Below is an excerpt from the press release for a sleep concert that will be presented on April 11 in New Orleans. I know Tanner (the instigator) from some things he has done upstairs at the Blue Nile, and they were very cool things. Click the link for the full info, and spread the word to anyone you think might be into it.
“Tanner Menard, Antenna Gallery and Experimedia Records
presents Sommeil: A Concert for Sleep, an international collaborative
experiment. Sommeil will be an all-night event beginning
at 10:00 pm on Saturday April 11th and ending on Sunday April
12th at 7:00 am. Participants are asked to slowly fall asleep while
live ambient and environmental music is performed through the
night by Tanner Menard.
Sommeil: A Concert for Sleep will be Menard’s reinterpretation of
the sleep concert experiment, first created by Robert Rich in 1982
and will be presented at the Antenna Gallery 3161 Burgundy
St New Orleans, LA 70117 in the heart of the St Claude Arts
District. The concert will be realized with Rich’s permission and
guidance. Sleep concerts are all-night events in which the audience
is asked to attend the concert with a sleeping bag and pillow
and to fall asleep while a slowly unfolding sonic texture evolves
over the course of the night and into the morning. People attending
the event are asked to be willing to sleep during the event or
at least to remain silent during the course of the nine hour experience.
Not merely a recreation of Rich’s original idea, Sommeil is
a conceptual, global remix of a performance type that addresses
one of the most basic functionalities of ambient and environmental
sound; music by which to sleep.
In the spirit of remix and the Creative Commons movement, Menard,
a Louisiana native, has compiled submissions of audio material
for the concert from nearly seventy artists across the globe.
These artists answered a call for submissions marketed online by
Experimedia Records which asked for music and field recording
to be used, remixed and mashed up during this nocturnal event.
Submissions include drones, found sound, recordings of natural
and unnatural environments and synthetic music created on synthesizers
and computers. Submitters have included radio scientists,
geologists, psychologists, sound artists, musicians, composers,
installation artists as well as several well known figures in the
ambient music scene. During the course of the evening, Menard
will remix these sleep submissions into a constantly evolving
sonic texture that will lull the audience to sleep.”
