WORK SAMPLES
print: away from towards and onwards
one-tone risograph print on linen paper, 2023
Edition of 50
image: 8” x 11”
Created for a commissioned piece at High Desert Test Sites Winter Open House in December 2023 curated by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Ry Rocklen, these prints of my graphic score for the piece were give to attendees.
a pair of dueling amps
gently converse
with layered highs and lows in communication
as intensity rises
voices cancel each other out
utterances neutralize
only to ascend into a confused ether
on its way out
or on its way in?
we are moving away from _____
towards ______
and onwards
print: rooms
Cut Vinyl Matrix Relief Print, 2022
Variable Edition of 10
image: 10” x 10” sheet: 12x12”
The creation of these prints are used to draw a parallel to the balance of structure and improvisation used in my practice. Each is made by using shapes I drew representing the sonic frequencies of my newest album Rooms. Working with these shapes as the vocabulary of the album’s sonic notation, I wondered what happens when you experiment with different configurations using the same components, in a way to visually conceptualize what happens in that moment of improvisation.
The results are provisional—arranging a group of concrete elements to dance across each print in efforts towards creating a variable of the piece each time, that can resonate with playfulness, repetition, or chaos. I felt parallels to the same way I experienced creating the record Rooms, which were taking elements of sound I had created, and then allowing devices such as a reel to reel tape recorder, sampler, swinging mics set up through a room, etc to interpret them, resulting in sometimes unpredictable and indeterminate compositions.
Rooms as an album and print can only be created in that moment. This is not dissimilar from the idea that every re-performance one hears of an album will be experienced differently every time it is performed, based on improvisational decision-making of the performer, environment, mood, devices, and other factors.
PUBLICATION: SOUND DRAWINGS
Risograph printed with blue and black inks on textured vellum paper, 2022
Edition of 100
5.5” x 8.5”
features work created during a sound drawing workshop Audra Wolowiec (Gravel Projects) and I led at the 2021 Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair. 30 participants joined internationally—together, at a distance—and sent us their drawings afterwards.
Debuted at 2022 Printed Matter New York Art Book Fair
published and riso printed by Gravel Projects x Weird Babes
PRINT: TELEFONKONCERT, 1983, TRANSCRIPT, 2021
Risograph Print with aqua, yellow, metallic gold, and black inks, on textured vellum paper, 2021
Edition of 50
8 x 11”
Printed at Hurrikan Press
During a month-long residency in Budapest, Caroline researched Hungarian language, text and music, namely from the 1980s Soviet era as they relate to censorship and the desire for communication between artists in Hungary and abroad. For her ultimate project, Caroline transcribed sound elements from telefonkoncert (April 15, 1983), a concert over the phone that took place over a course of 4 hours between three locations: Budapest - Vienna - Berlin (courtesy of the Artpool Art Research Center). Caroline’s interpretation will take various forms: graphic notation with a print made in collaboration with Hurrikan Press (as you see here), a sound and deep listening drawing workshop (completed at the residency), as well as a sculptural composition (to be imagined). Through this process Caroline hopes to illuminate that even in times of censorship and the aim to silence human expression, agency can still be amplified amongst voices of an artistic community.
print: SOUND DRAWINGS
Risograph print with blue and black inks, on textured paper
Edition of 20
8 x 10”
Risograph print featuring some of the kinetic sound drawings I made for a residency and exhibition at BoxoPROJECTS, Joshua Tree, CA in February 2020. The drawings document sounds of the wind in the abandoned mines of Joshua Tree National Park.
PRINT: ARMENIAN DANCE LABANOTATION
Risograph print with blue and black inks on textured paper, 2020
Edition of 20
8 x 10”
<<Ververi>> is a traditional Armenian dance that means to go UP and UP, indicating a notion of survival. This labanotation was transcribed by ethnologist Srpouhi Lisitsian at the Armenian Institute of Archeology and Ethnology in 1940. I recreated this in an effort to get closer to the object via reinterpretation through printing with a technique that came after Lisitsian’s time - the risograph machine.
print: KHAZ INSPIRED NOTATION
Risograph print with black ink on newsprint, 2021
Edition of 10
8.5 x 11” (variations created with 11 x 14”)
This is one of my attempts to create some visual scores in trying to make sense of Khaz, an ancient notation system of Armenian musical neumes used to transcribe religious Armenian music since the 8th century. This has since been replaced by Hamparsum notation and later Western musical notation. Scholars have studied Khaz but it’s incredibly difficult to figure out what’s right, and what’s not, because monks and priests don’t agree on how to read them, and therefore rely on their own oral traditions to pass these sounds forward. The notion that interpretations are left up to the communities, and individuals, and that there is 'no ‘right way’ of interpreting these figures is what inspired me to learn more about Khaz.
PUBLICATION: AUTOMATIC SOUND DRAWINGS
Risograph printed with teal, emerald, and lime inks, 2019
Printed at Endless Editions
Edition of 250
I printed the automatic sound drawings zine as part of the Endless Editions copyshop residency. A documentation of my notating a sonic script of what I was hearing in my every day, a practice I started while living and working in New York City. The automatic element of it comes from not thinking about what I was drawing, but just documenting what I was hearing on the paper. The ability to isolate the sounds I was focusing on during that time was a liberating practice for me, as a mode to let go of all my internal thoughts and just meditate on the sounds.
published by Endless Editions
sound installation: marfa sounds
metal, found materials, audio equipment, CRT video
collaboration with Ethan Primason
Marfa Open, Marfa, TX
August 2019
This exhibition is the culminating presentation of a daily ritualized practice we conducted during our six week residency. This ritual involved listening to, recording, and drawing the sounds we encountered at distinct locations throughout Marfa and the surrounding landscape as an automatic and unbiased practice to intentionally absorb, reflect and reinterpret the sonic character of a place.
This collection of glyphs and recordings became the material for an immersive sculptural sound installation. Mounted with springs and hung within frames constructed from materials found throughout Marfa, a series of six industrial steel sheets were built, chemically treated, engraved and fixed with tactile transducers, creating a six channel reverberating sound system. Through these drawings and metal speakers, a new context was revealed by our practice - a work created through the process of constant reinterpretation - repetitive daily encounters, a visual record of sonic impressions, the modulation of natural sound, and the unforeseen character of amplified raw material.
We also published a zine of the Marfa Sounds Drawings available here.
sound installation:
observations concerning the structure of the square window
existing window at gallery, vinyl decal, speaker transducer, mini amplifier, speaker wire
part of the exhibition micro/MACRO (curated by Lara Wilson)
Compound YV, Yucca Valley, CA
February 2 - March 15, 2020
For this exhibition I created a new piece incorporating a microtonal composition and my research of psychoacoustics, oto-anatomies, + perceptions of sound and space. The result is essentially two-fold: sound and drawing.
Some of the questions I asked myself in the process:
How can the modes in which sound is perceived become as or more important than the sounds themselves? How can using specific tones in a composition create a greater experience than the parts themselves?
The piece as a whole is entitled <<Observations Concerning the Structure of the Square Window>> a play on the title of an early book written about the anatomic structure of the ear's own 'round window' by Antonio Scarpa in 1772.
SOUND INSTALLATION: desert queen mines at boxo projects
metal, fans, slide projector, slides, oscilloscope, audio equipment
collaboration with Ethan Primason
BoxoPROJECTS, Joshua Tree, CA
February 29, 2020
Our installation as part of our BoxoPROJECTS open studio is the culmination of a month long analysis of three sonic moments recorded in three different abandoned mines in Joshua Tree National Park. On a particularly windy day in February, we recorded the wind as it filled, passed through and revealed the architecture of three long abandoned man made caverns. One short audio recording from each mine was then meticulously dissected, analyzed, and reconstructed into a multi-channel immersive audio environment to reveal the complexities, relationships and layered acoustic properties that make up a brief sonic moment. Through our multisensory analysis of these moments, we built a series of speakers, fans, resonating metallic sheets, and visual representations of the physical waveforms. This is a work created through the process of constant reinterpretation - an attempt to intentionally witness, reflect, breakdown and rebuild the sonic character of place.
As two artists with backgrounds in Music and Anthropology, Caroline Partamian and Ethan Primason work to explore the dimensionality of audio through the relationship between sound and space. Specifically, they are curious about the psychoacoustic properties and placeness of sound. Through their work, the artists explore concepts of architecture, transmission, acoustics, and ethnography through a creative and technological approach to audio.