An FTP site has been set up to include extra material for download regarding The Anta Project.
Available for download so far:
1. Full Signal to Noise Article (Fall 2006)
2. Anta Project Power Point (PDF version updated 04/08)
3. A video from Friday Morning Everywhere
ANTA PROJECT s/t CD (SONIC ANTA) In which a Tuscon-based artist named Glenn Weyant makes "an enhanced sound collage compiled from covert performances utilizing modified chop sticks and a cello bow to play the steel wall, barbed wire fences and assorted ephemera that separates the United States from Mexico in the Sonoran Desert." So, on one hand this is a pretty politically charged album -- as the liner notes say, "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," and sometimes you can hear the helicopters flying overhead -- but the first time I put it on I hadn't read all of that context yet, and it just sounded like a fine eerie contact-mic-driven experimental desert album. Of course the grandaddy of this genre is Jeph Jerman, aka Hands To, and some of the sounds here also remind me of Alan Lamb, micing up those big telephone wires down in the outback of Australia... and I was just reading an interview with Jerman where the approach was referred to as "acoustic ecology." Maybe this is some sort of acoustic sociology, I don't know, but as a sonic experience alone it's an interesting and fairly powerful record.
If an artist is a symbol-maker, then Glenn Weyant's musical artistry is pure magic.
In a work he calls The Anta Project, he transforms the U.S.-Mexico border wall into a musical instrument using, as he says: "a cello bow and implements of mass percussion."
He literally uses that cello bow to make avant garde music from the steel wall, barbed wire fences and assorted barriers that separate the United States from Mexico in the Sonoran Desert.
Weyant took a look at the border wall and then set out in 2006, as he said: "to transform this symbol of fear and loathing into an instrument capable of promoting unity, dialogue and compassion through sound and performance."
Now, three years later, his project potentially has the power to transform the suffering of border crossers into relief and assistance.
By collaborating with No More Deaths, an Arizona-based human rights organization, Weyant plans to release The Anta Project and its companion Droneland Security as a limited edition, double-disc set.
All profits from the album will directly benefit No More Deaths' life saving mission: to address the suffering and deaths of border crossers and to illuminate and rectify problems in U.S. border policy.
In 2006, he gained national attention when he traveled to the Arizona border for an endeavor he would later call the "Anta Project.".Spending 10 hours in the summer heat, Weyant improvised songs by drumming against the border wall that divided Nogales, Sonora, from Nogales, Ariz.He ran bows along barbed-wire fences, hooked mics up to shrines and gently tapped on discarded water jugs left in the desert for migrants..Weyant uploaded samples to his site and threw a mix of tracks on CD for sale. He hoped his efforts would spread awareness.."There was a real misconception of what I was seeing the U.S.-Mexico border to be like," he said. "I wasn't hearing stories about the number of migrants dying in the deserts. I thought I would tell the story journalistically with sound and images, a real avant-garde piece.".The online recordings drew in listeners from around the world. He was even featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."."For the most part it has been embraced," he said. "There is always somebody out there who will approach it with anger. They are in a mind-set that doesn't follow the idea of 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' It is more about walls and protectionism.".The Anta Project earned Weyant a cult following. These days, his Web site receives more than 9,000 unique hits a month.
Electric Fan Sound Works
The Tucson Electric Fan Appreciation Society
SonicAnta CD-R
The ephemerality of downloadable music - mp3s, iPods, file sharing,
and secret invitation-only servers stocked with thousands of albums –
has spurred astute artists and labels to make "physical releases" special, as a smartly packaged art object, a pocket exhibition of sound, or, in the case of Electric Fan Sound Works, part of a limited edition subscription-only series.
Available as a premium for joining the Tucson Electric Fan Appreciation Society or by subscribing to Glenn Weyant's SonicAnta D-Construction Sound Subscription Series at sonicanta.com, Electric Fan Sound Works is a single 30-minute composition based on a Honeywell electric fan. Recorded by, according to the liner notes, "a variety of microphones strategically placed to 'play up' the fan's assorted tones, drones, and nuances," this is industrial ambient music in its purest form. You hear the fan click on and whirr; drones gradually accumulate, and on headphones, gently tilt
from left to right.
I also listened at multiple volume levels through speakers at ambient sound levels and at full attention with the disc blasting. Heard in the background, Electric Fan Sound Works creates an insulating, almost comforting aural wallpaper; loud, the disc unfurls scattered knocks and pings as well as sumptuous drones piled atop one another, as if the distant din of a long-abandoned factory could echo into our ears.
In a way, Glenn’s vision makes sense to me. When I think about that eternal flow of mountains and prairies, a steel wall seems like an ugly scar ripped across the belly of society by some act of unnatural and incomprehensible violence.
Tonight’s show is part of the Chicago Calling Arts Festival, which brings together local and out-of-town artists in unexpected multidisciplinary collaborations—and as far as such things go this improvisation by Michael Erzen, Eric Leonardson, Glenn Weyant, and Matt Weston is a doozy.
Both Leonardson, a local, and Weyant, from Tucson, have invented and mastered instruments made from wood, springs, and cheap electronics that yield an astounding variety of sounds.
The former will be playing his electroacoustic Springboard, and the latter—who once “played” the U.S.-Mexico border wall in a project challenging its divisiveness—was at press time still working on something light enough to avoid overweight charges on the flight from Arizona.
They’ll be joined by Weston, an experimental drummer from Northampton, Massachusetts; his use of close miking and distortion on the recent album Not to Be Taken Away (7272) makes conventional percussion instruments sound like machines in extremis. Erzen, a local kinetic sculptor, will bring his Artbot, a semiautonomous robot that creates abstract paintings inspired by live music.
"The 30-minute record (The Tucson Electric Fan Appreciation Society Presents: Electric Fan Sound Works ) features subtle volume and tone changes, going from an upper treble whirling to a bass-heavy drone, followed by some spooky studio mixing that makes the fan not sound like a fan anymore. So what's your first reaction? Sounds a little out there, right? But why? After all, it is just sound. Does that make it less earworthy just because an everyday noise has been captured and released on a recording? For us, one deeper question that Electric Fan provoked is this: Does the CD straddle the abstract line between our conscious and subconscious minds? Definitely so. This album questions more than answers, which creative art tends to do."
Imagine waking up and tuning in the radio toElectric Fan Sound Works . How could the day ever be the same? Every town NEEDS a radio program/ host like DaveX's It's Too Damn Early!
"I’m going to close the broadcast with the Glenn Weyant, as promised. This is from the latest installment of the Sonic Anta D-Construction Sound Subscription Service, which is a bitch to type, but a joy to hear. I thought I had everything when my double disc set of experimental bagpipe ensemble music arrived, but “Electric Fan Sound Works” put me over the moon. Thanks, Glenn! As per his request in the liner notes, I’m letting listeners live it up with the full 30-minute recording. See you next week!"
"The Anta Project blurs the lines between sociopolitical art and experimental music. By reinventing the barrier fence into an electro-acoustic instrument, Weyant breaches on the controversial issue of US border control... A solid piece of work- thank you."
Glenn Weyant's presentation was fascinating and I think a lot of academics and non-academics alike would be interested in his project.
The Anta Project is a musical project wherein Glenn Weyant uses the wall along the US/Mexican border as an instrument. He plays it, with chop sticks and a cello bow, creating a "sonic sculpture" or sort of soundtrack of the wall as emitted by itself. It sounds intergalatic. Go forth and listen.
A nice synopsis of the Knoxville, TN installation.
Finally got a serious chunk of Glenn Weyant’s amazing “Anta Project” on the show. The Anta Project, which boils down masses of Weyant’s recording of his performances at (and ON) the US/Mexico border, will probably be the last straw for Homeland Security who are growing tired of ripping open all the weird packages you people send me. In my defense, please send more– it is my theory that if we keep them busy examining my mail, that they’ll leave Glenn alone to continue his incredible work. After you mail off your goodies, bop over to the SonicAnta site, and check out some of the recordings for yourself. Good stuff!
A video profile on The Kestrel 920 and assorted sonic doings broadcast on Tucson's public television news program: Arizona
Illustrated.
A fine Tucson radio interview about The Anta Project and assorted works.
A nice link to the Anta Project link on BOING-BOING (a fantastic site).
An hour of this stuff is hard to take in one sitting, but there’s something refreshing about this duo’s approach to the avant garde. In an age where it’s so easy to hit a button on a plug-in and spew out electronic noise to order, it’s great to hear something created the hard way, using imaginative playing techniques to extract new sounds from acoustic instruments. Phil and Glenn have found enough different flavours of cacophony to give each track its own distinct character, yet the album as a whole has a pleasing coherence.
A random discovery of Seven Transharmonic Explorations In Multitonal Omnivibrationalism: Volume Six in the "used bin" of a record shop leads to this wonderful review.
"Weyant's adeptness in layering different slices of musical textures creates coherent and strange wholes. I assume he is the only performer of the four to six instruments used on each track, from prepared piano and guitar, to clarinet and saxophones, to small percussion, to washing machines and sinks. The previously mentioned invented instrument whose description (“...a segment of found lumber that has been hollowed to create a resonation chamber for the placement of a contact microphone...”) brings to mind the work of Hal Rammel, whom I was lucky enough to witness before I left Chicago. The pieces, usually over ten minutes in length, cloud themselves in hypnotic soundscapes of drones, alienated melodies, tiny scraping noises and electronic processing. The various layers of noises fit together as if played by an ensemble and not one person, save for the saxophones on “Snug in Acid Washed Genes,” and “In the Sea of Key,” where they clash with the background noises as if randomly overdubbed.
Employing a combination of found sounds (the thump of helicopters flying above the border, for instance, or the amplified microtones of very small, guttural sounds within the wall) and experimental composition (perhaps most strikingly, the hum of Weyant stroking the barbed wire fence with his cello bow), the artist managed to compile a 57-minute soundtrack of carefully choreographed ambient sound. The Anta Project —“Anta” roughly translates to “border” or “end of territory” in Sanskrit—is also currently on exhibition at the Art Gallery of Knoxville, thanks to exhibition curator Crowe's interest in his work.
“When I heard you on the radio, I felt this excitement, this sense of relief,” Crowe tells Weyant. “It was just amazing to me that something so divisive could be softened, turned into an instrument, into something beautiful.”
Weyant humbly points out that he's not the first person to have “played a wall”; other politically charged borders, such as the barbed wire surrounding concentration camps, have also yielded music in the past. But he's the only artist thus far who has applied the idea to the wall between Mexico and the United States, challenging the disturbingly popular notion that a fence could stop the flow of undocumented immigrants into our country.
“It's an easy way of galvanizing the tension,” he explains. “We don't have solutions, but at least we can have a focal point for our fear: ‘We built a wall, we're safe.' But if the border has become a symbol of national insecurity, why can't we take the symbol and turn it on its head? Let's transform the wall, reconceptualize it as a bridge between two worlds.”
A thoughtful radio interview about The Art Gallery of Knoxville show.
In this music, haunting drones, shimmering and brittle, layer on top of each other, repeating and ebbing in an oddly calming fashion. Close your eyes, and the thick, humming electricity may evoke an alien landscape or a wayward beacon sent into space and lost. One of the last mental images these sounds are likely to summon is a man standing in the desert playing a metal fence with a cello bow and modified chopsticks, yet that’s exactly what you’re hearing in Glenn Weyant’s Anta Project recordings. At least, that’s the primary sound: Listen closely, and you might make out water jugs played with mesquite sticks, a barbed wire fence also given the bowed treatment, or the sound of helicopters circling in the sky.
VIDEO LINK FROM GALLERY INSTALLATION.
Supposing we relent for a moment and accept that border fences are destined to completely take over the world and will undoubtedly proliferate across the global landscape.
I wonder then how they might be used to, in a sense, bring themselves down?
How could we, as Weyant intends, transform them from “a symbol of fear and loathing into an instrument”?
Not only an instrument for making music but for devising some sort of architectural protest, perhaps; how could we use these structures to create a kind of auto-deconstructive Wall event where borders and barriers become a symbol of solidarity and resistance rather than an extended spatial dimension of military power and divisive nationalism?
What if playing them, as Weyant does, turned the fence along the U.S./Mexico border into something that came alive? What if all walls became, as a result of being made musical, to some degree, conscious of their own presence, their imposing nature – often times tragically out of context – erected for no other purpose then to serve some ideological trapping?
Weyant said he may also consider returing to Merced in order to "play" the city's water tower with the UC Merced logo, which is visible from Highway 99.