into_the_breaks

normanlong · WLD2 2020 Mixed live on World Listening Day 2020, July 18, 2020. You can read my thoughts on this year’s theme: “The Collective Field”, here. This mix collects the Black spaces and Green spaces of Black neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, from hydrophone recordings of marsh land at Marian R. Byrnes Park and Big Marsh to picnics at Washington Park and neighborhood parties.  When we say Black Lives Matter then Black space matters, Black Sound matters, then sounds we make, hear, live with and create matter and must not be dismissed or denigrated before they are heard. This is what I tell myself. We need our creativity and sensitivity. I haven’t led  soundwalks since the lockdown. However, I have been recording our prairie and have many recordings of an urban community with a wildlife reserve. The prairie is located between Jeffery Manor, a residential neighborhood in Chicago, IL and a large rail yard. This area is also called the calumet region and was onc...

July 4, 2009 I recorded my neighbors setting off fireworks in our alley. I submitted the recording for a compilation on the sound of recession . This summer of 2020, I was invited for ESS' Quarantine Concerts July 3 event by Katinka Kleijn. For this performance the context is the crisis of pandemic, recession and police violence towards African-American citizens. With this on my mind I performed a mix of recordings of my neighborhood and electronic improvisations to expand and decolonize our listening. I open with bells and fireworks to blast away bad spirits.

Due to technical issues, I couldn't get my Ableton Live to work on OBS/ twitch, so my set changed from field recordings to "dub-noise" at the very last minute. I usually attribute solo noise, drone, ambient, beat based performances to eXU-9. eXU-9 takes it's machine name from    Exu, Papa Legba, Cybotron, Model 500, UR, X-101, X-102. Sound inspired by MF BASS, Wave form Transmissions I & III, Interstellar Space, Space is The Place, Pulse Demon,  Butoh, Great Black Music and Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi Projects. It is both a machine and a hyper-sygil for liberation, disobedience, transformation and self-care/acceptance. It also gives me space to explore sound beyond logic and language. This set was improvised with real time frustration with my set up. In the end this was just me showing up, dealing with setbacks and performing anyway. I prefer listening to this set on headphones. 

You are invited to participate in World Listening Day 2020, an annual global event held every July 18. This year’s theme is THE COLLECTIVE FIELD created by Wild Sanctuary Vice President, Katherine Krause. The Collective Field There is something new afoot. The field itself is changing. The creature world knows.  The creative one does too.  So what does it mean now to listen? How do we express what we know? Be alert. Individually and in concert, There is sanctity in it. Amid new conditions, travel the field and explore By call and response The rhythm within.  How does your song fit Within the collective chorus?   https://www.worldlisteningproject.org/world-listening-day-2020-the-collective-field/ World Listening Day 2020 - The Collective Field: Thoughts & Recordings by Norman W. Long: I do not know what it means to listen now. But it is a good question as I sit and listen to a community isolated from the rest of the city o...

Marian R. Byrnes Park, one of the newest parks opened by the Chicago Park district is an open space and greyfield transformed into a park with trails. This open space has been in the neighborhood for decades. The entrance being a little league baseball diamond and an open wildlife area my neighborhood friends would often explore in the late 70’s and early 80’s. As the South Deering community went further into depression due to the steel industry leaving the area, the diamond was abandoned, neighbors and businesses moved away and we were left with open space that was not cared for and was an illegal dump site, very much like Big Marsh by the mid 80’s. It wasn’t until spring of 2007 when my interest in the prairie would be sparked by the screening of Chicago: City of the Big Shoulders. Dir. Harry Wiland. Prod. Beverly Baroff. Media Policy Center, 2006. Alexander Street Database. Web. at Cornell University’s City and Regional Planning graduate student social. This video featured my n...

Espinoza / Long Duo by Espinoza / Long Duo

Thematics is a compilation of recordings made in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1999-2001. This album features, data bent sounds, granular synthesis and digital sound processing. Thematics is built around the general theme of desire and is influenced by writings of Samuel R. Delany, Jacques Derrida, Kathy Acker, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, the performance art of Jade Blue Eclipse and Annie Sprinkle.

Untitled, 2000, Diego Rivera Gallery, SF, CA

View email in your browser March 23, 2020 Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, and Supporters, Over the past many months, the leadership of SFAI has been aggressively pursuing a number of strategies that would ensure long-term financial sustainability for our school, in hopes of setting the stage for a new era of growth as we approached our 150 th anniversary. Foremost among the options we considered was the possibility of merging or collaborating with another larger educational institution with the scale and resources necessary to help us survive, prosper and grow in today’s hypercompetitive landscape. Our goal was to find a partner that would share our values and vision, as well as honor, support and advance our long-standing commitment to the teaching of art and artists. We identified several potential partners, and that process led to formal and very promising negotiations with two of the Bay Area’s finest institutions of higher learning. We regret to s...

STEELWORKERS’ DRONE http://reservematinee.bandcamp.com/album/steelworkers-drone Reserve Matinee, Sara Zalek  and I are proud to announce the cassete and download release of Steeworkers’ Drone . Sara and I  have been improvising movement, sound and listening in various permutations, places and materials since 2015. This is my second release with Reserve Matinee, the first was a compilation of works from my Dubcology series https://reservematinee.bandcamp.com/album/electro-acoustic-dubcology-i-iv . I am grateful for having the opportunity to share some of our work with you. Thank you for your time and thank you for listening.  And thanks to Mia Capodilupo for having us perform at Ignition Project Space! About: Dialogues (Ignition Project Space, January 27, 2018) Inspired by Pauline Oliveros' Environmental Dialogue (1996 Revision), this is an extension of her composition (2018 Revision). Resonating the Ignition Project Space with breath, rhythm and s...