Music From The Other Room
Multimedia lab experimenting with image and sound. We try to do things as they are not supposed to be done.
This episode covers Funayūrei 2. Continuing the painterly approaches to image combination, this film also devolves into some of the most abstraction of the entire series with an ending that reframes the whole.
This episode is Funayūrei 1. A new series with more painterly techniques. This video also happens upon current events and attempts to present a certain consideration of the moment.
This episode of The White Whale tackles the fifth film of Hikikomori extensively before getting off track for the slightest of moments.
This episode of The White Whale dives into the films of Hikikomori and doesn't get past the third video, which is actually the first video. Confused? We explain. Just listen to the podcast.
Sounds of Harlem in 1968. The story of one woman's experience during a time of great musical evolution. This piece was produced by Garrett Tiedemann and The White Whale as part of The 24-Hour Radio Race from KCRW's Independent Producer Project.
Tape Extracts:
So, sounds. You wanted to know about sounds, the music. Well...
I don't remember hearing a lot of the guys rehearsing. I mean, occasionally I could hear someone practicing.
What we had instead were the sounds of fire engines and police sirens because it was Harlem in 1968 and things were poppin'.
Kids playing outside. That was a big deal.
There were the sounds of neighbors in the building. People playing music or watching TV. It was my neighborhood. You know like, 'these are the people in your neighborhood' kind of, from Sesame Street.
Friends went trick-or-treating for me, that was really nice and they brought be a bag of candy.
There were all these jazz musicians who lived in the co-op where I lived and they all worked weird hours. Some of them came and went in limousines. I wouldn't get to hear them playing very often. Occasionally I could sort of hear someone practicing.
There was an apartment building that was under construction across the street and they had to use a pile driver to sink piles to help hold the building up and that reminded me of the pile drivers they used when they were building the highway nearby when I was like, I don't know, 3, and it was kind of like the relentless march of human progress.
The only musician I hear practicing was the kid who lived below me who would every weekend try to play the Star-Spangled Banner out the window into the courtyard. Oh god, did he practice, he was so diligent. I have to admire his diligence. Every weekend he would practice.
I kind of had to rely more on my ears to figure out where I was and what was going on around me. I felt like I was hearing the sound of time rushing by.
We'd hear them because my dad would have their records. The musicians who lived in the co-op were out working so we didn't get to...it wasn't like you could hear them, you know, out the windows or something.
So, that was, I guess, a little odd. Because like, you know, we'd play records from somebody who lived around the hall form us or somebody who lived in the next building or somebody who lived around the corner. I don't know, I never really thought about it. It was just like 'this is what they did, this was their job'.
Mostly I just remember just kind of running into them when I'd be with my parents or with my mom and have them telling me like, my parents, my mom, who this person was and it would sort of register, but it was just kind of like, you know just one more grownup in my life. It wasn't a big deal, it was just like 'there's the guy who worked at the airport and there's the guy who works at the Tonight Show. That's the way it was.
I think my strongest memory of musicians is when I was very small and while making the rounds through the neighborhood with my mother; you know, going to the market and going to the dry cleaners and all that stuff, we would pass by Louis Armstrong's house and if he was out in the front yard my mom would say hello to him and they would chat over the hedge. But, I could never see him because the hedge was taller than me. So, I could hear that distinctive voice, but really rarely saw the face. But, I knew who it was. And, you know, I don't know how much I cared, you know all I cared about was getting a pastry at the Italian bakery at the end of our errands.
This episode looks exclusively at the last film for Aokigahara and how it took making the feature film KliKt to excavate buried ideas feeding an understanding that informed the development of The Yōkai Trilogy's films.
This episode presents a break down of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' music video and launches into how to not make a film, yet derive a way of making from it. Professionalism be damned. It also ends with the last track of Aokigahara and bends closer to talking about the second record's films.
This episode of The White Whale continues interrogating the films and dives into Garrett's history to learn more about what shapes the current work. Shifting from Jurassic Park to Fellini to the music video for Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', this episodes shapes context and provides valuable considerations for The Yōkai Trilogy's visual layout possible.
This episode of The White Whale winds things down. Concluding Funayūrei's making, John brings us to the guest in his room uninvited and the curious happenings around the finality of the trilogy. It's an ending in a beginning.
This episode takes an interesting turn to the Titanic as we set up the weird arrivals of Funayūrei's ghosts.
This episode of The White Whale returns looks at how one develops an openness with creativity and thinking outside the box of art. Where do we get our ideas? How do we accept our voice and interpretation if the surrounding thoughts counter it as correct? Why does it matter that you find your own road?
This episode dives into the "choose your own adventure" element to The Yōkai Trilogy's production as we move closer to Funayūrei and an eventual descent into the videos that came about as a result of this music.
This episode involves videos games and EVPs - their existence and use value in the sounds of ghost stories - as conversation begins to address the films ever more.
This episode starts addressing the films and how they evolved the way John saw the music. The coincidences of construction keep building onto this new narrative, creating ripples in how everyone can interpret the work.
This episode speaks thoroughly to the inspirations and compositional aesthetic of Hikikomori. Made up of inorganic instruments, John also speaks to mixes derived by machines rather than him alone.
This episode goes further into what it is to be Hikikomori and and why John's second record of the trilogy doesn't have a single organic instrument on it.
This episode looks at the classics by James, Poe, and Hawthorne to examine how limiting their structures of storytelling have become. For the modern day ghost story Aokigahara is much more than a name for a first record, but a conduit to ideas that may in fact bring us out of history.
This episode looks at how sound running backwards and listening out of order became significant conduits to composition. "Start anywhere, go anywhere, and do anything" as John says. Being a decider of your own experience shapes your context.
So begins conversation of The Yōkai Trilogy, its origins in ghost stories, and the desire to tell something different - first with the written word and then without.
This episode of The White Whale offers a preview of season 1, which aims to thoroughly consider The Yōkai Trilogy - an art collaborative between John R. Barner and Garrett D. Tiedemann where John supplies the music and Garrett the visuals. The project has been happening for more than a year and a half with the support of CyNar Pictures and American Residue Records. Final record in the trilogy and set of films are due for release soon.