ArtFriday: David Jensenius

I’ve wanted to do an ArtFriday on a sonic/audio artist for a while now. I felt ArtFriday was becoming too two-dimensionally heavy. Problem being, I confess, is how little I fully understand or comprehend audio art. I just lack the language. Then again, I’m of a generation that can just about remember music videos on television and the first generation to be sold the concept of large amounts of digital music in your pocket. This may be why I’ve often been annoyed at audio art whenever I have gone to a place to experience it. I’m just not wired that way.

Also, visual artists greatly outnumber audio artists in all the social networks I’m part of. So I’m glad David Jensenius emailed me. I was also pensive that it may mean nothing to me. I listened with my big Sennheiser headphones. My response to David’s email: “I like this”. This is my brain being rewired.

David’s use of space fascinates me, especially as I’ve never got on well with audio art in actual space. Sitting at my desk with a decent pair of headphones, listening to 7, I got an incredible amount of work done. I was somewhere else, gently surrounded yet kept at a distance by the sounds of a social situation that I recognised and was alienated from but actually didn’t exist. 7 is made of seven layers from seven different places.

(D./C.)e-NTW:v.2.0 continues the theme of space/non-place as traffic from an email server is translated into sound. This is the music from between-places, from Send to Inbox across a gap you only partially know about.

Iraq 2006 horrified me. Machine gun basslines fed directly into your inner ear makes you realise that this is the noise you’ve zoned out when watching the news. Accompanied by Anne Rhodes singing the numbers of the death count as both Valkerie and game show scoreboardEach number counted with a “Ta-da!” as Iraq becomes a Hollow State.

These are all spaces/places. 7 is the place I know, yet didn’t exist. (D./C.)e-NTW:v.2.0 is the place I don’t know, yet I’m sure exists. Iraq 2006 is the space that I may never know and struggle to think exists anymore than a hole of failure in the Middle East.

David Jensenius is on twitter and you can find his website here. Go to Listen/Watch and listen to these three pieces with a good pair of headphones or speakers. Then listen to the rest.