The sound of silence

By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

“I NOW have a better appreciation of silence,” I jokingly told Filipino video artist Tad Ermitano after 90 minutes of an “assault” on my senses.

I was at Mag.net Cafe in Bonifacio High Street one quiet evening on July 24. My friend and fellow tech journalist Jing Garcia sent me a text message inviting me to a gig. He did not give any details. He just told me to come over. I agreed. On our way to the place, he revealed that Tad and eight other sound artists have gathered to play in public. Sound art is not your everyday music. To help you understand it, let’s get back to my story. But here’s a video clip I took for iVDO of one of the sound artists, Lirio “Elemento” Salvador, plays his “turnplate,” an instrument he created.

Tad smiled back. I remember referring to John Cage’s famous composition called 4′33″ which involved three movements of silence.

Tad then gave this explanation, but please bear with me since I don’t remember his words exactly. But here it goes: 4′33″ was nothing but silence. As the silence became “deafening,” people who were listening started hearing other things, say, the coughing of a person in the audience, the sigh of a bored spectator, the creaking of chairs moving, and the mumbling of some people. Cage and other sound art performers later wanted people to hear “unexpected sounds” that came out of a concert hall, for instance, when people started listening. While the performer of this piece did not play a single note, there was “music” or unpredictable or unintentional sounds produced. Thus Cage has somehow challenged the very definition of music.

Sound art is that — sound but meant to convey certain feelings or meanings by an artist. That night, there were nine of them organized by young sound artist Tengal. They played his piece called the “Rotation of Nine,” according to Tad’s blog.

In an interview after the performance, Tengal said that he loved the number nine because it would always “refer back to itself.” He said the number nine is also the most “egotistical number.”

Prior to the actual performance, Tad and Tengal agreed to name their group Motzkin Gangan Ensemble. Asked what it meant, Tad said Motzkin refers to the number of possible combinations in a maze, while Gangan is a Japanese onomatopeia of a ringing in the ear, a headache or a climbing noise (I hope I got that right amid all the chatter and noise, heh).

So I figured Motzkin Gangan Ensemble is Tad and Tengal’s very own definition of sound art. It is a combination of different sounds organized like a jazz ensemble, where everyone is free to improvise under a certain form. In this case, an algorithm of nine artists, playing for 90 minutes at certain intervals.

Tad further writes in his notes about the performance in his blog Cavemanifesto: “[B]asically [it involves] a scheme to schedule the overlapping performances of 9 improvisors. As Tengal has a thing for the number 9, he wanted to set as many parameters as possible to 9. Thus: nine players, each playing for 9 minutes then resting for another nine; players’ entrances staggered 3 minutes apart, repeating as necessary to play a piece exactly 90 minutes long.”

Jing Garcia, Tad, and the rest of the sound artists are a relatively new breed of artists. Lirio “Elemento” Salvador, who was the only one wearing dark shades that night, played an instrument he created. He called it a “turnplate,” which is pun on a turntable. Using some electronic devices and everyday objects he found, this silver contraption (which looks like a little weapon from a Transformers movie) is an example of what Garcia calls “found instrument.” He also brought with him a bass guitar made out of found objects.

I also saw an “air synth,” a Kaoss pad, lots of synthesizers, a circuit-bended instrument (which is a modified electronic instrument), and other home-made electronic instruments that could literally shatter your eardrums when volumes swell.

The beginnings of experimental sound art or experimental music using electronic and ethnic or found instruments in the country is hazy. But Jing Garcia remembers that he and his group called The Children of the Cathode Ray were formed in 1989. At the time, they were playing what people called, “multimedia art/music.” This description would send Blums Borres, Tad, and Jing laughing. In the liner notes of the Children of the Cathode Ray, Jing writes:

The original 1989 lineup of The Children of Cathode Ray consisted of Blums Borres, Tad Ermitaño, Jing Garcia, Regiben Romana, and Magyar Tuason, with Peter Marquez pitching in as tech and gaffer. The band is a closed but metastable collective, with a 15-year history sporadic dormancy interleaved with sudden bursts of activity.

To people, sound art might be considered noise, albeit a structured one. But sound art is about challenging the conventions of traditional music. As Tad puts it:

With noise as their palette, augmented with feedback, delay and amplification, it’s as if every one of them owned an atom bomb: each one has the power to blow up the soundscape in pure white noise and most of them don’t have much experience jamming with others as a sound artist.

Honestly, they sound punk to me.

Finally, I borrowed the list of sound artists from Tad’s Cavemanifesto entry. Here they are in no particular order:

• Lirio Salvador on a self-made touch-modulated synthesizer
• Inconnu ictu on Alesis Airsynth
• Ria Munoz on Kaoss Pad and contact mic
• Chris Garcimo on Roland SH-101 keyboard
• Caliph8 on MPC Sampler
• Erick Calilan on self-made circuit-bent devices
• Jonjie Ayson on a scrapmetal bass made by Lirio
• Blums Borres on electric guitar
• Tengal on drums, panart, kulintang, interactive computer

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