Pittsburgh: R. Weis - Compositions of Manipulated Sound

R. Weis lived a productive creative life in New York City, where, beginning in the 1980's, he performed his spoken word poetry and monologues at live venues and on underground radio. It was during this time that R. Weis first began experimenting with sound collages, that he composed on cassette tape, introducing these recordings into his spoken word performances. These early sound recording experiments developed into his enthusiastic involvement in composing with manipulated sound. In 1990 R. Weis began working on a sampler embracing the discipline of composing exclusively with found original sounds. A series of collaborations began for him which resulted in sound scores for film, visual art, and dance productions.

In New York he met photographer Arthur Tress ( www.arthurtress.com ) and a collaboration began, resulting in Requiem for a Paperweight for which R. Weis composed the sound score. Weis, now recalls that Tress "created all the photographs with a simple "click" on a series of layered lights, gels, scarves, mirrors, acetates of found schematics and headlines, glassware, figures, etc. that he set up on a table in his apartment. The photographs are NOT computer manipulated nor are they double-exposures (pretty impressive I think)." According to Weis, Arthur Tress continued to work on the images for Requiem for a Paperweight for several years, and three images in that portfolio currently appear on Tress' website.

Weis described how he used "about 80 samples of different sounds" that he manipulated for the Requiem for a Paperweight sound portion of the composition, including "two of my nephews giggling and cooing in the beginning (now they are grown men!)". He worked on the sound score for approximately six months--" There are all kinds of sounds in there... phone, fax, manipulated synthesizer, my voice speaking phrases Arthur incorporated in the photographs, plus many other sounds manipulated beyond recognition."

Requiem for a Paperweight has been presented in installation form along with the physical photographs ( view installation shots http://www.rweis.com/rweis/requiem.html), and as a two-projector slide show, originally at University Art Museum, California State University Long Beach and has since traveled to The Bridgewater/Lustberg Gallery in NYC, to German museums including The Ludwig Forum - Stadt Aachen, and appeared in slide-show form at the 1994 CMJ Music Marathon in NYC. The sound score for Requiem for a Paperweight was also heard as part of Arthur Tress' retrospective Fantastic Voyage, Photographs 1956-2000 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

A 1995 Art News review excerpt describes Requiem for a Paperweight as "...a richly textured, haunting vision of life in the future...a dazzling morality play, its hero, the Everyman of late-20th century corporate life. A stereotypically overworked, anonymous cog in the Japanese business machine, the protagonist exists in a high-tech, migraine-inducing netherworld of garish neon color, charts and lab equipment, glossy ads, and business statistics. Haunted by shadowy memories of family and childhood and elusive promises of health and happiness, he faces a future in which bankruptcy, unemployment, and forced retirement are the preludes to his own cosmic apotheosis in death. His desperate search for meaning is met only with shiny, deceptive dreams.

"Enhanced by the score of composer R. Weis, who works with language and manipulated sound, the installation format works brilliantly for Tress. The dark-painted walls and vivid light reinforce the impression that we are witnessing, as in a medieval chapel, a kind of contemporary morality play."

(Peter Clothier,ArtNews, 3/95)

YouTube videos:

Requiem for a Paperweight Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz7j_BmhWyA

Requiem for a Paperweight Part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO8jeey5gc4

In 1994, R. Weis completed his CD Mystery of the Egg (available from CD Baby and on iTunes) which has aired on experimental radio programs in the U.S. and Europe. Then, after 16 years in New York City's East Village, Weis moved to the California desert where for three years he worked on a composition called noitatu MovE oveR which is a meditation on the structures of the universe. The 29-minute composition is organized like a DNA double helix, and is made from only 6 original samples--four to represent the four base components of DNA, one to represent whole numbers and one to represent prime numbers. After such a long immersion in this cosmic project, Weis was delighted to accept an invitation from The Savannah College of Art & Design to compose his light-hearted Dog Choir for the museum exhibit Pour l'Amour des Chiens at the Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris, 2003. Listen to R. Weis' humorous collaboration with canines, on the artist's website: Dog ChoirR.Weis returned to Pittsburgh in 2006. In 2008, he completed the one hour composition Victoriana, a project in which he challenged myself with minimalism in raw material. "That hour-long composition is composed entirely from 4 samples of creaking/slamming doors totaling about 15 seconds of raw sound material", based on sounds made by his 19th Century house. Victoriana premiered in the Gestures 12 exhibit at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory Art Museum, May and June 2009. R. Weis' newest project Excitable Audible is in progress and he hopes to finish it this Spring. Find out more by visiting the artist's website: http://www.rweis.com