Frozen Music’s Canal
experienced by
50,000 visitors during
Sleepless Night 2009
Miami, November 8, 2009 — Frozen Music, the new interdisciplinary music ensemble of the Subtropics Biennial became the unintended attraction of the 2009 Sleepless Night in Miami Beach, attracting an estimated 50,000 visitors over the 13-hour long performative installation titled Canal.
Canal excerpt 2
Excerpt from CANAL by FM (live recording)
audience reviews:
“The best use of the canal since John Collins”
“The canal is the perfect place for the sounds that are part bug and part pig”
“Bravo!”
“Different but extremely enjoyable”
“Beautiful. More canals should sound like this.”
“Could you send me a video?”
“The sounds are found. I didn’t know that such a rich ultrasonic wavelength was available – thank you for making it accessible”
“a sonic trip”
“The space and sound evoke a very special environment! I truly enjoyed immersed within it.”
“This is the very best exhibit that I have been to all night.”
“Very neat and psychic. I like the idea that it may be picking up and amplifying sounds in nature usually unheard by human ear.”
“Excellent show”
“Fabuloso!”
“Es una experiencia expectacular! Sensaciones inimaginables, que despiertan aquella parte de nosotros que no imaginabas que estaba dentro de ti! Felicitaciones, es un trabajo magnifico y merecen todo el reconocimiento que puedan tener. Seria dificil de dudar… !”
“Beautiful work. I loved meeting you.”
¡Excellent super sound!
“Bravo Subtropics!
“Great installation, you should consider living it permanently. It creates a great atmosphere in the walk! Thanks”
“Blissful! Amazing installation!”
“I’m loving the sound. Makes me feel as if I’m in a different world.”
“Fascinating experience in sound!”
“Chilling music for a leisurely stroll along the canal of love.”
“I’m interested in using your amazing dance piece since I’m a dance major at Nova Univ.”
_______________ << original announcement >>
CANAL
by Frozen Music
featuring
Gustavo Matamoros, David Dunn and Rene Barge
November 7, 2009
Saturday | 6PM-7AM (13 hours)
Dade Canal
Dade Boulevard, Miami Beach
as part of Sleepless Night
Canal is an exploration of an outdoor environment in Miami Beach using specialized audio devices capable of hearing the hidden sounds that occur underwater, inside the ground and surrounding plant life, and above or below the normal human hearing range. In addition to the sounds of everyday life, these sounds are amplified, mixed, and processed before being combined with a diverse array of other synthetically produced audio signals. The result is a constantly changing auditory fabric—heard through a state-of-the-art, multi-channel sound system—surrounding a section of the Dade Canal. The audience is free to wander within and around this sonic cloud or to come and go over several hours of continuous performance.
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The 2009-10 season of presentations by Frozen Music have been sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
FM presentations in Miami Beach are also made possible with support from City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council.
Subtropics Presents and the Subtropics Biennial of Experimental Music and Sound Art are produced by iSAW and SFCA, with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.
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The Birth of Frozen Music
FM
Gustavo Matamoros – David Dunn – Rene Barge
Frozen Music is an artist research collective and experimental music ensemble that designs and realizes interdisciplinary music in response to the acoustical characteristics of a given site. It focuses upon the making of otherwise inaudible phenomena audible in science, nature and architecture. Each performance is a kind of acoustical “tuning” or redrawing of the existing aural landscape through direct sound generation and amplification.
FM is a unique vehicle for the development and implementation of a novel kind of extended electroacoustic music presentation, at times lasting up to 16 hours. Its members use new and custom-designed audio technology to engage audiences in activations of indoor and outdoor spaces that promote an aural perception of the world. Rather than a traditional ensemble—where each musician contributes a single voice to a collective—FM arises from a confluence of sonic activation strategies where each performer engages with their own autonomous audio gestalt and unique instrumentation to simultaneously occupy and stimulate the same acoustic environment.
FM germinated from ideas explored in the Subtropics 20 exhibition SOUND at The Bass Museum of Art in March 2009. Similar to current discourse in the art world concerning the concept of art as a research activity, FM takes this notion seriously and attempts to transcend mere theoreticism by focused efforts to combine both aesthetic and scientific insights, thereby creating experiential understandings and descriptions of reality based in aural perception.