Membrane Window Mirror

How does the observer take part in what she observes? At what distance
does observation take place? How much of what might be observed lies
outside of our sensory capabilities? How does the observed observe us?
Perhaps we can learn, as Oswald Egger writes, to observe the obverse.

The conditions of observation, like those of consciousness itself remain

unclear. We move in a fog of uncertain proportions in a reality we hardly
grasp. The only clarity we succeed in finding is that which we create by
deliberately limiting our view or our point-of-view. Occasionally it happens
to us that we find a moment of relatively uncluttered observation, and for a

period the fog clears.

Observation is Toshiya Tsunodas word for listening, and that shade of

difference between the two words (observation/listening) is important.
Observation carries an echo of object and objectivity. It places itself
Observation carries an echo of object and objectivity. It places itself
between object and subject, in a continuum where the fog of our senses
operates.

Tsunodas work over the past 20 years explores the complexity of this
continuum in a dense variety of radical and often quite beautiful ways.

(1)

The microphone is a membrane.

The medium of sound recording can be viewed as a mediator. It is a flexible

place between subject and object, like the membrane on the outer wall of a
cell. It transfers vibration from one being to another. The receiver
perceives the movement of the world outside through the vibration of this
membrane. The membrane may approach a kind of transparency, but it
cannot truly achieve this; it will always impart something additional to the
message it wants to send: distance, distortion, even in some cases,
interpretation. It is with this concept that Tsunodas work begins in the
mid-1990s, the work of his documented in the four volumes of Extracts.[1]

Tsunoda has often insisted, especially early in his career, that his primary
interest is in the phenomenon of vibration. He carefully seeks out locations
in which to observe this phenomenon: a stairwell, a pillar, a bottle, a large
or a bent pipe. Most are fairly mundane sounding and looking. (Why is it
that places which often sound the most interesting, are either difficult
places to get to or unattractive places to be?) Most are not too distant from
his home in Yokohama. The precise locations are usually given, and the
recording situation described. In his early work, he also usually
characterized the kind of material he used in the recording.

The sounding world is porous.

A whole category of Tsunodas objects is described as solid (including,

but not limited to the Extract From Field Recording Archive #3: Solid
Vibration). His work reveals that they are also (perhaps mainly) fluidin
that they are moving and changing at all times (hence the recordable
vibrations). The world we see looks stable, but the world we learn to hear,
with Tsunodas help, is in constant flux.

The most vivid scene in The Matrix is when Neo begins to see the world
transform before his eyes, as it bends and flexes, and then changes to
streams of numbers. It is vivid because we know this is the case: the world
is different from the evidence given by our direct perception. In The Matrix
the illusion of the world is maintained by a computer program, hence,
when Neo sees the numbers, he is seeing a real world not apparent to
others. This is a relatively simple way of showing that things are not as they
seem, that theres another reality hidden in what we think we perceive. In
Tsunodas work there is a similar impulse, but allows us to hear that the
relationship between these things is not simple; that it operates in a whole
variety of non-linear, non-dialectical ways[2].

Since everything vibrates, what serves as the process of selection from

amongst the vibrating worlds? In Tsunodas work observation is not a
neutral activity, the vision has to be trained on points of interest. There is
therefore an aesthetics that guides the choice of what to observe. One of his
earliest preferences was for varieties of standing waves.

Spaces and materials of all kinds reinforce specific frequencies; essentially

by creating a reflection of the signal back through the medium in which it
occurs. This creates something that is and sounds (relatively) regular or
patterned. In musical terms, we hear first and foremost the fundamental
tone of the vibrating material. But very often at a secondary level, more
softly a whole set of tones may be audible, creating something like a
harmonic drone or even a chord. (One could conjecture that the everyday
occurrence of this simple fact accounts for the instant familiarity of the
drone.)

Listen to track 5, Nagaura Bay: Solid vibration of a steel plate at a loading

area, from Extract from Field Recording Archive #1, and you will hear a
low fundamental (the loudest sound) and a series of quieter sounds above
it (which at times seem to form a minor chord). It is steady but not exactly
stable. There are other vibrations and other tones interfering with the
fundamental tone, causing it to change (a semi-regular beating effect
audible throughout the track). We hear a mixture, therefore, of stability
(the periodic vibration producing the tone) and instability (the turbulence
of the physical system of the solid plate under the influence of the motors
of the ships in the area). This very familiar trait of Tsunodas music is
something I would call quiet turbulence. Audible turbulence is perhaps the
first indication in Tsunodas work that the worlds we hear are different
from the ones see: they are in constant motion; unstable and we hear on
from the ones see: they are in constant motion; unstable and we hear on
one side of the membrane what happens on the other.

I [heart] space.

Sounds are intensities: successive compressions and rarefactions of air

molecules. Our ears are extremely acute sensors of these movements, with
a complex and very highly developed system for translating these
vibrations into sound. Who or what ordained that these vibrations would
be heard as opposed to felt (on the skin)? Our ancestors must have relied
on this apparatus to sense danger and food, to determine whether the
animal met was predator or prey. How else to account for the sensitivity
that lets us hear sounds from miles away (i.e., from distances we can hardly
see in any detail, let alone touch)? At some point we no longer need to see
to believe: hearing is believing.

Obviously, we also learn to use sound to evaluate, understand,

communicate and even sympathize with the activities of those sources
(animate or inanimate). So this extremely subtle mechanism gets put to
use to read the finest shades of expression, including a vast range of non-
verbal sounds. Is there any question about whether the tiniest sonic
inflection of a word can become meaningful? There are certainly millions
of examples, but if any reminder is needed (and for the pure pleasure of
listening one more time), just listen to the first three lines of Le

Dpeupleur (Samuel Beckett) as read by Serge Martin:

Cargando

Sjour o des corps vont

Hearing is both a form of investigation and a
form of empathy. Listening to Tsunoda, I often
sense that a response to space is required that is
on par with our ability to interpret speech or
music. In the best work of this period something
is riding on the outcome of a recording. The
fragility of the situation means things can go well
or poorly. The caw of a crow can still be bad news.
cherchant chacun son
dpeupleur. Assez vaste pour
permettre de chercher en vain.
Assez restraint pour que toute
fuite soit vaine.
(Abode where lost bodies
roam each searching for its
lost one. Vast enough for
search to be in vain. Narrow
enough for flight to be in vain.)

Does this empathy account for the subtly monastic atmosphere that
emanates from Misaki Bay: Solid vibration of the surface of a concreted
emanates from Misaki Bay: Solid vibration of the surface of a concreted
wharf where a marine products market used to be (also from Extract from
Field Recording Archive #1)? Here (again) we hear a low fundamental
(this time of 60hz, reflecting the rigidity of the material). Experienced
listeners of his work will know that low frequency is something that clearly
resonates for Tsunoda on a psychological level. In this piece, it develops a
kind of throbbing, insistent rhythm. The upper harmonics (at 125, 185
and 365 hz) coming and going, apparently the result of boats passing by,
leave a distinctly ghost-like presence. This must come in part from the fact
that the media (water, air) radiate waves, so that sound comes to us
through a whole series of individual reports, more and less direct, both
there and not. For me there is the distinct feeling of looking out at
something from the other side of a shaded window.

[Brief, parenthetical analysis in the form of a koan:

What is the name of the monk who sings into the curved pipe? (See
Curved Pipe in Scenery of Decalcomania)]

To return to space.

What accounts for the melancholy of Bottle at Park (from Extracts #2)?
What accounts for the melancholy of Bottle at Park (from Extracts #2)?
The chord here consists of three elements: a low fundamental (more felt
than actually heard), and higher, intermittent, insect sounds. In the center
range is a hollow wind, circulating, changing in volume, with a band of
distortion at the upper limit. The changes in intensity in this wind are
sensed as slight changes in the harmonic balance.

Like so much of Tsunodas music, there would be no way to hear these

sounds without the small microphone that goes inside the bottle. We are
both inside and outside. The outside is audible but utterly distorted by the
container. The inside is empty, except for the microphone and the air.

My description does not tell you why the piece is so strangely moving.
Perhaps this object tells us something about ourselves, or at least about
ourselves in certain states: both empty (or hollow) and not fully in touch
with the outside world. Our minds are chambers in which thoughts and
sounds circulate in the much larger room of that which is unthought (i.e.,
that which is deliberately avoided or repressed and that which cannot be
thought). Unthought is a medium, like air, surrounding us at all times. Will
what we think make sense outside of our brains? (This is the kind of
question Tsunoda will ask two decades later.) The crickets outside the
bottle dont think about our thoughts, and their sounds will never fully
penetrate our consciousness, we will never hear them in their entirety.
There is joy or fullness in perception, but sadness too.

The Drain Hoses of Extracts #2 (Track 4) produce sounds reminiscent of

a bowed contrabass, or a section of them. The low frequencies, here more
or less uninflected by upper harmonies, have the texture of multiple layers
of friction. The outside world can be dimly, occasionally perceived, from
the small opening at the other end of the hose. (At about 800 we hear the
astounding sound, for this context, of a car skidding.) The pitch is not
entirely stable. The turbulence of the air creates many small deviations,
glissandi, articulations, and variations in loudness. Inside the hose there
must be many layers of moving air, articulating not just the full length of
the space, but also the activity of the inner walls. It is a profound music,
grounded very deeply, of uncanny solidity. Here, as elsewhere, a kind of
music is made that one we might have wanted to create (with an
orchestra?), but in fact can only be found already formed.
The low frequency vibration of Asphalt Road Surface (Extracts #3, Track
5) is even more bereft of atmosphere, with just hints above the
fundamental. The fundamental varies dramatically in loudness with
unstable, edgy shifts. I picture not a road, but some kind of rounded, half-
mechanical, half-biological entity, jutting back and forth, in an irregular,
slightly threatening way, at about head level. Its a surreal image, to be
sure, but (for me) shows the necessity of getting away from a strictly
scientific or analytic view of this music. The actual physical
characteristics of the recording location (and what we find out about it) are
only part of the story. In this case my head is too taken up with the
proximate vibration to keep picturing the road. Sound is, obviously, not
very much like sight. The uncanny nature of this sonic world tells me as
much about what is suppressed or hidden (in me, in you) as it does about
the physical system. Which is to say that even real objects in the world,
have virtual properties and processes.

To be a torus, to rhyme with Reimann.

Music is the word we use for sound that follows the actual and the real at
once. Music exists in the world of physical vibration and in our head at the
same time. Well never know, exactly how one connects to the other. At
some point between the inner ear and the brain, the transformation of
mere sound into music occurs. It is more, much more, than a decoding of
signals.

So, in music, what is low frequency, otherwise known as bass, about? It is

movement from below. The ground is not stable, not on earth, not
anywhere. Even the apparently solid sonic dimension of low frequency is
curved like a Reimannian manifold. Philip Glass connected Carole King (I
feel the earth. Move. Under my feet.) with Albert Einstein. For a while
disco carried a potential (virtual) movement of social upheaval (there is no
ground, no fundament, thats one reason why we dance). But both stability
and movement are relative. One of the attractions of Tsunodas music is
that it seems to promise a stable situation; but as one listens this is
gradually undermined.

So the flexibility of the membrane applies not just to the vertical

dimension, but also the horizontal. We walk on a membrane (the unstable
ground) even when we walk through a medium (like air).

Throughout his entire body of work, for Tsunoda the microphone remains
a membrane. However, it is possible to picture the membrane as being a bit
like (or tending towards) a door that can swing open (to field recording)
and shut (towards the mechanisms of human perception and thought). In
the later work, we start to have a much more complex view of space
presented to us, one that adds layers (or folds) the one already present in
the early work.

(2)

The microphone is a window.

In the recording Ful (1996) by m/s and Tsunoda, a contact microphone is

placed on a window. For close to an hour we hear the low, unsteady
vibrations of the window (the familiar low frequency of fundamental of
Tsunoda). We also hear the abrupt sound of a small window that is
warping in response to the atmospheric changes (it sounds as if something
is thrown against the window on which the contact mic has been placed).
We hear some of the world outside the window: those sounds that reach a
certain threshold (mostly birds and vehicles). These sounds are played
back into the room in which the recording was made, a feedback loop of
sorts. In a certain sense, we become a magnified version of the window by
hearing what it hears, by being inside of it.

A closed window is a perfect example of a membrane. It vibrates between

inside and outside. It is also a drumhead, a wave and a conduit. For
someone standing inside, we are conscious of the fact that those objects on
the other side of the window, reflect the fact that they are passing through
itthey are distorted by the membrane. The light is a little dimmer, the
itthey are distorted by the membrane. The light is a little dimmer, the
sounds are a little softer. We are inside, hearing inward, but
simultaneously on in the inside hearing outward.

Open the window.

But most windows can be opened, and that changes things. So we open the
window, and what do we hear? (Pieces of Air?) The open window forces a
confrontation with what is outside and potentially, with the idea of the
outside. We are, or can be, as John Ashbery put it, on the outside looking
out.

When we place a microphone in contact with the outdoor air, there is, at
the very least, the illusion that we are achieving some kind of direct contact
with the world. Isnt this the promise of field recording[3]? Attempting to
hear the world-as-it-is is based on the desire to transcend human
perception.

There is little, at least in the early stages of his work, to indicate that
Tsunoda is interested in the transcendent. This early work (i.e., from the
1990s) is created with clear limits. A largely controlled recording situation
is set up (one might at times even call it staged). The location is carefully
selected and prescribed. The resulting recording seems to be tightly
focused on a narrowly defined register of sonic eventfulness. These
conditions conspire to make music. That is, they allow structures to
emerge that feel as if they were composed. I am continually amazed, for
example, by how much the motor + environment of Air Vibration Of
Elevator Motor Room In Stairwell (Extracts #1) feel like they could be a
performance by trombonist Radu Malfatti. The tone and the timing,
though obviously random, in a certain sense feel that perfect.

But the sounding world, in its raw, out-of-doors state, is excessive: there is
always more to hear than one can recognize. Even though a recording is
already a reduction, a location recording nonetheless often presents a
complex situation that has to be taken whole to be heard. Many details will
elude us. A sampling rate of 44.1k (or 88.2 or 96) is obviously faster than
we can directly perceive: we hear the composite it produces, not the
interstices. But if one inserts a single foreign sample into the mix it will (or
can) be audible. Even this extremely high density of sonic indicators is less
dense than the continuity of sound. (With analog there are different but
related issues.) We somehow sense that the numerical density of the
sounding world is even beyond that of the sophisticated technology, and
our ears. The awareness of this excess, I think, creates a sense that we are
at least in the vicinity of (if not in direct contact with) the real of the
outside. The desire to make field recordings is, at its core, driven by its
proximity to this limit.

In Tsunodas works after the period of the first four Extracts recordings,
there is an increasing tendency to include pure location recordings along
with those of constructed environments. What force was acting upon his
music to make him start to include these simpler, more open recordings
along with the more controlled work? To be sure, an outdoor location, even
when one is not focusing on it, still contains a wealth of vibration (which
will remain one of Tsunodas core interests). But there is an audible
difference in situations that appear mostly under ones control and
situations where contingency will rule.

Some differences in air.

Pieces of Air (2002) is the transitional work. From this point on, Tsunoda
will continue and intensify his exploration of the inside, with later pieces
like Metal Pieces with High Frequencies, from Ridge of Undulation
moving very much in the direction of abstract electronic music. But at the
same time, and with increasing frequency, he takes his work into the
relatively uncontrolled outdoor environment. The transition is gradual,
and to some degree present even in the earlier work. This is already a
significant difference between air vibration and surface vibration. And
there is some continuity between open air recording in inside and outside
spaces, at least in terms of the kinds of microphones used. A bottle is a
small piece of air and a seashore is a large piece. But now the explicit
differences between these spaces (or pieces) will be explored in his work.

Relatively closed spaces feedback upon themselves, and therefore tend to

provide tonal information. This is demonstrated in a beautiful way by the
two bottle pieces on Pieces of Air. The 121hz wave in Bottle + Signal
121hz is more in tune with the vibration of the air in that space than the
111hz wave in the piece immediately following. The two 216 recordings
thus move perceptibly from relative stability to turbulence.
Echo of a Room is to my mind one of the finest short pieces in the
Tsunoda canon. A pure sine tone at a discrete frequency (moving higher in
steps as the piece progresses) is projected into a room. The recording is
edited so that the sine wave (of about .4 seconds) is heard in the left
channel, and as soon as it turns off its resonance in the room is heard in
the right channel, for the same duration. Thus for a brief moment after
each pure tune, we hear the singular decay of that tone (along with
whatever environmental sounds might leak into the gallery). It is a piece
whose description does not prepare one for its audition. The instantaneous
movement from the no space of the tone to the full space of the echo at a
steady rhythm creates a strangely recognizable archetype. Havent we been
hearing this our whole lives, in something close to this form? At the same
time: isnt this one extremely odd sounding piece[4]?

This piece reinforces the sense we might already have gotten from the
membrane recordings: that a situation can be composed. That is, the
circumstances can be set in such a way that they behave in structure like a
composition. It ushers in a series of pieces along these lines on the

following discs, including, among others, the beautiful 40 Oscillators and

the brilliant Heater and Amplifier from O Respirar da Paisagem (2003).
But it seems that at some point during this work, Tsunoda starts to
recognize found compositions as well.

On Pieces of Air, Echo of a Room is preceded by an outdoor recording of

the same concept, as Tsunoda says in the notes to Middle of the Hill. A
gunshot-like sound is heard to echo at a regular interval through the field.
gunshot-like sound is heard to echo at a regular interval through the field.
(It is actually a device placed in a planting field to protect the crop from
birds.) Like Echo of a Room the signal is in the left and its report is in the
right. But the source sound carried along multiple echoes, waves of sound
ricocheting against the borders of the space.

Rocky Coast on a Windy Day sounds exactly like its description. The
turbulence of the wind and water occurs in a much freer, more chaotic way
than the controlled environments. The roiling of the waves breaks on to a
bed of low frequency noise. The wind and birds wrap themselves inside of
the high frequency waves. There is white everywherewhite noise, white
foam. Its sound is irresistible but also threatening, with the force of wind,
held at bay in the bottle recording, here encountered in something like its
raw form.

This low frequency wind is still present on Cider Forest on a Windy Day,
but here its force is heard (and felt) in the twisting and bending sounds of
the wood. The high frequency glides are presumably from the twisting of
the wood, but they are also nearly vocal in character. They reveal in sound
the folded character of the tree, externalizing this inner song. (Like Echo
of a Room there is both an internal and an external space, but there they
are simultaneous.)

The Seashore, Venice Beach (recorded on 1 July 2001, and released on

Ridge of Undulation in 2005) is a pure field recording that captures the
raw but still gradual transformation of the shift from high to low frequency
as a wave turns into its undertow. As a musical device, the pattern of waves
is an elegant form unto itself, the physical and the sonic repetition seem
necessary. No matter how many times one hears these sounds (in whatever
context), they retain something unknown and unknowable. In California,
at the edge of one continent, facing another, Tsunoda reaches the external
limit of his work in the forbidding uncanniness of the great outdoors.

This piece however is immediately followed by another situational

composition, An aluminum plate with low frequencies-1, a piece that
mirrors the wavelike shapes of those heard in Seashore, Venice Beach.
This concept of mirroring would undergo a radical turn two years later
with the Maguchi Bay recordings.

With the various pieces discussed above as templates, one can wind
interesting pathways through the three fine albums that followed over the
next few years (O Respirar Da Paisagem, Scenery of Decalcomania and
Ridge of Undulation).

The ultrasonic life of your speaker cone.

Low Frequency Observed At Maguchi Bay (2007) is a pivotal work in the

Tsunoda canon. It deals head-on with several of his obsessions in an
extremely elegant and suggestive way (and is, from my perspective, a
candidate for one of the most significant works of art in our still young 21st
century). The concept seems very simple. Wanting to capture the
vibrational movement of a mysterious old pier at the bay (in Miura City),
he carried a DAT recorder and contact microphone there and made four
recordings. They capture the vibrations of the surrounding area through
the medium of the vibration of the pier (itself vibrating because of the
movements in the seabed). Like a fusion of the membrane recordings
discussed above with the window recordings here, they feel like controlled
compositions in the wild, emphasizing the low vibration of the medium,
applying a specific kind of filter to the environment (steady-state
turbulence). But then Tsunoda does something extraordinary: he
sequences each of these recordings on the CD with a mirror track of the
same recording, but with all frequency above 20hz cut off. Now as you may
know, human hearing does not in practice extend below 20hz (though in
special conditions frequencies as low as 10hz have been heard by humans).
On top of this, the frequency range of a speaker rarely extends below 40hz
(and you need a subwoofer to hear below this properly). (Is a subwoofer
that goes below 21hz even commercially available?) Thus, for all intents
and purposes, you will not hear anything emanating from the speakers
during these mirrored low frequency recordings. But this does not mean
nothing is happening. There is of course the ambient sound in whatever
space you happen to play the recording. But much more importantly, the
bass speaker cone will be moving. Get up close to the cone and watchor
even touch it. It is vibrating, in a visible and tactile (but for us, silent) way.
Pure vibration, abstracted of sound. One of the subtlest shades of feeling
our senses possess. If you have had this encounter with your speaker, you
will not forget it. If you make recordings as works of art or fun, you should
not forget it.

Here we are at a crossroads in Tsunodas world, one that I continue to find

transformative. One way of looking at Tsunodas work would be to say that
it began to move in a conceptual direction, away from the powerful world
it began to move in a conceptual direction, away from the powerful world
of low vibrations and of extra-scenic dimensions, into more abstract
structures that represent ideas about listening. But I think that what is
shown with this work, with how it works, is that there is a false dichotomy
between concept and sound, just as there is between inside and
outside. The travel between sound and thought isnt between the physical
and mental; they are interwoven, with the tendrils of one reaching into the
other. Every sound begins with vibration; we hear some of those
vibrations; we feel or see others. Vibration is a physical thought in a world.

It is hard to overstate the potential this seems to open up for making

music. The hidden door which Tsunoda finds, swinging back and forth
between the environment and the mind, with the ear as a hinge, with the
mind composing sound, and sound composing the mind, throws
conventional notions of the roles in making music, of composing music,
into chaos.

A sonic image for this existed very early in Tsunodas work, in Inside of a
Pipe-Radio and Water Level (recorded on May 4, 1994, released on Pieces
of Air). Microphones are placed in two identical pipes at the seashore.
Earphones are used to project a sound source (in this case radio
broadcasts). In one pipe (left channel), the earphone is above the water
line. In the other (right channel) the earphone is at the water line. In the
right channel we hear the sound change as the source goes above and
below this line with the incoming waves. In this complex situation, sense
moves fluidly between perception and construction, between incoming and
outgoing, between hearing and imagination.

(3)

The microphone is a mirror.

From this distanceof about seven years after the factit seems fairly clear
to me that Tsunoda began to work with the consequences of his discovery
in Maguchi Bay only gradually, as if its importance was such that it opened
up something of an abyss. How does one (anyone) continue with their work
when they reach a crisis, especially one that challenges the very
foundations of the work they are doing?

Tsunoda pursued collaborations: with Luke Fowler (Familial Readings,

2008), with Michael Graeve (s/t, 2009), with Seijiro Murayama (Snared
60 Cuts, 2010) and then with me (crosshatches, 2012).

In retrospect the reason for this becomes clear. Unless one is

improvising[5] a collaborative work requires coordination, communication
and planning. The work inevitably becomes structured. I would argue that
Tsunodas way out of the crisis was therefore not just through
collaboration, but composition.

Weve seen that a composed situation is a kind of composition where

spontaneous details and features occur within a limited and planned set of
variables. And weve seen that a field recording is a kind of composition,
one of whose authors is the contingency of the situation itself. But the
conscious ordering and timing of individual elements, and the work with
sounds recorded as raw material to make new structures, were relatively
new to Tsunodas work. In the end a compositional process was necessary
to the works ability to follow the consequences of what it had opened up.
But what develops is no ordinary compositional approach. It brings with it
all of the work and thought of the previous two decades. When the work
edges towards composition it brings with it the poetry of space and the wild
of the field.

An ocean of blue connecting me to you.

An ocean of blue connecting me to you.

I had a window into Toshiyas thought and methods when we worked

together on crosshatches, starting in early 2011. In fact, at this early stage,
he wanted us to begin by composing a score(!). So we started with that.
Toshiya began by making a graph which indicated times and kinds of
sounds (tones or noise) to be used. Then, gradually, and with the help of
Yuko Zama (who translated for us some of the more tortuous trains of
thought we sent over the Pacific), we arrived at a co-composition. The
object of this was to structure the recordings we were about to make, to
give us something concrete to guide what would otherwise have been too
many options, given the varieties of work we both make.

When it came to the recordings themselves, Toshiya did in part produce

material in line with some of the things he had done in the past (i.e.,
composed situations). But the diversity of the material, and its
inventiveness was striking. In one instance he affixed a contact mic to a
long rope to record its (very) low frequency fundamental as it moved and
twisted. (See image below. From a drawing Toshiya Tsunoda made to show
Michael Pisaro how the individual recordings he sent were made.)

As we can see, it is mixed with sounds I sent him. The combination gives
this recording a very different, more harmonic character than anything one
finds in his earlier music. (This recording forms the first long section, after
the Introduction, of the first track, 1.1.)

In another instance, he placed each of a stereo pair of microphones under a

stone in a hollowed out area by the seashore (shown in the next
illustration), an extended stereophony where the sand listens to the sea.
(And then we listen to the sand listening to the sea.)
This was, as before, mixed with tones I provided to Toshiya. The result
found its way into the complex of things that formed the final track (2.4).

In our discussions of the material Toshiya sometimes expressed doubts

about whether some of the forms of processing (such as the looping that
appears in some placesthe first part of track 1.2 is one example) were
consistent with his work at all. Field recording is haunted by some idea of
purity (i.e., of the idea that a recording is a true document of its place in
time). Even though Tsunoda has more often distanced himself from this
perspective, it remains, even in his work up until this point, a part of the
intellectual background in which it and other work that references field
recording is made. Nonetheless, in the context of crosshatches it was clear
that nothing we were doing would truly appear as a documentthat
anything we recorded was simply one part of a much larger assemblage.
Toshiya, in building upon the work done the other recent collaborations,
was already headed in this more synthetic direction. From this point on
this tendency was accelerated in ways to be discussed below.
I believe the critical hinge for the composition of crosshatches however was
not sound, but time. What became clear as we worked on the piece was that
we were dealing with several simultaneous layers of time within each
musical segment. The multiple dates and times of recording (some
embedded in others by re-recording one set of sounds in a new situation);
the cutting of time into segments and the looping, and other subtler forms
of displacement occurring in the editing process: all of it led to a sense that
time and duration as they occurred in the piece had to reflect this multi-
dimensional orientation. Thus the work gradually became organized into
segments or capsules of time: collections of moments arranged like
constellations. From the very beginning of the project, Toshiya talked
about how our respective places of residence (Japan and California) should
be present as locations, but also in time. This implied some conception of
space-time in a worked-out way that was new to both of us. (The mystery of
a good collaboration is that it forces you to do something you might have
wanted, but never otherwise would have conceived.) A sonic sense of the
space-time continuum would find its way into both O Kokos Tis Anixis and
detour.

The mind is a temple.

It may be pure accident, but when I first saw the title The Temple
Recording (for a pair of discs that followed upon crosshatches, in the
following year), I thought for a moment, even though I knew better, that
Toshiya had recorded religious temples! But in fact, and to my relief, the
title refers to a persons temples. A confusion of the outside with the
insidewhich in its own way, is emblematic of the work itself.

The technique Tsunoda developed here is to affix stethoscopes with a

small, built-in air microphone to a persons temple. The stethoscope
records the minimal activity of the body (blood flowing, muscle movement)
and a dim record of the environment nearby. This could be done with one
person, with a microphone affixed to both temples. However his preferred
method is to have two people sit a short distance from each other (a meter
or two) and then put this stethoscope-mic assembly on the left temple of
the person on the left side, and the right temple of the person on the right
side. The recording is made as the two subjects focus on an object in the

landscape that is of interest. This extended stereo or stereophony as

Tsunoda calls it, carries deep within it what I think of as one of the most
profound images of contemporary listening: multiple subjects, diffuse
object.
object.

The technique conjures up an interesting background. Listening to

listening has been a central theme of experimental music at least since
Silence and Cages reports of his experience at the Harvard anechoic
chamber (hearing nothing but the sound of his heart and his circulation).
The theme of listening has always been integral to Tsunodas work. And
while there are parallels between Cage and Tsunoda, there are also
significant differences. The listening object is not the more abstract sound
itself that one can see lurking behind Cages writings. For Tsunoda sounds
are material things of the world and their connection to material is
important. It is physical, and indeed the physical limits of the sensing parts
of the body are often explicitly a part of his work. (And our senses develop
and change through contact with his work.) But listening for Tsunoda does
not involve a split between the mind and the body. We will always want to
know something about how the sound was made, where it was heard, what
it might be doing there. We may want to know how it was recorded. The
overlap or interpenetration of thought and sound is part of what gives the
work its special charge.

Also in the background of The Temple Recording/One Stereophony By

Two Persons is Alvin Luciers Music for Solo Performer (1965). In this
piece EEG electrodes are strapped to a subjects scalp as a way of
converting brain waves into a source of vibration. (The vibrations are then
greatly amplified and played against percussion instruments that respond
sympathetically.) The idea that something poetic is happening inside the
head is an interesting point of reference for The Temple Recording
because as Tsunoda notes in a text that comes with the disc set: there is no
relation among temples, air microphone and brain waves. Our brain waves
do not stir the air. Exactly: its the space between, the place in which the
overlap that concerns him.

The location of the microphone is at a critical juncture between the head

(and brain) and the zone outside the body. The microphone is not hearing
what a person hears, it is hovering in the space where sense becomes
thought and vice versa. So as listeners, we are in the unique position of
listening both to the once-removed results of the brain and body (from the
temples) and the distant echoes of the point on which the subjects
concentrate.
Furthermore, as we listen, we have the distinct sense of being on the
surface of a large head. The distance between the two microphones (i.e.,
between the two people) is just enough to pull the left and right channels
out of focus. Distinct events occur in one channel that do not occur in the
other. The image (sound, location, sight) is that of the physical locus of
thought. This is critical because I believe the force of Tsunodas work
comes from the sense that outside worlds occur inside our bodies and in
our brains. (This is another version or way of expressing folded sound
space.) When we hear, we also project, and even create an image (sonic or
otherwise) of the objects that move the air. In the listening worlds that
Tsunoda creates, we vibrate and these vibrations are sent back to us as an
integral part of our sensory mechanism. Another way of saying this is that
we mirror our own process of listening. By the time we make sound it has
already bounced back and forth in our body. But at the same time, we as
listeners are hearing (or attempting to hear) beyond ourselves, to somehow
reach the impulses of the world and to learn from them. This desire is a
critical part of the whole mechanism, and is certainly one of the main
sources of attraction for field recording itself (see Appendix for further
discussion).

Tsunoda however does not deliver on the desire for the real world in
any immediate sense: he constructs systems that mirror the complex set of
twists and turns that thwart this immediacy, and makes art of that
passageway. I am not for a moment forgetting that most of his work just
sounds good, i.e., that it has immediate sensory appeal. But there is more
to it than that, its beautiful sound surface often stirs something deeper.

When, on the second disc (this one, recorded at a different time, is called
One Stereophony By Two Persons), Sachie Hoshi (in the left channel) and
Teppei Soutome (right channel) begin to hum, it comes as a shock, an
externalization of the internal worlds. By the fifth track, the blend of voice
and environment even approaches something recognizable as music, and
this marks the outer limits of the project.

If in the whole project what emerges is not necessarily music (or at least
instantly recognizable as such), it is composition. But what is being
composed (i.e., brought into relation)? The situation? The recording
mechanism? The performers? The listener? All of them.
The grains of time.

Hearing is physical, but it is not objective. Cartesian doubt about any clear
separation or categorization between what is heard and who is hearing,
renders the ontological status of music (always) problematic. How much of
it actually takes place in the mind of the listener? How can anything heard
on a recording be categorized as real? And if the sounds of small fruits
falling in the grass as the wind shook the tree[6] are real things we hear,
what about the displacements of time that come along with them?

In 2013, fans of Toshiya Tsunoda were treated to two epoch-making

statements of his new position, as O Kokos Tis Anixis (Grains of Spring)
was released on his label at the same time as The Temple Recording.
Whereas the technique of two-person stereophony placed the listening
perspective near the surface of the head (i.e., in the vicinity of thought)
Grains of Spring stirs, even physically shakes, the mind.

Although as part of the attempt to form my own perspective on his work

Ive hardly, until now, quoted Toshiya Tsunoda, I will let him describe the
genesis of this project:

The ancient Greek

Tsunoda, like everyone else who makes field
recordings, knows that there is no reason for the
things he is recording to occur: they are
contingent (or in his words), accidents. We
cannot manipulate accidentalness. The only way
for us to relate to the events is to closely observe
what is happening there. (emphasis mine)
This focus on accident, on contingency, for
Tsunoda jars something else loose, something
that, for lack of better words, we may call the
death of time. In dealing with the question of
units in the composition of field recording piece,
he eventually asks the question of how long they
should be. When a loop is used in a longer unit,
we can recognize it as a certain concrete sound.
But if it is very [much] shorter, pushing the limit
of the editing software, it becomes like a simple
philosophers thought that the
world is constituted of a series
of grains of space and time.
When I walked around Miura
Peninsula in the springtime, I
felt the same waythe quality
of the space and the time
seemed to be formed by a
series of grains of sounds.
Each place has its own unique
character. You could label it as
a particular quality of the
place. The quality of the
sound. Or in other words, you
could label it as a fundamental
character of the space. What
we focus on here are the
events happening in a short
unit of time. I decided to
present the recorded materials
as a composition with the least
amount of modification, mainly
by replacing one unit with
another. (from the liner notes
to O Kokos Tis Anixis)
of the editing software, it becomes like a simple
electric sound. So he proceeded to make these loops of various (but always
short) lengths with between three and a hundred repetitions and then
inserted them into the work. Like many of Tsunodas formal decisions, it is
so simple. Yet the impact of this work on me when I first heard it was
staggering. I was elated for days, returning to it in small pieces, convincing
myself that what I was hearing was actually something someone I know
had made.

We can say, as Hamlet did, that time is out of joint. But it is quite another
thing to experience it first hand, and to have the experience made concrete
in the form of a work of art. There is almost nothing that creates the
illusion of the flow of time better than a well-executed field recording. It is
very easy to be lulled into a sense of naturalness, a sense that things will
continue indefinitely and of their own accord. The structure of this work
offers a multitude of ways to be lulled and then awakened, to be placed into
the natural flow and then jarred loose from it. One way of listening
impinges upon another. After a sequence of discontinuous repetitions one
hears the continuity of the field with a different sense of depth (how
continuous is it?) and a different sense of how things will continue (given

that they can be interrupted at any moment). When the loops come, at
apparently random intervals, they draw our attention to the tiniest, most
ephemeral moments. For much of the piece the looped sounds are
unrecognizable. When very short, as Tsunoda says, they become pure
electronic artifacts. Sometimes they are easily identified: a tweet, an echo,
a drip, a resonance. In these instances we start to appreciate the complex
set of circumstances that surround any sound in the field, because by
means of repetition their otherwise hidden sonic characters are
underlined. In a few places one series of loops is joined to another, with a
connection that suggests a musical or gestural intention (like one chord
changing to the next). The looped grains stand as individual events, but no
one will remember the whole set of them in the 146 minutes of listening.
Nonetheless they alert us to the grains occurring everywhere both inside
and outside the work.

To engage with O Kokos Tis Anixis is to enter a recognizable world, but one
that has more dimensions. We discover that we are mobile in directions
that were previously fixed. We can move forward and backward, and
oscillate between the two at different rates of repetition, where previously
we could only move forward at one speed. This new version of the old
world is sonically more beautiful than the one with which we are familiar,
but it is also treacherous. A sense of continuity is replaced by a thin-ice
fragility. This world is also, in part, virtual. We cannot swim, eat or love in
the dimensions Tsunoda creates for usonly hear them. That could change.

Misdirection as contingency.

In the next work, detour, Tsunoda and collaborator Manfred Werder

discovered another strategy to challenge our habitual ways of listening. At
first detour feels more like a naturalistic field recording than either The
Temple Recording or O Kokos Tis Anixis. It seems to be captured in an
open space near a pond, bordered by a road. Trees with leaves blowing and
branches cracking; birds; a carp jumping occasionally. But from the
beginning one has a sense that it is not as straightforward as it appears.
Theres more going on than would be expected in such a situation,
including layers of sound that do not quite mesh. Starting at 650, for
including layers of sound that do not quite mesh. Starting at 650, for
instance, there is an apparent disruption that seems too near and present
to square with the perspective given by the central microphone. At 1030
the character changes: what sounds like a temple recording moves to the
forefront, with the pond recording moving back in the mix. For a while we
hear breathing and the temple sounds as a kind of frame around the pond
sounds. At various points one hears someone walking around: Are we on
the move[7]?

In fact, as Toshiya confirmed to me, there are always two layers of

recordings: a basic track by the pond that runs for the full duration, and
other, shorter recordings that have been overlaid. One of these (starting at
2357) is even a temple recording from a live performance by Tsunoda and
Werder in Tokyo.

The decision to work with this layering grew out of a series of discussions
between the two collaborators. One starting point for these discussions was
a score from Werder (written in 2012) in which a quote by Alain Badiou
taken from Logiques des Mondes, appears: tout objet a un inexistent
propre (every object has one proper inexistent). In this section of the
treatise, Badiou attempts to show how change occurs (particularly at the
highest, most life-altering level, which he names an event). One part of his
complex argument is the demonstration how, in some situations,
something with minimal presence (i.e., the inexistent propre) can be
turned into something with maximal presence. This happens when
something previously unknown or hidden in a situation is revealed to be
central as the situation changes (a spontaneously revolutionary force, the
declaration of a love hidden to those concerned, etc.).
Now let us attempt to think this in the context of a recorded work. No
situation can be completely captured, not even with the best microphones.
There are, in every situation, things present that cannot be heardbecause
they are too small, too distant or too obscure. To record is to be plagued by
the awareness that something (potentially something critical) is always
missing. Yet how does one know or find out what one is missing?

At the first stage, as Manfred wrote to me, the two decided to try to record
all kinds of layers, physical and psychological. An attempt was made to
do this at a live performance by the duo at the i and e space in Tokyo.
They hoped to render an empty space: the frame of the concert format
from different perspectives that actually are always present in our layered
experiences. Several recordings were made of the situation, including the
live sounds of the performance and temple recordings of various audience
members. This did not really work, for various technical reasons.

Next they tried to do this in a place outdoors. The question of perspective

became critical, i.e., where should they place themselves and the various
microphones? As Werder writes:

Where to put the contact

mics? (into the ground, under
branches, on the tree trunk,
etc.?)
Where to put a general mic
(what could be kind of a
center of a place)?
Where to put ourselves with
the temple recording mics
within this place? This
included our
directions/inclinations, i.e.:
toward to tree with the contact
mic, or toward the general
center of the place, or toward
to ground of the place etc.?
They proceeded spontaneously: how else to deal with the infinite
multiplicity of a situation, where the unseen/unheard predominates? And
again, for various reasons, aesthetic and technical, this did not work. Still
the idea remained to explore multiple perspectives in one place. As Werder
puts it: rendering a place would need both very general and very
particular views on it, like different vectors that traverse the place in
unknown and unpredictable ways and by doing so touch all kinds of views
that often are more grey than sharp-cut.

After Werder departed, Tsunoda made another attempt using the same
methods they had developed. (In the terms established above, I would call
this a composition.) This time he went to his beloved Miura peninsula, and
made most of the recordings that would appear in the final result.

At 4025 something extraordinary occurs: a sound one does not recognize

takes over and then sustains itself until the end. When one first hears this,
it comes as a shock. Within the frame established, many things seem
it comes as a shock. Within the frame established, many things seem
possible, but not this, apparently synthetic sound (it seems like something
processed, even electronically produced, or, at the very least, like a small
buzzing engine). Added to this is the fact that this sound dominates what
had previously appeared to be a natural setting (which continues to be
heard, but now very much in the background). But what is this sound?
And: how important is it that we know what it is? Part of the mystery of
this recording is how it is able to evoke this whole set of considerations,
initially through the medium of sound itself. Contingency plays out on
multiple levels: the (contingent) renderings of space; the (contingent)
discovery of the inexistent; the (contingent) potential of the listener to
discern these perspectives; and the (contingent) discovery of the source of
this mysterious final sound on the part of listeners.

In fact, as Toshiya confirmed to me, this apparently electronic sound was

obtained by placing a stethoscope on the ground very close to an insect.
Even now, as I clearly hear the insect, my first apprehension of it as
something synthetic stays with me. My attention here, and throughout this
magical work, wavers between one mode of listening and the next, never
resolving itself to a stable perspective. The detours (or misdirections)
that formed the recording process yield something hidden in the situation.
This would not amount to much if it were just a question of form. But it is
not just the piece that takes a detour, it is our way of listening. It is gently
pried loose from its habitual sense of single perspective, of near and far,
natural and unnatural, planned and contingent.

There is no world

there are worlds: multiple, infinitely varied, unstable. If one draws such
conclusions, one enters a chaotic and confusing universe, too dense to
know, without any foundation other than its own contingent existence. It is
a difficult place in which to move with any clarity. The clarity that one does
achieve comes at a price: the subtraction of critical elements; the
commitment of time to potentially meaningless work; the squandering of a
life. But this is a wager that experimental musicians (along with
revolutionary leaders, radical science and so on) make. We struggle to

actualize unreal worlds in one of worlds we inhabit, without any assurance

that this will happen, for us or for anyone else. The strange momentum of
Tsunodas work comes from the fact the he has shown us that these unreal
worlds are very near to us, waiting to be actualized, if we can only discover
the correct way to dignify them at the edges of our perception.

This will make us different. We might no longer recognize ourselves.

Strangers to the world, we might change it, by hearing in it those things
that would otherwise remain hidden.

Theoretical Appendix on the Subject of the Outside in Field

Recording

Among other things, field recording seems to offer an encounter with the
real of the environment, of that which, if is not actually outside of us,
appears to be the medium within which we exist and to which we are
bound. This may appear simple or obvious, and I suppose, on some level,
most of us continue to operate with conventional concepts of nature and
environment. But any sustained examination of them, especially in the
light of the philosophy, aesthetics and science of the last century will
convince us that we are well past the point at which simple notions of these

terms, or even the word outside can be defended. Although it has been
the focus of much of my creative work and a fair amount of reading, I do
not make any claim to have mastered the dialogue. I also think that some
concept of the outside becomes increasingly important to Toshiya Tsunoda
in the development of his work (especially in pieces such as Low
Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay and The Temple Recording), so it is
useful to broach it in this article.
For the present I will use three linked (and for me, useful) descriptions of
the problem of inside and outside. (For the moment the best I can do is
sketch the problem.)

1. Concept: Quentin Meillassouxs great outdoors. The question is

whether humans can have any genuine access to something outside of
ourselves or if that outside is always mirrored by a correlate of our
own thought.

As Meillassoux puts it: Is, as current philosophical thought would

have it, the space of exteriority is merely the space of what faces us, of
what exists only as a correlate of our own existence? If thats the case,
we do not transcend ourselves very much by plunging into such a
world, for all we are doing is exploring the two faces of what remains a
face to face like a coin which only knows its own obverse. Then
contemporary philosophers [will] have lost the great outdoors, the
absolute outside of pre-critical thinkers: that outside which was not
relative to us, and which was given as indifferent to its own givenness
to be what it is, existing in itself regardless of whether we are thinking
of it or not; that outside which thought could explore with the
legitimate feeling of being on foreign territoryof being entirely
elsewhere.[8]

Questions: Does field recording offer us any access to the great

outdoors, or does it lie fully with in the realm of human experience? If
we conclude that field recording is not capable by itself of revealing
the nature of things, does it nonetheless echo them?

2. Concept: The real. Here I refer to both in the sense of the

mathematical concept of the continuum (which as defined by Cantor
and Dedekind used the real number line as part of the demonstration)
and Lacans related concept of the psychological real.

Essentially, the real number line allows us to picture an unbroken

continuum of numbers for which we are not required to know each
and every one. We can identify the transcendental number, and
mathematically speaking, we know there is one number higher than it
(i.e., we know that it has to exist and its location can be formulated),
but we dont have to have access to the actual number in a direct way.
(There are many more numbers that we cannot identify than there are
 (There are many more numbers that we cannot identify than there are
numbers we can identify. I use the word real here to indicate the
horizon of this multitude.)

For Jacques Lacan as well this word resonated. He used it as a concept

for that which lies on the outside of the (largely linguistic) symbolic
order. The real is the directly inaccessible (or impossible) continuum
of our primordial, undifferentiated sense of reality, which disappears
with the introduction of the sign. Breaks in the symbolic order are a
kind of trauma, where the real (or what is repressed) comes to the
surface.

Questions: Are there aspects of the (mathematical) real in the

recording of a location? Are there aspects of the (psychoanalytic) real
in the reflection of the recording medium onto the listener? Does field
recording make contact with or touch the unseen or unheard (which
we might also call the uncounted) and that which is ignored or
repressed?

3. Concept: Folded space, derived to some degree from Gilles Deleuzes

book, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (University of Minnesota,
1993). Here we can conceive of a physical model, where by an internal
space is merely a folded (or infolded) version of an external space
(which itself can be viewed as an unfolding of internal space). Viewed
in this way, the division between the internal and the external is
broken down, even to the level where what transpires inside the body
can be linked to the outside.

Questions: How porous is the space of listening to that of recording?

How deep in our ears, bodies and minds do the experiences of location
recording extend? Can we can conceive of an aural space that is
somehow beyond the dialectic of the inside and outside?

I do not take a definitive stand on which, if any of these of these is

right. I can be easily persuaded by any of these approaches to the
question, and tend to use them when they seem to best fit the nature
of the work at hand. There is no way of reconciling them without the
creation of some wholly new concept, which may lie down the road, as
Tsunoda (and others) continue to do what is artistically engaging and,
indeed, necessary work.
Discography
(significant solo works and a few collaborations, given in the approximate
order discussed)

Release Year Label

Extract From Field Recording Archive #1 1997 WrK
Extract From Field Recording Archive #2: The
1999 Hpna
Air Vibration Inside A Hollow
Extract From Field Recording Archive #3:
2001 Infringitive
Solid Vibration

Ful (with m/s) 1996 Selektion

Lucky
Pieces of Air 2002
Kitchen
O Respirar Da Paisagem 2003 Sirr
Scenery of Decalcomania 2004 Naturestrip
Ridge of Undulation 2005 Hpna

Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay 2007 Hibari

Music
The Argyll Recordings (2 discs) 2008 edition.t

crosshatches (with Michael Pisaro) (2 discs) 2012 erstwhile

The Temple Recording/One Stereophony By
2013 edition.t
Two Persons (2 discs)
O Kokos Tis Anixis (Grains of Spring) (2 discs) 2013 edition.t
detour (with Manfred Werder) 2014 erstwhile

About the Author

Michael Pisaro is a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective and
teaches music composition at the California Institute of the Arts.

Photographs by Toshiya Tsunoda unless otherwise noted

Footnotes
Footnotes
1. In the first part of what follows I limit myself to the first three volumes
of the Extracts, recorded and released from 1993 to 2001records Ive
been listening to for several years, and true classics in the field
recording genre. A fourth volume, from recordings made at Nagaura
Bay during the same time period as the others, has been added to the
forthcoming box of all four Extracts on the Presto!? label (due in
2015). The principles discussed here are well represented on that very
beautiful and necessary new volume.
2. We may note, however, that after a recording Tsunoda was once
questioned as a spy. (See the liner notes to Standing Wave of Nagaura
Bay, Extract from field recording archive #4, Presto!?, 2015.)
3. In order to maintain the continuity of this discussion, Ive put some of
my thinking about the terms used in the foregoing into an Appendix.
For some it might be useful to take a look at it before proceeding.
4. To get the full effect of this work, I would recommend you listen to it

with headphones. (On the whole, I think all of Tsunodas music

benefits from listening on both speakers and headphonesbut there
are a few which seem to demand one or the other as the primary
experience.)
5. There is a nice improvisation from this era with Tsunoda, Mitsuhiro
Yoshimura and Taku Sugimoto, SANTA (Presqule Records, 2008).
6. This is one of the track titles of O Kokos Tis Anixis.
7. The question of movement in detour is subtle. In the end it is created
through the changes in perspective. It may be that the excellent
TramVibration (Skiti 07), which Tsunoda recorded with Haco in
2006/7, but edited into final form and released in 2013, was a kind of
study. Here the literal movement of the tram is heard as both
electromagnetic waves and (with contact and stethoscope mics) as
vibration.
8. After Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux (trans. Ray Brassier), Quotes are
drawn from pp.17-18.