Rick Gribenas: In Memoriam Tones by Ayanah Moor

Posts on this blog usually begin with and include a picture of the contributor of the tone(s). In regards to these In Memoriam Tones, I’m avoiding that tendency; for these images are meant to convey the loss or absence of a person from our Pittsburgh landscape–the artist Rick Gribenas, who passed away earlier this year. He died when he was 31, as he was undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The image above and the tones below were submitted by Ayanah Moor, artist and associate professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Around 2001-2002, Ayanah began collaborating with Gribenas. Their collaborations consisted of print-making and mixing music together. “I believe we met each other at A.I.R. (Artist Image Resource) on the North Side,” Ayanah said. “When we played music together, Rick would come over to my house, he’d bring his cassette tape deck, a stack of tapes and a computer, and he’d alter sound from the tape deck in real time. I worked with two CD turntables. We didn’t talk a lot about thematics before we’d begin playing–we just let these ‘conversations’ unfold.”

Around 2005, Gribenas left Pittsburgh for grad school at Columbia College in Chicago. That same year, Ayanah had a solo show at A+D 11th Street Gallery in Chicago (Columbia College’s gallery), and one of their recorded pieces was part of he exhibition. The photograph above is documentation of their 11-minute piece,  A&R. The two ringtones contributed by Ayanah are excerpted from that collaborative piece, and are dedicated to Rick in memoriam.

“When he returned to Pittsburgh after completing his graduate studies, Rick left this note in my mailbox. I kept meaning to respond to it, but didn’t,” Ayanah said. “I never caught up with him. That’s why I decided to create some tones in memoriam. It’s an opportunity to bring closure. It just feels right.”

Last week, Ayanah and I listened to the track and talked about excerpts that would capture the essence of their music-making collaboration. We both thought that Gribenas/Moor@3:41 would make a great ringtone or phone alarm, and then we selected Gribenas/Moor@7:10 as a second tone.

These are the first memorial tones in the project. Thank you, Ayanah, for your thoughtful contribution–a contribution that responds to my project’s focusing question with sounds from the not-so-long-ago past that still resonate in the minds and in hearts of many Pittsburghers who knew this young artist.

What did Pittsburgh sound like? Sometimes it sounded like the handiwork of Rick Gribenas.

Steel Fabrication Tones

Meet the gentlemen who work at Zottola Steel Corporation, a fabrication shop in East Liberty. I met Matt Zottola about a month ago at a friend’s party. As soon as I answered his what-do-you-do question, he said, “How about some steel fabrication tones?” Since I’d just been to Rivers of Steel to get archival steel industry tones, I thought some present-day steel tones would be fitting. Plus, such a shop would be the next likely stop after steel came out of a mill–so perfect!

Matt started working at his family’s business when he was in high school. “I’d get calls from my father to come down and help out when other guys were missing from the floor,” he said. And it’s still a family business–the day I visited, Matt’s son Brandon was there working.

The shop is huge (the building is 18,000 square feet and the ceiling is about 25 feet high). Looking around, I kept thinking of the Richard Scarry books I had as a little kid. How I loved looking at all those finely detailed pictures of animals working (at the airport, in stores, on city streets). Those books, like episodes of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, when Fred went to visit factories and farms and other exotic-to-me places, made me feel like I was having a look at something most folks don’t get to see. Neat-o.

I asked Matt where their work goes after it leaves the building. “About 99% of the fabrication we do is for construction of some sort. Every once in a while, we produce a part of a machine for a customer. And we also did the cages and chutes for the elephants and polar bears at the Pittsburgh Zoo.”

Matt identified major sounds related to the work that goes on in the shop and introduced me to the men on his team who specialize in working with the various equipment. As we went around the shop, the guys were helpful, fun to work with, and darn patient with me and my childlike curiosity about what the heck the machines actually did.

The first audio I recorded for a tone was made by Russ Kovacic, who was working on a stainless steel truck rack.

Before I began recording, the guys brought over an extra helmet so that I could see what the welding process looks like. If you haven’t seen anybody weld before, you might not know that you shouldn’t look directly at that firey light from the torch. Through the green glass of the helmet I couldn’t see the fire, just the path of melted steel from the torch. Very cool. Or should I say hot? Anyhow, here’s Russ Kovacic’s Welding Tone.

After welding, we moved onto grinding. When I asked Matt which of the audio would make the most ‘iconic’ ringtone for him, he said, “grinding because practically every job that goes out of here has to have some grinding done on it before it leaves this place.”

Dave “Unk” Demme did the honors. I pulled very straightforward audio from his work on the steel truck rail to make this Grinding Steel Tone.

Here’s the other Dave–Dave Bassett. He ran the machine called the Iron Worker, which, as Matt told me, “takes a lot of tonnage to punch through stainless steel.” And it makes a very loud “bang” sound that made me jump in the air when I heard it the first time. This ringtone audio consists of the ‘whir’ of the machine once it’s powered up, the punch and a little clank.

It was the loudest, scariest, most powerful sound I recorded within the shop. It reminded me of the industrial music my college friend Sean used to listen to back in the mid-to later 80s.  For that reason, I was inspired to make this Iron Worker Industrial Tone–the sounds are mixed from the range of audio content I recorded from Dave working the machine. I also made a very short (but shouldn’t be described as sweet) Iron Worker Punch (Message) Alert for the non-faint of heart who want a powerful text or picture message alert–it’s a simple chronological excerpt from the type of work Dave did with that machine.

Last of all, I edited a clang-ey Fixin’ to Move Steel Tone from audio I recorded of the guys (starting from far left–Matt and Brandon Zottola with Dave Demme),  moving steel beams across the shop floor.

You’ll hear a lot of clanking sounds. That’s Brandon Zottola throwing the chains around (for the most part) to use the crane to move steel through part of the fabrication shop space.

Thanks to Matt Zattola (and the guys) for welcoming me to the shop to collect some awesome steel fab tones, and thanks also to Craig Parrish for showing me how the drill line works. Watching that machine operate was super fascinating, but the audio wasn’t distinct enough from the other sounds in the shop to cause me to want to make a ringtone out of it.

Thanks gentlemen of Zottola Steel Corporation! I’m pleased to have a whole new set of local industry heritage related work tones in the project.

Hola Tones from La Escuelita Arcoiris

This is Megan Rooney. She’s the founder and director of Pittsburgh’s La Escuelita Arcoiris–a Spanish Immersion preschool and kindergarten in Squirrel Hill. She wrote into Locally Toned this summer, asked if I had any Spanish tones in the project, and said she’d love to have her students help make an Hola ringtone (or two) for the project. Being very interested in the diversification of the project in relation to language, I was interested. And as a part time/life-long learner of Spanish myself, I felt the project could use a tone submission from locals learning a new language.

Megan asked permission from all the parents of the children attending the school, and then asked me to come to La Escuelita Arcoiris during afternoon circle time. After getting my equipment ready, I sat down in the middle of the circle to work on setting audio levels (to ensure that I’d capture a good recording of the children singing). Some of the little ones seemed a bit shy around me (a stranger directing strange objects, the microphone and recorder, at them), so I asked Megan if I could introduce myself (and my equipment) to the students. “Hola, mi nombre es Teresa! This is my microphone,” I said. “The microphone is kind of like an ear. What do ears do?”

“Hear!” a bold little girl explained.

“That’s exactly right. Ears hear and so do microphones. So if you want my microphone to hear you sing, you can come close to the microphone and sing,” I said, showing them exactly how close they could get. Some students eagerly moved forward.

The audio content of La Escuelita Arcoiris tones are charming to me because they’re so candid–you can rehearse as much as you like with preschoolers and kindergartners, but whatever happens, happens. What you get is what you get (bumps and all).

Here’s the first (and shorter) tone from our session–the Hola Escuelita (Hello, Little School!) Tone.

And this is the Hola Amiguitos (Hello, Little Friends!) Tone–slightly longer than most tones in the project (at 33 seconds). I’d describe it as hyper-preschool/kindergarten realistic and “of the [cold] season”–listen carefully and you’ll hear a little sniffle. You’ll definately hear the cough in the second part of the tone.

Thanks to the Arcoiris staff, families and students for helping to contribute two very sweet tones to the project!

Conversation with Architect Michael Schoner (of Boom Bench Fame)

Meet the artist/designer Michael Schoner of NL Architects in the Netherlands (Amsterdam). He’s the creator of this amazing piece of outdoor furniture–the Boom Bench.

Michael re-worked the idea of a street bench into a work of public art capable of reflecting and amplifying the tastes, interests and personalities of those who have access to it. The Boom Bench has been described as “a regular piece of street furniture [turned] into a sound system.” Michael’s described it as a super-sized Docking Station. I’ll let him speak for himself:

“The Boom Bench features eight 60-watt co-axial speakers and two subwoofers that can be accessed through Bluetooth. Connect your player to the amplifier and take control. Now you can play your music with 95 dB high quality sound. A Bass Shaker in the seat transforms the deep sounds into vibrations that enhance the physical sensation of your tunes. Playing loud music in public will either attract or repel people. The music extends you personality onto the streets. As such it will shape the place. It is a showing off and putting yourself on the stage. Either you start an instant party or mark your territory. The music acts as an acoustic sign.”

Michael told me that the idea for the bench came out of putting a couple of observations together–that teenagers would congregate around benches near their homes and play music from their cell phones. They didn’t have boom boxes to take outside (like in the old days–if you’re old enough to remember) and they didn’t have the space to play their music loud or share it with each other in their families’ homes. Go here to read more about his democratic bench (especially the hilarious Celine Dion story he recounts there).

How’d I find out about Michael’s work? Through project research about how sound shapes space. That notion came up in conversations related to a grant proposal I was preparing for Locally Toned. The first glimmer of that idea came from a comment that the designer and PhD candidate Scott Davidoff shared with me: “Someone like my mother wouldn’t completely understand your project unless there was video documentation to show her what happens when the tones go off in public.” He was so right. How do I capture that experience/arrange for that sort of video documentation?

I mentioned Scott’s comment to another mentor/project adviser, Marge Myers, she said, “Yes, what happens when the tones go off in public? How do the ringtones shape or affect the space or sphere in which they’re played? Notions of unexpected place and timing are interesting to think about in relation to your work…”

After talking with Marge, I went straight home and googled “how does sound shape public space.” Presto! I found this .pdf called Can Sound Shape the Public Space? uploaded by NL Architects. The document includes writing about (and links to) other projects and products that embodied this concept. So I wrote to the firm to thank them for posting that research and asked if anyone at the firm would allow me to talk with them about the idea of how sound shapes space.

The firm wrote back (!), said they were delighted to hear I found their essay, and suggested I speak with Michael Schoner, who designed the Boom Bench. Then Michael sent me a note (!). He mentioned that the sonic cannon ringtone made him feel extremely nervous and that he’d be happy to talk. Here follows our Q&A:

Teresa Foley (TF): You’re sensitive to audio in particular?

Michael Schoner (MS): Yes, but I think it does take a while to realize how much audio has to do with space. For example, in churches and museum–the general expectation is that you have to be quiet.

TF: Can you describe a formative experience from your childhood in relation to sound?

MS: Yes–sitting on a washing machine and singing, or the experience of parents telling you to shut up.

TF: The first thing you mention is an embodied experience of sound and of manipulating it! As soon as you say that, I remember lying on my stomach on the floor, and another kid giving me a karate chop/pretend massage–I start humming and love how the impact of their hands on my back affects my vocalizing.

MS: Well at least your experience was social, Teresa–mine was with a machine…

TF: Yes, but I bet somebody put you up on that washing machine the first time you discovered those vibes, though.

MS: Sure.

TF: Until you said what you did about your washing machine experience, I never thought about how children learn about sound/vibrations physically. It reminds me of that thing I’ve seen musicians and scientists do–where they put sand or rice on top of an amplifier to make sound vibrations visible .

Okay, another question–where’s the Boom Bench been so far?

MS: Amsterdam, Milan and New York.

TF: Where’s it going to next?

MS: Possibly Shanghai.

TF: Have any cities asked about installing it somewhere permanently?

MS: We received an inquiry from Bulgaria, but right now it’s been designed for temporary placement or exhibition. If you wanted to make it a permanent piece, it would have to be fabricated out of steel. The original is made out of wood.

TF: What would be an ideal location for it?

MS: The obvious placement is urban, but some people have asked to place it out in the suburbs–one location that’s been pitched is an area in between the sea and a lake. The idea of an urban artifact installed in the countryside is interesting, I think. But I’ve never really thought too much about this idea. I think it’s up to other people to figure out what to do with it. The thing leads a life of its own, anyhow.

TF: Are you working on any other audio related projects?

MS: I’m working on designing a concert hall.

TF: Would you kindly share the names of any other artists whose audio work you find interesting?

MS: Yes, a friend of mine told me about a project called The International Dance Party–a kind of disco machine. You start dancing by it and music comes out, the machine starts to open up–there’s even a smoke machine. My bench is for hanging out, a machine like this is for dancing–something like that machine would be great to have for openings.

In 1999, I saw an installation of an artist named Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at PS1. It was a wonderful work with live birds and sound produced, I think, by the birds landing on feeders.

Image from a more recent work by Boursier-Mougenot

Another sound project which I found really interesting is the Optofonica–a collaboration between two artists–TeZ and Janis Poenish.

Oh, yes, and the artist Roman Signer–he has a very nice movie in which he went to Iceland, put a tent up, went to sleep and amplified his snoring through these giant speakers.

Roman Signer (image from his website)

TF: What kinds of things would you think about if you were designing a ringtone to be shared/downloaded for free/played in public?

MS: Well, I don’t really like ringtones. They’re usually so terrible. I had a friend who made an interesting tone–he had one of the first phones that you could record sounds with. He made a ringtone out of the sound you get when you slowly let air out of a balloon. Snoring might be an interesting ringtone…

TF: There is a snore tone in the project… Okay, one last question–may I make a ringtone for the project based your specifications, or would you like to submit an audio file to the project?

MS: I’ll think about it. Maybe that is the sort of thing I could mention at the lunch table to the firm.

TF: Wow–that’d be great! Thanks for your time, Michael. I’ve enjoyed learning about your work, and this exchange we’ve had is helpful in expanding my thinking around the performative aspect of Locally Toned.

Ron Baraff’s Archival Tone Series from Rivers of Steel (Homestead, PA)

Ron Baraff is the Director of Museum Collections at Rivers of Steel in Homestead, PA. He wrote in to Locally Toned this summer to see if the project would be interested in some tones related to the history of the steel industry. My answer was yes–such tones would certainly represent what some of the industrial history in this region sounded like, and I was interested in what tone content might be brought to light from the extensive archive.

The Rivers of Steel museum/archive is located in the historic Bost Building on E. Eighth Avenue in Homestead. It was originally built as a hotel, restaurant and bar.

The building is a national landmark, largely famous because the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (and the international press) chose it as headquarters during the Homestead Lock Out and Strike of 1892. At that time, the building was the tallest building in Homestead and 2 blocks from the Carnegie Steel Company mill. It’s a fascinating story, so if you’re interested in this region’s history, I recommend that you read more about the event.

The collection housed within the Bost Building is impressive–when I visited Rivers of Steel, an exhibition entitled “Safety First” was up. Some of the audio files which Ron submitted to Locally Toned for consideration came from mill-sponsored films associated with this particular archive.

When I asked Ron which audio file was most resonant for him of the steel industry/history as an archivist, he said, “The sound of the tapping of the open hearth. That is the vessel that allowed for the growth of industry in this region. So many men and women worked here and tried to make better lives for their families.” Have a listen to the Open Hearth Tone.

Here’s the very dramatic Steel Plate Shearing Line Tone. It’s the sound of long runs of steel plate being cut, which Ron also described as a sound associated with compressing steel to slab.

The final Rivers of Steel tone has been excerpted from a locally produced industrial film called “With These Hands.” Ron described the movie about mill safety this way:

“This schlock-shock film from 1956 graphically tells the story of a double amputee grappling with his severe injury that’s the result of a mill accident. This kind of movie will scare the hell out of you. It was shot in Renzie Park in McKeesport, in Technicolor. It’s also important to note that the music was performed by the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra. The siren sound you hear goes off in the film every time a flag waves to show the viewer that something dangerous is about to happen.”

I’m calling this tone the Siren Alert Signal (from With These Hands).

Thanks to Ron and Rivers of Steel for sharing these special historic audio archives (and some images) with Locally Toned.

Carolina’s Flamenco Tones

Carolina Loyola-Garcia is an Chilean artist, curator and Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Robert Morris University. She’s also a Flamenco dancer who agreed to work on a tone idea for the project.

Barbara Jo York and Carolina Loyola-Garcia

Late this summer, she reserved the dance studio at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and invited her friend, a singer/songwriter, percussionist (and fellow Flamenco dancer), Barbara Jo York to come along for the recording session. Both ladies teach within the Centro Flamenco de Pittsburgh program, and told me that although the Flamenco community here is small, it’s certainly growing. They  felt it important to underscore a niche of global culture in Pittsburgh by sharing these tones within the project.

I asked Carolina how she learned Flamenco. “Performance is just part of my nature. I started taking Flamenco classes in college.” I also asked her to tell me some things about Flamenco dancing that most people would not know. “It’s interesting–the dance form was born out of resistance–it came from a group of people who were outcasts in Spain at the time of the Catholic Inquisition. It’s a mix of dance from people who were Gypsy, Jewish and the Moors–it’s comprised of many traditions melting together over a period of several centuries. Flamenco has the lament (“lamento” or lamentation form) at its core. This music and dance expresses grief. The other thing I’d share with people is that Flamenco is not just one dance-it’s a family of about 40 rhythms. This very complex artistic expression has an array of histories, rhythms, people and stories behind it.”

My personal favorite of the tones has playful rhythmic lyrics–the Toma que Flamenco Tone. “The Spanish verb ‘tomar,’ is to hold something,” Carolina said. “It works well as a ringtone, I think because in Spanish you’d say something like ‘Toma el telefono’–’Take the telephone.’”

The second tone we recorded was the Flamenco Alegria Tone–a purely rhythmic dance piece.

Thanks to Carolina and Barbara for contributing the first dance (and probably only Flamenco) tones to the project! And thank you Pittsburgh Center for the Arts for allowing us to record this tone in the dance studio.

Locally Toned Ringtone Heard Today in the Weldon Library in London, ON, Canada

This is my good friend and a long-distance adviser to the project Nick Fox-Gieg. This morning I received an email from him with a 10:20am time stamp on it. His exact words:

“So right now I’m in a library in London, ON…and someone’s cellphone goes off…and–it’s your pinball ringtone!”

Excited by the news, I asked Nick to take a pic of himself in the library and send it to me so I could blog about his ringtone sighting hearing! Thanks for keeping your, um, ears peeled, Nick! Readers, check out his work. It’s AWESOME.

I don’t know what pinball ringtone went off in that libray, but my favorite one from the PAPA series is the Mata Hari Pinball Tone. You can hereread the story about that tone here.

Carl Cimini’s G20 LRAD (Long-Range Acoustic Device) Tone

Carl Cimini is a documentary filmmaker and political activist who was working with colleagues Michael Solano-Mullins and Jerry Pearl at the G20 protests on Thursday September 24, 2009 down in Lawrenceville. In advance of the summit, he and his crew had begun working on a piece by conducting several “talking head” interviews with locals. On that Thursday, he was out with his mates shooting B-roll (or cut-away) footage for their documentary-in-progress at Lawrenceville’s Arsenal Park (in the neighborhood where Carl has his studio). When that protest wound down, they stopped to take were a break at a coffee house.

“We were on Butler, near 36th street or so. All of a sudden a police or military truck came up–I mean, we thought the protests were over. When we saw the truck, we knew something was happening, so I grabbed my camera and started rolling.” Carl told me he was approximately 30 feet behind the LRAD when he was capturing the footage containing the sound of this sonic weapon (that I used for this ringtone). “Michael got caught in the protest, and he ended up getting sick from either the LRAD or the tear gas–we’re not sure.”

Still of the LRAD from the documentation shot by Carl Cimini.

Carl said he was disturbed to hear people on the streets saying, when the device went off, “That’s nothing–they’re just trying to scare people.” The Guardian.co.uk reported that “It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.”

Several people I ran into the week after the G20 protests asked if I’d captured this distinct audio for a ringtone. Thanks to Carl, this tone is yet another response to this project’s focusing question, “What does Pittsburgh sound like?” [Why, on September 24, 2009, it sounded like the first time the sound cannon had been used publicly in the USA.]

Here’s Carl Cimini’s G20 LRAD (Long-Range Acoustic Device) Tone. If you’re interested in the editing deets, I dropped the audio level a bit, took one “firing” of the device from the original audio Carl shared with me and looped it together to make this short and piercing tone.

BTW, Pittsburghers weren’t the only folks to think of turning the sound of the LRAD into a ringtone. John Stewart joked about a sonic cannon ringtone on The Daily Show episode which aired on the eve of Monday September 28, 2009.

P.S. A local reporter told me that the strangest thing he perceived during his time covering the G20 summit and protests was the “pre-recorded police warning” (in English and Spanish) that was played to warn protesters before the firing of tear gas and/or the sonic canon. This G20 Cease & Desist Pre-Recorded Tone is for him.

A Locally Toned Dream Come True! Foley hears a project ringtone on a stranger’s phone in public!

Brooke holds my "Lucy Tugboat Plus Bell Tone" art card from the Dividing the Goose show at Future Tenant gallery.

This is Brooke Sumner. She works for the Federal Courts and is a local supporter of the arts. Last Friday, she totally made my night.

I was sitting with friends chowing down on Greek food at Salonika Gyros after my performance at the Transfer Lounge opening at SPACE gallery when I thought I heard the sound of the bell from Jill’s Ye Old School Bell Tone. I was a bit confused, though, because I heard some spoken word audio playing along with it. As I was trying to figure out what was going on, my friend (and project advisor) Jen Morris looked at me and said, “Is that one of your ringtones playing?”

Yes, it was!

Brooke had just come from the Crawl with her friends Ryan Meanor and Michael Danehower–they’d stopped by Future Tenant, where they’d seen my Alice Out of the Basement ringtone art cards in the Dividing the Goose (fairy tale) show. Brooke picked some of the cards up and used the texting code on the back a card to send the Lucy Tugboat Plus Bell Tone directly to her phone!

I went straight over to their table, introduced myself and told Brooke and her friends that they made one of my Locally Toned project dreams come true (my wish to hear one of the project tones on a stranger’s phone in public)!

From left to right: Michael Danehower, Brooke Sumner and Ryan Meanor with T. Foley. Photo by Jen Morris.

Thanks, Brooke (and friends) for being tuned-into the Pittsburgh arts scene!

Mobile Ringtone Performance at October 2nd Pittsburgh Gallery Crawl

Here are some Locally Toned images from the opening of the Transfer Lounge show at SPACE gallery in downtown Pittsburgh on October 2, 2009 at the Gallery Crawl. Thanks to all the amazing art installers at SPACE who made my work (and all the other work in the show) look SUPER fantastic. It was a plus having the computer adjacent to the cards so I could show folks specific tones in the project. From now on, that’s a “must have.”

For the show, I *performed* a total of 20 tones–the 10 tones from Pittsburgh that I took to Valencia, Spain and the 10 tones from Spain that I brought back to Pittsburgh.

Here are the 10 Pittsburgh tones that I took to and performed in Valencia, Spain.

Tones from Valencia turned into art cards. From left to right: Turia Fountain Tone, Juguete (Toy) de la Plaza Tone, and Sonia’s Dama (Lady) Campanilla (Bell) Tone

Art cards for the Ecstatic Saint Tone and Senora Soledad’s Besitos (Little Kisses) Tone.

Art cards for Birdie (Pájarito) Tone and Firecrackers in the Street Tone (Tono de Los Petardos en la Calle).

Rear: Crushing Garlic in the Mortar Tone (Manchacando ajos en el mortero); front: Maris en el autobus (Ladies on the Bus) Ringtone.