As a live performer Clark attracts an eclectic and adoring
audience. Standing, with all four of his legs, on an amplified
metal platform chewing and banging tin cans, the most famous goat
on the experimental music scene makes, literally, noise.
Clark, along with a host of other emerging artists, is the
latest on a new front in the American and European avant garde art
scene ““ noise.
With a recent spark of interest in experimental music among UCLA
Design | Media Arts graduate students, as well as fans across the
world, the Design | Media Arts Department is hosting a lecture
series called Soundscapes on the emerging artistic scene.
Upon entering the lecture room in the Kinross Building on
Monday, one was immediately confronted with what can only be
described as the “feel” of this new artistic movement.
With high, exposed ceilings and slightly off-white walls, a record
player and two computers stood, spewing a mess of tangled wires at
the front of the room.
Several speakers were emitting what sounded like feedback but
turned out to be ambient noise used in a later presentation.
Having already accomplished an urban and industrial feel with
the setting of the lecture, the artists, Cindy Bernard and David
Cotner, wore black and leather.
Bernard, beginning the lecture, focused on the history of the
Phillips Pavilion in Brussels and the Pepsi Pavilion in Japan.
These pavilions marked a distinct turning point in the mid-20th
century, for the creation of experimental music.
The Phillips Pavilion, focusing mostly on the creation of noise
and image around a static audience marked a specific view toward
art that was later changed in the Pepsi Pavilion.
Pepsi, funding the creation of a new and experimental art
pavilion in Japan, created an environment where the audience
actually participated in the creation of sound within the
facility.
Brussels, as an artist and producer, focuses on the interaction
of visual image and sound.
“If you work in space, you cannot ignore sound,”
Brussels said.
Cotner focused on the emerging art of creating noise.
Discussing everything from Clark the goat, to artists that
create unique speaker configurations, or people that mix old
Beatles records into incomprehensible screeching, Cotner focused
more on the current scene.
Cotner also stressed the true freedom of the experimental music
scene.
“That’s why noise music is free. No one cares. No
one wants it,” Cotner said.
Though Cotner is a self-proclaimed lover of noise, even he has
his limits.
“People like noise like they like uncut cocaine … you
just have to have something with it,” Cotner said.
Speaking to an audience of both UCLA students and members of the
community, the reactions of the audience were diverse.
Michael Tank, a third-year Design | Media Arts student, said,
“It was interesting how (Cotner) emphasized the freedom of it
all. … It’s something I had never learned about
before.”
“I wasn’t that into (Bernard’s) art, but the
programs she was creating looked good, and I will probably look
them up,” Tank said.