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SonicAnta: ABOUT

About The Anta Project: Office Map

 The Anta Project is a series of recordings made in 2006, by playing the border walls and assorted ephemera found along the U.S./Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona.

The roughly 10 hours of recordings were then blended in a multi-track laptop environment to create a single sonic collage.

The instruments chosen for this project were objects with political and metaphorical symbolism found during my desert journey.

By turning the three-mile long Nogales steel wall that separates the U.S. from Mexico into a sprawling electro-acoustic instrument, my goal was to deconstruct its purpose and sonically prod the listener into a line of inquiry:

What is it I am hearing?

Why do these things exist?

 Who is kept in and who is kept out?

Instead of being an implement of division, the wall becomes an instrument of creation with the power to unite. ~*~

 

~*~ Similar desert performances were carried out upon a leaking water jug (played with found mesquite sticks), a barbed wire fence (played with a cello bow), and a roadside shrine dedicated to travelers and police alike.

The sound of wind vibrating fence wires in the open spaces and the thumps of helicopter blades were also manipulated and recorded. Office Map

The recordings were obtained by attaching a Schaller Oyster contact mic with roughly five feet of chord to the object of choice with a swatch of black electrical tape.

The signal from the microphone was then fed into a battery powered DOD sustain/ volume/ compression pedal.

Unlike an ordinary audio recording where a microphone is used to capture signals as they enter the air, these contact mic recordings focused upon how the objects themselves internally interpreted the sonic world around them as well as my percussive applications.

For each performance I used an assortment of sticks and mallets I’d customized or discovered. These included chopsticks (plain, taped and with rubber balls glued to the ends), a metal whisk with bent tines, an amazingly sturdy cardboard tube which once held fax paper, thin rods of aluminum removed from a science experiment and palm cut frond cores. All performances were closely monitored (and occasionally inspected) by armed agents of The U.S. Border Patrol, The Department of Homeland Security and The City of Nogales Police Department.

 A semi-regularly updated Power Point (PDF) detailing Anta Project background is available HERE.

About Glenn Weyant:

In addition to being a sound-sculptor, I am also a journalist- educator- baker- instrument inventor- welder based in Tucson, Arizona. Office Map

Over the past few years I have had the pleasure of workng with: Margaret Randall, The Running Dogmas Collective, Prepping Finger Salad, The High On Out Duo, Adam Cooper-Teran, George Haslam, Phil Hargreaves, Bill Marconi, Steev Hise, Barry Chabala, Mike Yarrish, Mike Sekel, Jane Crowe, Jon Rose and many others.

As far back as I can remember, I have found myself consistently drawn to projects which blend the borders of the sometimes fiercely distinct worlds of freejazz, experimental music, electro-acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing. Instrumentation I routinely use includes, but is not limited to: tenor/alto sax, clarinet, flutes, upright piano, found object percussion and instruments of original design such as the Kestrel 920. ~*~

 

~*~ More videos: HERE.

About the Kestrel 920:

The Kestrel 920, is a sound transmogrifer I designed and calibrated to amplify and exploit the nano and overt vibrations created through percussive blows, bowing, electromagnetic fields and assorted manipulation. Office Map

 At the heart of Kestrel 920 is a segment of found lumber that has been hollowed to create a resonation chamber for the mounting of a contact mic.

The lumber has been strategically mounted with found objects mostly including: a tuned dust pan, a deconstructed satellite dish mount, assorted screws, nails, bungee cords, wires and springs.

The vibrations and subsequent tones created by the manipulation of these objects passes into/and is translated by the grain of the lumber where it is captured by the contact mic, boosted, processed and eventually broadcast.