The flash animations reside inside a radio style interface. While this interface may appear to be a rather retrograde step, limiting the visitor?s options for participation, it was chosen because I wanted to convey the message, from the outset, that there is nothing to do here. I wanted to actively discourage the desire to roll all over the screen, clicking incessantly on every object in order to "see what happens." I want the viewer to be patient, to just watch and listen, even if only for a short period of time. I believe that one of the negative aspects of interactive art is that it encourages the desire to explore the interface at the expense of the content.

The animations are arranged on the radio dial in the order of their file size (from top to bottom), and their CPU overhead (from left to right).

content

The pieces range from simple evolving and random noise patterns, to self generating poetry based on the work of the Italian and Russian Futurists, such as F.T. Marinetti , Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, based around the theme of "radio" (Cf. Telegraphic Language). They are based on scripts, which generate random, evolving and permutational sequences and structures, and have no determined duration. In most cases I would think of them as musical compositions with visuals, rather than animations with sound. However, this is not to say that the sound is more important than the graphics. I like to think of ether-1 as an online album of experimental music.

the project

This is an ongoing project, some pieces will be modified over time, some will disappear, and others will take their place. Ether-2 is planned to consist of contributions from other artists (a kind of compilation album). And Ether-3 will perhaps be a "remix? project where different artists tweak, recode and otherwise mess with the work of other artists.

A world shrunk by speed Human energy centrupled by speed will master time and space We create the new aesthetic of speed. We have almost abolished the concept of space and notably diminished the concept of time. We are thus preparing the ubiquity of multiplied man. ( F.T. Marinetti, Destruction of Syntax - Wireless Imagination - Words-in-Freedom, 1913) It was this modern world "shrunk by speed" that prepared the stage for a new form of modernist literature informed by new advances in technology, and a youthful impatience with the wordiness of conventional language. This new literary form was dubbed the Ôtelegraphic styleÕ of poetry. Two factors contributed to the simultaneous eruption of telegraphic poetry all over Europe, in the early part of the twentieth century. One was the discoveries of Marconi in radio, and the other the contemporary mythification of the Eiffel Tower. In 1909 Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics on account of his work with wireless telegraphy. The possibility of being able to communicate with anywhere on the globe clearly excited the poetic imagination. News could be transmitted and received virtually instantaneously thousands of miles away, and so the distance negating power of radio fed a desire to attribute mystical qualities to it. A plethora of poetic texts appeared right across Europe, bearing the influence of this new science. The German Expressionist, Franz Richard Behrens wrote in a style which he called Telegrammstil; Ukrainian Panfuturist Mykalo Semenko wrote "Cable Poem of the Ocean"; Mayakovsky, in 1914 declared that the nervous life of cities requires quick economical abrupt words; Blaise Cendras experimented with a form he called the "telegramme poem;" Nicolas Beauduin was writing wireless poems and the Polish Futurist Stanilaw Mlodozenieg wrote telegraphic poems. Radio and wireless telegraphy is also mystified and fetishised in a number of Italian Futurist texts: MarinettiÕs Zang Tumb Tumb (1914), FilliaÕs Lussuria Radio Elettica (1925), GerbinoÕs Telegrapho e Telephono dell Anima (1926), Emilo BuccafuscaÕs Realradioculla (1934), FarfaÕs Marconia (1937), BuzziÕs Poema di Radio-onde (1940), Marinetti and MasnataÕs La Radia (1933), and DeperoÕs Uriche-radiofoniche (1934). One of the most detailed appraisals of wireless communication is KhlebnikovÕs The Radio of the Future (1921), written while he was working as a night watchman for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). These Modernist poets translated MarconiÕs discoveries from scientific fact to poetic myth. The letters TSF (Ôtelegraphie sans filÕ or Ôtelegraphia senza filiÕ) figure prominently in the poetry of Appollinaire, Marinetti and various others, and become the trademark of a crucial modernist sensibility. The quasi-magical realization that communication could be achieved without connecting wires gave birth utopian visions of a new, or scientifically liberated humanity. Many of these texts promote the almost Nietzschean idea of "cosmogonic Man" or "telegraphic Man". In The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes suggests that "for Robert Delaunay, the master image of culture was the Eiffel Tower which he viewed with real ecstasy as an ecumenical object, the social condenser of a new age"1 The first regular radio broadcasts were being received from the tower in 1909 and the popular feeling was that the tower possessed a new kind of poetry which communicates mysteriously with the entire world. The Eiffel Tower figures as a symbol of the new sensibility and combines associations of being at the center of a vast communications network, of enjoying a new kind of Promethean (or Zarathustrian) overview of the world. In June 1913, F T Marinetti published his manifesto: Destruction of Syntax - Wireless Imagination - Words-in-Freedom in which he proclaimed a freedom of images and analogies with no connecting wires of syntax and no punctuation. At about the same time, the Russian Cubo-Futurist, Alexie Kruchenykh, in the leaflet Declaration of the Word as Such, formulated a theory of transrational language, Zaum (an abbreviation of Zaumnyy Yazyk), a "free language" without definite meaning. In his essay New Ways of the Word, Kruchenykh writes: We loosened up grammar and syntax; in order to depict our dizzy contemporary life and the even more impetuous future, we must combine words in a new way, and the more disorder we introduce into the sentence structure the better. 2 and in an untitled manifesto in the booklet A Trap for Judges 2: We ceased to regard word formation and word pronunciation according to grammatical rules, since we have begun to see in letters only vectors of speech. We loosened up syntax...... we abolished punctuation marks, which for the first time brought to the fore the role of verbal mass and made it perceivable. Both the Russians and the Italians promoted the invention of new forms of representation adequate to express the speed and intensity of the modern world. Marinetti refers to "zones of intense life" (revolution, war, shipwreck, earthquake, etc) which for him are the catalysts for the production of a fractured mode of speech. For Marinetti, a person in such a situation would waste no time constructing sentences but would instinctively destroy the syntax of their speech. The result would be "handfuls of essential words with no conventional order." 3 Thus, for Marinetti, these zones of intense life require a new type of speech, a telegraphic speech, delivered with a tempo which matches the speed required by the telegraphic reporting of war correspondents (in 1911 Marinetti was a war correspondent in the Libyan War). This dramatic reduction of language elements serves, not only as an economy of speed, a need for abbreviation, "Quick give me the whole thing in two words," but, more importantly, as an intuitive link with the universe. For Marinetti, telegraphic speech reveals the analogical foundation of life itself. Echoing Marinetti, Kruchenykh defines his Transrational Language as the means of expression a person resorts to at crucial moments, citing, as a model for Transrational Language, the glossolalic speech of the flagellant, V Shishkov. Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, is a type of non-meaningful speech characteristic of schizophrenics and religious mystics, the pure unmediated expression of divine presence through inspiration. For the futurists, this communication with the divine is, in a sense, a two way street. Divine inspiration is channeled through glossolalia into language and, conversely, (in terms of poetic practice) Transrational Language, through its inner laws, penetrates the divine essence of reality, resulting in a state of higher intuition. Glossolalia constitutes a complete separation between signifier and signified, concept and sound, it is signification in its purest form, with no recourse to any referential function, the manifestation of language in the realm of pure materiality. 4 The Russian Cubo-Futurists treated words purely as plastic and sonorous materials. Kruchenykh declares that totally new words (and new ways of combining them) are needed in order to depict the new; "and so a new word was created... a genuine testimony of faith, the revelation of things unseen." 5 For Kruchenykh, conventional language is not adequate for the expression of states of inspiration. In New Ways of the Word, Kruchenykh boldly asserts that "the word is broader than thought - The word (and its components, the sounds) is not simply a truncated thought, not simply logic, it is first of all the transrational (irrational parts, mystical and aesthetic)." 6 The aim of the Cubo-Futurists was to arrive at unmediated comprehension through the word itself, through a quasi-mystical process of identification with the phonic elements, which reveals a higher meaning beyond signification. Bound up with this reverence with the word is the concept of irrationality or trans-sence. In poetry of Cubo-Futurism, the formalist practice of "Ostranenie", or making strange provided an important theoretical justification. "We learned to look at the world backward, we enjoy this reverse motion (with regard to the word we noticed that it can be read backward, and that then it acquires a more profound meaning! " 7 Thus the production of irrationality, of non-sense, was believed to present a world with new content; it provides a means of perceiving the world through to its core, as if to pierce through a veil of obscurity to find an underlying reality. Kruchenykh takes from Cubism the notion that irregular perspective generates a new fourth dimension. This irregular perspective applied to poetry (in the form of irregular structuring of a sentence, grammatic irregularity, unexpected phonetic combinations and word formations), according to Kruchenykh, generates a new perception of the world. Going beyond telegraphic lyricism, Marinetti proposes the introduction of Onomatopoetic Harmonies, "to render all the sounds and noises of modern life" 8 He speaks of" a free expressive orthography", "an instinctive deformation of words corresponds to our natural tendency towards onomatopoeia." 9 Both the Transrational Language of Kruchenykh, and MarinettiÕs Words-in-Freedom, privilege this notion of onomatopoetic naturalness, that is, the possibility of a ÔnaturalÕ universal language arising through the natural conjunction of words and acoustic images, a language untainted by the arbitrariness of signification. Marinetti writes; it matters little if the deformed word becomes ambiguous. It will marry itself to the onomatopoetic harmonies, or the noise-summaries, and will permit us soon to reach onomatopoetic psychic harmony, the sonorous but abstract expression of an emotion or a pure thought. 10 Thus Marinetti theorizes the possibility of a more efficient use of language closer to abstract thought, unhampered by the unnecessary baggage of phonetic signification, the supreme goal of which is onomatopoetic psychic harmony. Jacques Derrida speaks of a tradition, which since Plato, consistently valorises divine or natural writing over human finite artificial inscription. " there is therefore a good and a bad writing: the good and natural is the divine inscription in the heart and the soul; the perverse and artful is technique, exiled in the exteriority of the body." 11 The formulations of Words-in-Freedom and Transrational Language in their idealized purest form repeat this opposition. What is valorized is a poetic practice in which words immediately signify an eternal and universal truth, a primordial logos. Futurism seems to be condemned to repeat this opposition without bringing it into question. As a movement, Futurism remains almost exclusively antithetical and reactive, merely replacing previous values with new values. Futurism never questions the setting up of values in the first place. For example Futurism simply declares "The Aeroplane is beautiful; where as Dada and Surrealism question the very values of ÔbeautyÕ and ÔuglinessÕ. The Italian Futurists despised analysis and detail. MarinettiÕs telegraphic lyricism is a strategy for rejecting the intellectualism of passeist syntax. For Kruchenykh, new verbal form creates a new content but, in an act of glossocentrism he advocates the invention of new native (Russian) words; "do not use foreign words in your literary works." 12 For Kruchenykh there is something of a primordial feeling about the Russian language. However he feels that his native language fallen from its natural primordial state, through the subordination of the word to rational thought. Thus he advocates a new transrational language with its roots in the primordial sonority of the Russian language. Marinetti, on the other hand , does not seem to be possessed of the same reverence for the Italian language but, then, Italian is not his first language ( Marinetti grew up speaking and writing in French). For Marinetti, the essence of language lies in its evolution towards brevity, which he believes is the key to the essence of matter. Marinetti is concerned with a search for an essential language in the sense of the requisite style for the new technological age, one adequate to he modernist spirit. Marinetti writes; "The plunge of the essential word into the water of sensibility minus the concentric circles that the word produces." 13 The penetration of Words-in-Freedom into the depths of material reality without an excess of signification, polyphony and redundancy in conventional language, "only the unsyntactical poet who unlinks his words can penetrate the essence of matter". However, unlike the Russian Futurists, Marinetti had no illusions about Words-in-Freedom becoming a universal language of the future. Kruchenykh, on the other hand, declares that "Transrational works can provide a universal poetic language, born organically, and not artificially, like Esperanto."14 It was proposed that the utilization of Zaum would eventually be extended to everyday speech, not as a special language for a selected audience but as the "language of the street". However, from a strictly linguistic viewpoint, the possibility of Transrational Language ever becoming colloquial seems very remote since it presupposes only the potential ability to signify. This contradiction arises from a misunderstanding of the very nature of language. According to Saussure, Language cannot be based exclusively on the material element of sound. The linguistic signifier is not phonic but incorporeal - "constituted not by its material substance but by the differences that separate its sound image from all others." 15 The Russian Futurists focused their interest purely on the phonic element, organizing language according to sonorous and euphonic criteria to create a transrational poetry without reference. Similarly, MarinettiÕs Words-in-Freedom is at odds with its aspirations towards brevity and accelerated communication. In paring down the syntactic structure of language in order to focus on individual words, Marinetti arguably retards the pace of delivery and increases the incidence of ambiguity. While both the Italian and the Russian Futurists were concerned with the liberation of language from convention meaning in order to be able to express, at the speed of pure thought, the ubiquity of Being in a fast and multifarious world; and both proclaimed the importance of sound as pure emotional signification through onomatopoeic naturalness, and revered in the primordial aspect of the word; certain important differences remained. Technology, particularly wireless communication, became an aesthetically determining factor, in both poetic form and content. However, unlike the Italians, the Russians were, to an extent, wary of the dehumanization of industrial society, preferring to keep intact a connection to the earth via the primordial sonority of their native tongue, and finally moving toward the Constructivist values of Man controlling his own destiny through conscious social change. The Italians, on the other hand, rejoiced whole-heartedly in the glorification of war, speed and technology and the intense nihilism of a total acceleration of life. Their modernist vision of the future united Man and machine forever in a multiple and simultaneous awareness; an existence in which human potential would be multiplied by the efficiency of technology. 1. Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New:Art in the Century of Change, London: BBC, 1980, 36. 2. Alexie Kruchenyk, "New Ways of the Word" in A.Lawton & H. Eagle. Russian Futurism through its manifestoes 1912-1928, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,1988, 73. 3. F. T. Marinetti, "Destruction of Syntax - Wireless Imagination - Words-in-Freedom" in Richard Pioli, ed. Stung by salt and WarThe Creative Texts of the Italian Avant-Gardist F.T. Marinetti. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. (unpaginated). Also in Umbro Apollonio, ed. Futurist Manifestoes. New York: Viking, 1973, 98. 4. Allen S Weiss, "Psycho Pompomania" in The Aesthetics of Excess, Albany: State University of New york Press, 1989, 117-118. 5. Kruchenykh, "New Ways of the Word," Lawton Op Cit, 72. 6. Ibid., 71. 7. Ibid., 76. 8. Marinetti, Op Cit., 104. 9. Ibid., 106. 10. Ibid. 11. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammotology, Trans. Gayatri Spivak, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976, 15. 12. Kruchenykh, "New Ways of te Word," Lawton, Op Cit., 77. 13. Marinetti, Op Cit., 100. 14. Kruchenykh, "Declaration of Transrational Language," Lawton, Op Cit., 183. 15. Ferdinand De Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, Trans. Wade Baskin, New York: McGraw Hill, 1959, 118-119. Copyright © 2002 soundtoys.net™ All artists rights reserved.

Ian Andrews How do you define "soundtoys" ? Toys should be fun. Soundtoys should not be too serious or overly academic. Unlike sound applications (productivity software) they should not need a definite purpose. Unlike games they should not need to have a goal or final outcome. Sound should be, if not the primary consideration, at least equal in importance to the visual elements. On a personal level, why do you make this work? Over the years I have come up with a number reasons to justify my work, ranging from the political to the aesthetic expression. I now believe that my motivation to do this work comes from a compulsion to "muck around with things." It is play, playing around with ideas and technologies, rather than the desire to express something (from within) that drives my work. For this reason, among others, my work often involves a considerable proportion of random, aleatory or indeterminant processes. What is you project and your work about? Ether -1 combines my fascination, since childhood, with shortwave radio noise, and the "empty" channels on the television (in 60s, of course, television sets had large rotary switches which displayed several dead channels of snow and noise patterns between the broadcasting stations), with my research into the fascination that the Russian and Italian Futurists had for the "new" science of radio telegraphy in the early 20th century. It is, in other words concerned with the zone of "noise" on the fringes of communications. It is also an attempt to raise questions about the nature of the net itself. By forcing the visitor into a radio style interface I hope to reinforce the idea that the net is not like radio television. Ether-1 can also be thought of as an online album of electronic music. Its also an ongoing project. Ether-2 is planned to be a collection of contributions from other artists working in the same field. Ether-3 will perhaps be a "remix" project where different artists get the chance to tweak one another's code. Overall, my work in this area is primarily about providing interesting low bandwidth sound and music over the net. How long have you been working in this area? I've been working with sound since about 1981, with video since 1984, moving towards computer graphics about 1989. I started working on net based animation with Flash in 1999 and finally, with sound in flash and action script in 2000. Were you an artist/ musician first who got into using computers/the net, or did you respond to the net as a medium in an artistic way? I was an artist/ musician first who got into using computers/ the net but also had a long relationship with computers starting with Commodore 64, then Amiga and Atari computers. But I always used them in conjunction with analogue technology. What/ who has influenced you in your work? (themes, other artists etc) For this piece the obvious influences are: the poetry of F. T. Marinetti, Apollinaire, Khlebnilov, et al, Jean Cocteau's film _Orphee_, Shortw noise and number stations (from my own listening over the years, as well as the Conet Project), and the extreme techno-minimalism of artists such asPanasonic (Pansonic). As for my work in general, there have been a great deal of influences over the years. I'll list only the most important, and I think it would be more interesting to list them I the order in which they occurred. 1979- Han's Richter's _Dada: Art and Anti-art_ changed my life and set me down this path. In the early 80s the writings of William Burroughs big influence and got me working with tape recorders. The art of Duchamp and Ernst,. David Lynch's film _Eraserhead_. The music of Stockhausen, Cage, Fluxus, Varese, Paik, Robert Carey, early Severed Heads, Esplendor Geometrico, Boyd Rice. The experimental films of Brakhage, Sharits, Resnais B grade Sci-Fi movies, the original Twilight Zone and The Outer limits. I the late 80s the writings of the situationists, The films of Jarman, Godard, Tarkovsky, Ruiz. The 90s - The writings of Bataille, Derrida, Benjamin. Techno music (in particular Detroit techno and the post-techno avant garde). Are there any other artists covering the same field as you? Joshua Davis. www.praystation.com/ Do you see this work as art? Yes but also music, more or less bluring the line between the two. With regard to 'soundtoys' especially, why do you think the audio visual form is so key to the net? Probably because the net has been marketed as an entertainment medium, and that has, to a large extent, determined the direction taken by the development of the technology. I would argue that the audiovisual form is the dominant form of the net but it's not the only art on the net. Non-browser based works, text environments, and conceptual works on the net are of equal importance in my opinion. mIn regard to "soundtoys" on particular, they represent something more unique than the dominant audio visual forms (movie trailers/ advertisements, MP3s etc.) in that they, to a certain extent, resist commodification. How important is the visual aspect in the 'new' relationship of the audio visual.? Here I can only speak for my own work. For me the visual aspect is very important but it should never become dominant. The idea of someone watching my work with the sound down is a concern for me. Therefore I have tried to make it pretty obvious that it is a sound work, not just a visual work with sound. How novel do you feel generative music and interactivity is? Theoretically there is little difference between computer generated generative music and the aleatory and process based work of John Cage and other Fluxus artists. Also generative algorithmic computer music has been around for some time. However, the fact that it happens over the net, often taking the form of a unique version every time it is played, so that no one who plays it, hears exactly the same thing as someone else, makes it quite novel at this moment in history. Interactivity, in terms of the visual, has been with us for some time, but true interactive sound pieces are much more recent artform. Do you think there is a history to audio visual work? Certainly, beginning with the first avant garde films of the Futurists and Dadaists, through to the tradition of experimental filmmaking in the 1960s, through to video art and media art. Recently this trajectory has been marginalised in the independent film/video communities and replaced by the dominant form of the "calling card" or "one joke" short film. This has resulted in many experimental film and video artists turning to multimedia and the net, where global communities concerned with like minded activities can flourish. Would you describe yourself as a multimedia artist, a net.artist, programmer, or none of the above? A multimedia artist in the broad sense of the term, covering video art, sound art and music production. What software do you use most and why? Macromedia Flash because I like the aesthetic, it can deliver quite small files, it has large install base, and a reasonably powerful scripting language. On the downside its very buggy and is somewhat lacking in of what it can do with sound. Can you recommend three urls to soundtoys? http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA.html its not really soundtoys but I like it alot Ian Andrews, born 1961 (Australia) is a Sydney based independent film, video and sound artist who has been practicing since 1981. Beginning with experimental audio collage, Andrews gradually moved into the production of film and video, and film and video soundtracks, and then to electronic music, digital animation and interactive net art. Much of Andrews’ work consists of video/sound collage, "cut-up," and agit-prop culture jamming utilising a diverse range of visual styles – from animation to "found" footage. The work is often characterised by themes such as technology and subjectivity. In the early 80s he produced a number of 16mm "cut-up" films which were shown in conjunction with live audio performances, During this time he also created experimental radio work and audio cassettes, and collaborated with international artists on various experimental sound projects. He studied electronics and computer studies at TAFE from 1983 to 1986 in order to achieve the knowledge and skills to build his own electronic instruments and video equipment. This was supplemented with a traineeship in the broadcast television industry. In1988 be began working at Metro Television (Metro Screen), where he is still employed today. He studied film at the University of Technology Sydney from which he graduated with first class honours in 1994. During this period he made a number of films and videos, and wrote several essays on sound which were published in periodicals such as NMA and Essays in Sound. In the early nineties he formed a video (VJ –visuals) group with long term colleges John Jacobs and Marco Fante. The group – Subvertigo performed using a diverse collection of video equipment including cameras, video mixers, VCRs, effects devices, computers, oscilloscopes and specialised home built equipment. Subvertigo performed from 1992 till 1997 during which they did over fifty performances at techno dance parties and other events. Andrews has also produced electronic dance music of which much can be heard on CDs and records released in Australia and overseas. Over the last couple of years he has returned his focus to the production of experimental music and video. His latest work consists of a series of sound interactives (and aleatory and permutative works) for delivery over the net. Using Macromedia Flash with action script he has developed techniques to deliver interesting and reasonably high fidelity sound using minimal bandwidth and small file sizes. Recently he has collaborated with Garry Bradbury (Size) on the Sanity Clause project, and created visual work for The Loop Orchestra. Andrews has exhibited his works in various international film and video festivals including festivals in Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Naples, Catania, Amsterdam, Berlin and Wellington, in addition to numerous events throughout Australia. He has spoken about and presented his work at various conferences, both nationally and internationally. In June 2001 he presented a retrospective of his work, from 1983 to 2000, as part of the Sydney Film Festival. Andrews teaches video technology and interactive media subjects at Metro Screen in Sydney. i.andrews@metroscreen.com.au http://www.metroscreen.com.au Copyright © 1998 - 2005 soundtoys.net™ All rights reserved.