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Listening Report 8 Pauline Oliveros Dan Harpole Cistern

 Maria Alighourchi

7489718

The Future of American Music

 

Listening Report 8

Pauline Oliveros

Dan Harpole Cistern

 

The clip “Dan Harpole Cistern” by Pauline Oliveros with Goddard is to me a short film with a lot of eerie elements, most prominently the echoes. But perhaps I should start with the scenery.

The scenery – an abandoned sort of underground room or catacombs, evokes a creepy atmosphere that comes with a thrill. The first few minutes of the clip feel like a “behind the scenes” video where everyone prepares for the actual recording. The ladder in the middle of the picture, leading to white, bright light entrails me to only focus my eyes on this particular object. The voice, or more so the echoes of the people around the recorded video that are not visible, are the crucial reason why the scenery seems so eerie. The voices allow a pre-melody to enter the room, a introduction of the singers voice that follows later. Without the echoed voices, in the beginning, and the chuckling and breathing of the camera women, the tape would not have the same magic atmosphere.

The whole time, without me knowing, these small melodies, escaping each person, create a suspenseful feeling. The suspense grows bigger, the longer I regard the ladder with my utmost interest. While watching, what I fist thought to be a “making of” video, I slowly realize that I am actually listening and looking at the work itself. The art of recording a music video, the art of the echoed voices who are as enthralled as I am, watching from outside. After a few minutes, I felt like I am the woman holding the camara and filming the singer, filming the people around, also being a part of the making, the creating. That my quite voice would also echo, swirling together with the others.

When the singer enters through climbing down the ladder, it seems as if an angel has been sent to the underworld itself, to pay a long visit to Hades. Her singing is hypnotizing and somber at the same time, carrying the interpretation of a fallen angel with her. The unoriented camara swings, only to contribute to the sense of being lost, puzzledly seeking a way out of the dark underworld.

However, through the other people who are entering and exiting the frame of the video, flashlights in their hand, not knowing if there are the staff for the video or if they are actors who are purposefully part of the story, the magic breaks. The magic of regarding  a perfectly recorded music video breaks, since I am in fact not watching the finished edit of a tape but everything that is connected to recording one – which has a very different magic to it.

This magic conveyed by this type of experience, is rather different since it captures the beauty  of witnessing the creation of art – in all forms. The people with the camara, the props, the lightning, the scenery – it all has an utterly changed look to it. It is more exiting, more adventures, like a journey in which everyone takes a big part in and is witnessing the show live, at the same time. The echoed voice, the quiet comments are all part of the art that create a totally different kind of art. Ultimately, getting to experience the “making of” art than the end product is more personal, is more intimate on a higher level, and could even be more categorized as art than the end product. Therefore, I do think that Oliveros and Goddard wanted to intentionally prove with this short film how much more magical it is to see a live unedited version of the art, and  that all that surrounds and prepares the end product should also be taken into account as part of the complete magic.
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