling by splitting experience, forcing conception against sensation. Ray Brassier, Against an Aesthetics of Noise (2009)
12 Hour Noise was intended to move beyond context, to produce noise that could not be known but only felt. There is still a sense of order at this point, the sound of a phone ringing is repeated, existing as a constant within a fluctuating sea of noise. There was a definite sensation of no longer knowing what to do but rather responding intuitively, of overriding peoples normal contextual knowledge, of trying to create something people would struggle to place within a predefined cognitive framework. Looking back there is a definite sense of a disparity between what we were transmitting and what other people were viewing. There was a fairly long period of time when someone else was on webcam transmitting from their flat. It seems like there are three states in which the piece exists. The first is the piece as it exists to me and Chris, as the actuality of generating the noise. The second is that of the viewers who participated in the spreecast, who generated additional noise. The third is the state in which the piece now exists, as an online document (including all participants input). Personally, the state in which the piece most completely overrode normal contextual knowledge is the first. If a performance artist falls in the forest and no one is around to provide critical feedback do they make art?

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"...that critique is a trap since it also affirms what it criticizes and does not propose a solution to the problem." Tino Seghal (2008, quoted by Mcgarry, 2010)
I cannot talk about 12 Hour Noise. I can only talk about the spreecast. The action itself is... If I could have said what I wanted to say in a way more direct I would have. Art is not about logic. Art is about existing. Existing is something I will be doing all my life. Existing goes on for the longest time I am capable of experiencing. Sometimes it seems hard to exist because there are a lot of things happening. Earlier on in the night I remember jumping up and down. It seems unlikely this will happen again. I check the screen. We are halfway through. There are six viewers. One is broadcasting from his flat. He is sitting wearing a mask. His window is open. Shortly after I check my laptop the on screen viewer begins to loudly play music. When I watch the spreecast this means the noise me and Chris is making is obscured/mixed/competing with a song that was number one for five weeks. Five weeks is a long time. Imagine the same thing happening for five weeks. Imagine shitting every single day for five weeks. Existing is something that I will be doing all my life and sometimes it will be easy and sometimes I will be in a dark noisy room.

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A guy is on the radio talking about the war. Speculating. Speculating. Speculating. He says in less than two hours, we shall fight to preserve freedom. Freedom. America wants to give another country freedom. That doesn't sound that bad, or does it. Noah Cicero, The Human War (2003, p12-13)
Im not indignant about speaking for others but I am uncertain. I struggle to believe in events that I do not physically perceive. In a film they always seem to be showing on television everybody is very worried because all the numbers some people have made up have become in charge. I dont know why the people dont just make up some more numbers. Some of the numbers are pieces of number printed on paper. These numbers are promises. The more promises there are the less the promises actually mean. The promises all mean different things in different places, like if you are on an island or if you cross an imaginary line on the ground that most people agree exists because people are very worried about other people always so sometimes they say things like everyone on this side of the line is my friend and everyone else isnt. This is approximately how I am thinking at this point. I eat some food but I am not hungry. The coffee is making me feel sick. I have a hangover from the beer I drank at the start of the performance. The only thing I am sure about is that it is very noisy.

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They said things like, What does it even matter. I might not even be myself. Then they threw themselves off a bridge, or else drank a quart of ice coffee and watched Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom Tao Lin, Bed (2007, p238)
I am making noise come watch me. I will not write an essay about noise. This is not an essay this is a story about two people in a room who cannot see a lot of other people but are trying to communicate to them by using the internet. I am making noise come watch me. I will not write an essay about noise. This is not an essay this is a story about two people in a room who cannot hear each other speak directly but instead communicate by waving and hitting things and nodding and smiling. This is a story about one person who thinks he was in a room with another person and he is trying to communicate with the other person by hitting things and making noise and, as the night progresses, it seems increasingly unlikely that anything is real. No one can see all the other people on the internet. Everyone is trying to communicate to all the other people on the internet. Sometimes people are doing this using culture. What even is culture? I dont know. Please everyone stop making culture. One day of the year should be declared as a culture free day. There is no culture there is only noise. There is no art there is only noise. There are no other people there is only noise.

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...in the early days it became clear to us that if you feel the need to yak on about something (specifically, art) then odds are you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Introduction, protocols & operations, Pere Ubu (n.d.)
At around 4am a man entered the room. He had a clipboard and was wearing clothes which had the logo for the entity which owned the room we were in. He asked me to sign something. I felt suspicious of him. He wanted me to write my name down. I was worried we were going to get in trouble. I made marks with the pen on the piece of paper on the clipboard. I do not know if the marks were legible. I think maybe I deliberately made non-legible marks. The man says something like: Hell of a racket Yeh Whats it for? I dont know. Weve been doing it since eight Haha Were going to be doing it until eight this morning Why? I dont know. I think its art Haha. Good luck. I had drunk a lot of coffee. I had put whisky in the coffee. We had agreed we shouldnt get too drunk. By 4am there was a definite sensation that we had peaked. Making noise had become difficult. In some ways maybe this was the point at which the noise became noise in the purest sense, in that we were too exhausted to function cognitively. I remember trying to come up with the most efficient way to generate noise.

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...we have come to believe that our own bodies and minds are the fixed center for our understanding of the world... from Filling The Void: The Infrasound Series, Scott Arford and Randy Yau. (p204, Site of Sound #2 2011)
It felt like we had passed a threshold, that we had as Arford and Yau would say collapsed the void, moving beyond verbal communication. There was no sensation of being connected to the viewers through anything other than noise, than the assurance that there was still noise, that all our cognitive presets had been overridden, overwhelmed, by noise, by continual noise. There was no longer any sense of order in what me and Chris were doing, we were both sitting at our own separate noise generators. It is not going to be possible to continue making noise I thought sometime after 5am. It was possible to generate noise without continual input. For a while I had just been sitting at one of the keyboards (the one I had earlier spilt beer over). I was slightly changing the drum loop that was playing by pushing the four sliders up and down using one finger held horizontally across all the sliders. I felt unable to look at Chris. I remember thinking repeatedly do not do anything strange, do not do anything strange. The noise progressively tailed off. I removed my ear plugs. I felt naked. Me and Chris had a brief conversation. We agreed to switch the projector off and lie down, leaving on a simple beat on one of the keyboards.

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Anxiety is part of the new connectivity Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (2011, p242)
It was very cold. I think this period of lying down in the dark lasted for around an hour. It was very cold. We were still broadcasting. I covered myself with my jacket. It felt like I had transcended the desire to perform, the desire for attention. The floor was very hard. I am unsure if I slept. There were two small green lights, one indicating that my laptops webcam was on, the other that it was charged. Other than this the room was dark. This period on the floor was the longest I went without checking the spreecast, without promoting the performance via twitter or facebook. I didnt care anymore. Neither of us cared anymore. There was still noise. The beat of the keyboard meant I couldnt sleep but instead descended into a calm state of rest. I was thinking about what the most valuable thing in the world is. In another performance piece the four of us agree to be quiet. When it gets dark the first asks if they can switch on the lights. The second asks why the first is talking. The third tells them both that they are stupid. I am the fourth. I am very pleased with myself. I am the only one who has not talked I tell them. None of us cared anymore. The floor is hard. The air is cold. The electronic noise repeats in the background, like each cycle of the beat is a small extra dimension.

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So what? Anthony Schrag (lecture, 15 November 2012)
The room is light now and the sun is up. I feel very ill. I am hungover and tired and cold and caffeinated and my back hurts from lying down on the floor. I switch the keyboard off. I check the spreecast. There are still people watching. I dont know why. I walk around the room picking up remnants from the food we had eaten. I take the rubbish next door. I look at the spreecast again. People are complaining about the fact it is quiet. Quiet noise I think. I unplug the amplifiers and coil up the cables. The two smaller amps are identical and have no backs. I put the cables in the back so they nestle below the speaker cone. The larger amp has an area which I think is where the cable is supposed to go. Chris unplugs the projector and wheels it back out into the corridor. Yalright?

Yeh. You? Yeh. I go downstairs and put all the equipment that is mine in my locker. I go back to the room and sit by the window. At the time I remember the room as being very bright and empty and light. On the spreecast the sky looks purple. I walk over to the screen and look at it. The sound of typing and speaking is very loud: How longs left like? euh its like two more minutes Me and Chris both stand and look at the laptop for the last minute.

List of References Adorno, T (1991) The Culture Industry. New York, Routledge. Arford, S and Yau, R (2011) Filling the Void: The Infrasound Series.In: Labelle, B and Martinho, C .ed. Site of Sound #2: Of Architecture and the Ear. Berlin, Errant Bodies Press. Brassier, R. and Ieven, B (2009) Against an Aesthetics of Noise. [internet], Available from: <http://www.ny-web.be/transitzone/against-aesthetics-noise.html> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Cicero, N (2003) The Human War. New York, Fugue State Press. Gordon, D. (1993) 24 Hour Psycho [Video]. Lin, T (2007) Bed. New York, Melville House Publishing Mattin. (n.d.) NOISE VS CONCEPTUAL ART. [internet], Available from: <http://www.mattin.org/ essays/14-Mattin-Noise_vs_Conceptual_Art_fin.html> [Accessed: 26 November 2012].

McGarry, K (2010) Koons and Joannou: The Pre-Show Figures. Art In America [internet], 16 February. Available from: <http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/the-scene/ 2010-02-16/dakis-joannou-new-museum-skin-fruit-jeff-koons> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Naumann, B. (1966) Manipulating The T Bar [Video]. Available from:<http://www.ubu.com/ film/nauman_t.html> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Pere Ubu (n.d.) Protocols and Operations [internet]. Available from <http://ubuprojex.net/ protocols.html> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Steyerl, H. (2009) In Defense of the Poor Image. e-flux journal [internet], 10. Available from:<http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Turkle, S (2011) Alone Together. Perseus Books, New York

Image Sources Naumann, B. (1966) Manipulating The T Bar [Video]. Available from:<http://www.ubu.com/ film/nauman_t.html> Screen capture of facebook event. (2012) [Online image]. Available from: <http:// www.facebook.com/events/163591993780953/> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Screen capture of facebook profile (2012) [Online image]. Available from: <http:// www.facebook.com/thejdawinslow/info> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Screen capture of twitter (2012) [Online image]. Available from: <https://support.twitter.com/ groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/104-welcome-to-twitter-support/articles/215585-twitter-101-howshould-i-get-started-using-twitter> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Winslow, J. (2012) Screenshot of my web browser at an arbitrary point in time[Digital Image]. Private collection. Winslow, J. (2012) Screenshot of 12 Hour Noise at an arbitrary point in time[Digital Image]. Private collection.

Winslow, J. (2012) Another Screenshot of 12 Hour Noise at an arbitrary point in time[Digital Image]. Private collection. Tree Falling (2012) [online image] Available from: <http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wlj9fvalbfw/TpFiZtIhrI/AAAAAAAAEps/ay1_lkTeTdM/s1600/falling_tree.jpg> [Accessed: 26 November 2012]. Drew, R. (2001) Falling Man [Photographic Series] Winslow, J. (2012) Screenshots of a music video [2 Digital Images]. Private collection. Winslow, J. (2012) Screenshots of a bad place to live [4 Digital Images]. Private collection. Winslow, J. (2012) Is image referencing still viable in a digital age well idgaf [2 Digital Images]. Private collection. Winslow, J. (2012) idk [Digital Image]. Private collection.