Huffing that gasoline, making that scene—featuring kristiana clemens, owen fernley, umber hulk, matt rogalsky, with a special vapours musical supple-ment and a centerfold artist project by dorothea paas.

syphon honours the etymology of the term "hoser," referring to those farmers who, on the Canadian prairies during the great depression of the 1930s, would syphon gas from their neighbours ’ vehicles with a hose. We reclaim the somewhat derogatory expression and apply it to all those trying to make ends meet in artist-run culture.

a publication of modern fuel artist-run centre, kingston, ontario // volume 2, issue 2 // summer 2013 // issn number: 1480-0306distributed freely at select artist-run centres inside canada, by subscription, or online at www.modernfuel.org/syphon

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Owen Fernley: if (music) then (continue)

About four years ago my fight or flight response was tested in a large indoor venue after driving to Ottawa to see what might have been an entirely forgettable concert, had it not been for the

opening act. This was someone whose perfor-mance resonates in my head to this very day. As the audience was assembling in their seats, the house music went down and the musi-cian stepped up to a controller connected to a speaker system. After some anticipatory silence, we were then sonically attacked with a wall of noise so sudden, and so loud, I was immediately compelled to plug my ears and duck. The noise didn’t let up however, and all around me I could see people leaving, clam-bering for the aisles to take refuge in the lob-by. I remember judging if I should also make a break for it, but instead I opted to stay. I shut my eyes, and keeping my ears plugged, I placed my head on my lap, behind the seat in front of me, as though caught in a crash-ing airliner. As the noise wore on, I remember easing my ears open and hearing the breadth of frequencies expand inside from the cav-ernous venue around me. I could hear noise reflections clashing with each other, reverber-ating off the walls and the ceiling. The whole performance was a sustained assault. There was no ebb to this flow, and I soon recovered my ears and braced for an impact that perhaps would never come.

It occurres to me that when seeking out ex-perimental music, there is a certain level of

Matt Rogalsky on the scene and its sound

I think it was Herbert Brun who stated once in an interview that he was always striving to compose the music that he “didn’t like yet.” When I read that as a teenager, I thought the notion was a little shocking, and admirable. It relates

somehow to John Cage’s mid-20th century definition of “experimental” music: music which depends on processes “the outcome of which is not known.” It also begs the ques-tion, how can anyone ever become “profes-sional” in this line of work? Is professionalism something to be avoided, or can one perhaps strive to be a professional amateur? We have many professions these days which grew out of the work of amateurs: in the 1920s, for ex-ample, it was impossible to become an accred-ited psychoanalyst because the field had not been established and codified. It was defined only by key thinkers and a pool of enthusiasts who found their ideas compelling. Those en-thusiasts did not limit themselves to analysis with Freud in Vienna, pondering the meaning of their dreams, and so on. Some were simul-taneously pursuing research in other equally experimental fields: investigating the para-normal, for instance, or trying to understand humans’ place within a holistic ecosystem (the term was coined by a Freudian botanist less than 100 years ago). At that time there was little stigma in pursuing serious research in several apparently wildly different areas, by necessity as an amateur.

Is professionalism to be avoided, or can one perhaps strive to be a pro-fessional amateur?“Experimental music”... what means this? It seems to have a lot to do with amateurism, in the noblest sense of the word. That is, go-ing back to the original definition, “lover of.” To a great extent, anyone who identifies as an artist is trusting instinct, following what they love as they develop and change, construct-ing experiments and challenging themselves, embracing failure with success as a necessary part of growing. Kingston is lucky right now to have a large community of young sound

syphon is an arts and culture publication produced by Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre that is meant to act as a conduit between the arts community in Kingston and communities else-where. It was created in response to the lack of critical arts commentary and coverage in local publications, and seen as a way to increase exposure to experimental and non-commercial art practices. Syphon has a mandate to feature local arts coverage in conjunction with national and international projects, and an emphasis on arts scenes and activities that are seen as peripheral. It acts, in essence, as a record and communiqué for small regional arts communities throughout the country.

modern fuel artist-run centre is a non-profit organization facilitating the production, presentation, and interpretation of contemporary visual, time-based and interdisciplinary arts. Modern Fuel aims to meet the professional development needs of emerging and mid-career local, national and international artists, from diverse cultural communities, through exhibition, discussion, and mentorship opportunities. Modern Fuel supports innovation and experimentation, and is committed to the education of interested publics and the diversification of its audiences.

board of directorsMelinda Richka, PresidentSunny Kerr, Vice President Phoebe Cohoe, Secretary Jenny Stepa, Acting TreasurerKelley BolenJulia Krolik Robin McDonald Sharday Mosurinjohn Pansee Atta Emily Carlaw, Student Representative staff & personnelKevin Rodgers, Artistic DirectorMegan McNeil, General Director

Modern Fuel would not be able to function without the generosity and spirit of its volunteers.

21 Queen StreetKingston, Ontario, Canadak7k 1a1

613 548 4883info@modernfuel.orgwww.modernfuel.org

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 12 noon to 5pm

editorial & publishing for syphon Kevin Rodgers, Editor-in-chiefVincent Perez, Editor-at-large & Art DirectorMegan McNeil, Advertising

Printed at McLaren Press, Bracebridge, Ontario.

lovers, “experimental musicians” who have constructed a sort of safe space in which to share ideas, perform for each other, form and reform bands, make noises without particular intent to make major statements, and grow from interacting with a wide variety of tour-ing musicians who pass through town. Most of the time this is happening without anyone earning very much, and of course amateur sta-tus is also often defined by whether or not one gets paid. Sometimes we persist only because we love. I’d like to see more people get paid more, more often, but (for instance) the grass-roots, deliberately “unofficial culture” aspect of what goes on at The Artel is inspiring. Combine that with other local opportuni-ties to experience and perform “experimental music”—thanks to CFRC, Modern Fuel, Tone Deaf, Queen’s, along with other independent producers—and there is currently a pretty full calendar of events. More than I can take in, which is great. When I came to Kingston ten years ago the situation was much different. But this “scene” is only as much as the people driving it, and we may be coming to a point of transition as some of those people get ready to move on to other cities and opportunities. Interesting times ahead, and we’ll need to ensure that the momentum and enthusiasm gained in the past few years isn’t lost. Here’s to everyone who’s making it happen and keep-ing it happening.

matt rogalsky has been active since 1985 as artist/composer/performer of live elec-tronic music performance, and gallery and site-specific sound installations. His practice is informed by study and recreations of late 20th century electronic works by other com-posers, notably David Tudor and John Cage. Most recently, he performed his own and others' works on programs of experimental music and performance in festivals in Calgary and Vancouver, and exhibited his sound in-stallation Discipline, for twelve self-resonat-ing electric guitars, at Mercer Union Gallery in Toronto.

Rogalsky is currently based in Kingston On-tario, where he also teaches in the School of Music at Queen's.

He also plays electric guitar and mandolin with bands The Gertrudes and Old Haunt, and as Memory Device has also recorded and produced music with many other Kingston-based singer-songwriters and bands.

m a s t h e a d i n t r o d u c t o r y n o t e

a l l p h o t o c r e d i t sOwen Fernley

d e b r i e f i n g

risk you need to be prepared for. Experimen-tal music is not regulated. By it’s very defini-tion, it is experimental. This, in my mind, means the performer need only ask themself one question: What would happen if... This in turn leads to all kinds of interesting scenarios. Some subjectively good, some not, some ter-ribly boring and others instantly appealing, usually for reasons unexpected. All are valid, and the more extreme the experience, the more they occupy my memory, which in the long run makes me value them more.

We could sense there was a message of value in all that bandwidth, but we could not explain, as it was built from crude tools and obscured in a wall of noise.The first experimental show I saw that called itself as such was part of Kingston’s Tone Deaf Music Festival. The venue was a wood-ed path in the Cataraqui Conservation Area. The idea was to walk down the path at night, while battery-powered radios planted on the ground and in the trees played snippets of au-dio. The music itself was interesting enough, but the spatialization it achieved represented an ultimate limit for me. It was here I realized “stereo” was simply a standard we happen to be using: an assumption that makes the over-all production and playback of music more

convenient, as in a physics exam when you are told it’s okay to ignore the effects of kinetic friction. Or relativity.

Experimental music is often the most noisy, the most drawn out, the longest, the most technologically advanced, the most expan-sive in terms of media used (is this even mu-sic?), and the most difficult to parse into words. Collectively it cuts a wake in an ocean of sound from which all other music can get behind. It’s been like this for as long as music has existed. At first there was chanting and maybe singing in unison, clapping and hitting things. As our craft moves forward the wake expands. Technology is invented or repur-posed to support new methods of performing, listening and archiving. The music diversifies. Long drones and intense noise dominate the present stereotype, but this genre is only a placeholder, a common assumption from which to experiment from. Experimental music is about innovation, the creation of a positive feedback loop between available technology and our understanding of music, one reinforcing the other.

The piano keyboard evolved over many years into an efficient interface to voice several notes at once and in any key. It is now as ubiq-uitous in music as qwerty is to computing, al-though both are built from compromise. The modern drum kit is also quite the experiment. It started in the percussion pits of orchestras, where players consolidated their instruments. The drums and the piano work well together, but only thanks to the changing public opin-ion of what makes for good listening. None of this is experimental music, but the process has always been there. Otherwise music as we know it would not exist.

One night at CFRC, four of us wondered what would happen if we managed to get an input signal moving on every fader of the

control board. The guest and studio micro-phones, the phone line (via cell phone), the computer line-in, both record players, both CD’s, the tape deck, anything that wasn’t on that could be. Those who tuned in at the time would likely have checked their reception, but that didn’t matter to us. We could sense there was a message of value in all that bandwidth, but we could not explain, as it was built from crude tools and obscured in a wall of noise.

The boundaries of what we call music and how we interact with it continue to expand, unrec-ognizable in the context of our present day. New techniques in listening will emerge, and music may finally become a universal language in the literal sense of the term, a direct connec-tion between minds. No object-oriented verbs or nouns needed, as words will not describe. The noise subsides.

Our primitive brains are designed to detect movements outside our field of view. By bringing them into focus we guide our craft forward. Our wake is cast and our history archived. The journey continues, but only by challenging our boundaries and expanding our field of view.

The reverberations from the walls and ceiling trailed off as sounds from the lobby and the street filled its place. I unplugged my ears and acknowledged the ten or so people still in the audience.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

owen fernley is an experimental musician and geophysicist in Kingston, Ontario.

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Peripheral Visions

Peripheral Visions is Noise. Improvisation. Found sounds. Electroacoustic. Circuit Bending and beyond. It is the result of a call for submissions, whereby all submissions were accepted and se-quenced. Most of the artists are from geographic locations or communities that are removed from large urban centres: located in, or constituting an outer boundary or periphery.

Launch of the Peripheral Visions bandcamp compilation will coincide with a Vapours Concert at Modern Fuel on July 10th in Kingston, Ontario.

Listen at vapours-mf.bandcamp.com

1. introduction 01:03

2. hello babies / must we bust 04:22

3. c. trimmer / soundtrack to the radio documentary, ‘beth’ 03:10

4. ghost marriage / aine 03:25

5. d. burke mahoney / fog of industry 11:35

6. fire moss / mu 03:00

7. zach clark and kayla grant / wooden ladder leaning in a crater on the moon 05:47

8. the solina string ensemble / chorus howls 04:04

9. colliding canyons / echoes of pacific rim 03:44

10. i heart chaos / protoplast 02:33

11. buffalo 7 / for julia 04:01

12. shanna sordahl / gir 09:29

13. timmy bear / art show theme 04:00

14. kevin rodgers / reprise 01:58

15. graham beverley / germinale 02:15

Umber Hulk

You! Halt!

Yes, you! A-ha, A-ha, do you feel it? Your body numbing, as you take in the gaze from all four of my eyes at once? Do you feel your limbs

stiffening? Muscles atrophying? THAT IS THE POWER OF THE UMBER HULK’S GAZE!!

What business have you in this dungeon, which I call home? Are you a treasure hunter, seeking to plunder what little resources I call my own? These small baubles and trinkets I have man-aged to accumulate, and which constitute all that I own: are these what you seek? SPEAK!

Your weakness astounds me. Go on, take your saving throw versus paralysis. I will wait. Ha! Utter failure! I knew it!

Perhaps you are on a quest? You seem fool enough to delude yourself with such righ-teousness. Here to redecorate? To root out the “trash” like me, and the Decomposing Pianos down on sublevel 5? Did some sovereign tell you glory awaits? Were you promised fame and fortune by a strange enchantress? Every other week another one of you waltzes into this dun-geon looking to transform it into un habitat that better suits you. Well, message received. No room for a lowly old Umber Hulk in your ideal dungeon-polis! Hey, U-Hulk, buddy, you say, U-Hulk, buddy, get out of this dingy nowhere of a dungeon. Well, U-Hulk’s got news for you: I love it here! With my iron-like claws, strong enough to burrow through stone, I love to dig myself into corners! (fourfold wink!)

What encumbers you so? A loop pedal? A circuit-bent child’s keyboard? A CD labeled “field recordings?” What parlour wizardry is this? Hand-made cassette tapes? Ah yes: another roaming emitter of sounds formless and arbitrary, under guise of subverting con-ventional narrative! Braying petulantly about your feelings through a broken microphone -- “je suis weird” and “la musique, c’est difficult” and such -- while encouraging people who are nor-mally spry and energetic to sit in chairs and watch humorlessly! I question whether my four-foot mandibles could mangle language so! What in the Prime Material Plane is the aim of these experiments? What results do they achieve? What manner of troublesome dynamic is established ‘twixt artist and audi-ence when swaddled in such gauzy rhetoric? And you think I am fearsome – a-ha, a-ha! What could be more fearsome than THE RE-DUNDANT NOTHINGNESS INHERENT IN THE GESTURE TOWARD “EXPERI-MENTATION”!

Kristiana Clemens: Live Transmission

“Radio comes to us ostensibly with person to person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords.” —marshall mcluhan, Understanding Media

Like music or the Internet, radio ful-fills our desire for instant communi-cation across distances, an aspiration that lies at the heart of humankind’s longings for connectivity and explo-ration. As a platform for music and

audio art, radio offers creators the promise of expanding the horizons of one’s audience, reaching the ears of unknown and unseen lis-teners in remote locations in serendipitous instants of time. The mystery of contacting distant strangers, the spontaneity of a time-based medium, and the magic of transmitting sound signals outward to the depths of the universe, coalesce into a compelling opportu-nity for artists seeking to explore, challenge or improve relationships within our communi-ties or between our society and environment.

In 1895, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi built a wireless system capable of transmit-ting signals across distances, over the air. In 1901, he sent a Morse Code signal for the let-ter “S” across the Atlantic Ocean, from Pol-dhu in Cornwall, England, to Signal Hill in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The response from the scientific community was one of disbelief, so in 1902 Marconi conducted a second test, proving that radio signals could be transmit-ted across distances of more than 3,000 kilo-metres. Within 10 years, Reginald Fessenden and Lee De Forest had created technologies to transmit much more complex audio sig-nals, of voice and of music, from multiple stations across the AM frequency spectrum. The modern radio age was born. In the 1920s, dozens of broadcast radio stations emerged across the globe, including Kingston, Ontar-io’s own CFRC Radio.

Today, radio signals form the basis of all kinds of communications technologies, from wire-less networking to cell phones and satellite signals. Media studies experts such as Robert McChesney and Henry Jenkins point to the similarities between our current relationship with the Internet and the social impacts of radio in its early days, particularly in regard to struggles aimed at preserving access to com-munication tools as a public good, or to the encroachment of corporate interests onto emerging media platforms. While pundits incessantly predict the death of radio, the

f i n d i n g s

medium has already chimerically transformed itself, pervading the infrastructures of our newest technologies, while providing a chan-nel through which artists can explore our past, present and future in collaboration with unfamiliar listeners.

While pundits incessantly predict the death of radio, the medium has already chimeri-cally transformed itself...

When one considers the appeal of radio in an age where any piece of information or music is instantly available at one’s fingertips, most people will respond that tuning in creates an opportunity for spontaneity, serendipity or surprise. Listening offers an experience of opening oneself to one’s surroundings, broad-ening one’s understanding of contemporary culture and society, sitting back and absorb-ing the tonalities that another human being, someplace distant or at least hidden from view, has crafted for our pleasure and enrich-ment. Unlike on-line social media sites and search engines, where results are selectively winnowed down to appeal only to those pref-erences that a proprietary algorithm has de-termined we are entitled to, radio remains a mass medium, allowing the broadcaster to share content with an extremely diverse audi-ence, while permitting the listener to engage with sounds and concepts that may be unfa-miliar or challenging. Unlike the Internet, which we access by physically attaching our-selves to a device, and which cannot be fully enjoyed while driving or in the park, radio greets us in the private or public location of our own choosing, and at the level of fidelity and intensity we select, be it a portable wind-up speaker or a 400-watt stereo system. This friendliness and adaptability makes its poten-tially consciousness-altering properties infi-nitely more accessible and palatable.

When radio is produced outside of the com-mercial sphere, without a profit imperative, the result is a transgression of norms being increasingly established and enforced by digi-tal media mega-corps and surveillance states. Non-profit radio might tell you what you DON’T want to hear, and it will NEVER be watching you. Even more frightening for mar-keters of the status quo, radio might change your preferences and perspectives altogether.

This special property of non-commercial, and especially community-based radio, is many music and sound artists’ best-kept secret.

Offering a venue for creativity and experi-mentation, as well as the chance to con-nect with ears that would otherwise not be reached, community radio continues to draw underground artists to its airwaves in swarms, like honeybees to a field of flowers. A unique and mutually reinforcing connection is es-tablished between local radio and local art, as artists create programming to raise aware-ness about the sounds that most interest and inspire them, while listeners are encouraged to explore these sounds independently or par-ticipate in creating their own.

In short, the technology that radically en-hanced our capacity to communicate across vast distances more than a century ago is now a tool to reflect surprising and unexpected facets of our local communities back to us. The technology that increasingly provides the infrastructure for our access to the Internet, simultaneously subverts the individualized and corporate-driven content dished out by multinational web corporations and govern-ment spin-doctors. Radio expands beyond its original mandate as a tool for communica-tion across distances, and becomes a tool for social change, for creative collaboration, for the exploration of social, political, economic and cultural alternatives. Radio puts music in the streets, and then broadcasts the sounds of the streets back into our homes, tents and cars. Radio is not dead. Radio is our future. kristiana clemens is the Operations Officer at CFRC 101.9fm in Kingston and sits on the National Campus and Community Radio As-sociation Board of Directors. She has been involved in campus and community radio since 1990 and has also worked as a journal-ist, DJ, sound technician, community orga-nizer and performer.

a c c u s a t i o n s

Hark, what is yon darkened stain spreading fast ‘cross the fore of your jodhpurs? A-ha! You have brought dampness upon yourself in your fear. THAT IS THE POWER OF THE UMBER HULK’S GA – uh. Wow. Still going strong. Are you going to be ok? That’s a lot of…wow. Let me just find something to help you dry off.

Here, dry thyself with this parchment. I pro-cured it from a lowly scribe who sought to historicize “the experimental scene.” I think perhaps its present application writes the his-tory quite nicely, does it not? A-ha!

Right, now where was I? Yes: abandon such hu-bris! “Look at me, I am not like the other dun-geon crawlers,” you say. Hmph! Waltzing in here as though you’re the Great Wizard Ro-Gal-Sky of the House of Gertrude. As though your gri-moire contains anything other than recordings of breathy vocalization loops, waiting to be lay-ered atop one another until all damnéd sugges-tion of clear intention, determination and risk is obscured! I am sorry to break this to you, level-one conjurer of soft clouds of inoffensive digi-tal static, atop which perfect fifths phase-shift pleasantly, but not a day goes by that these dun-geon walls do not ring with the atonal bleating of these so-called “experiments.” Would you like to know how these experiments play out with regard to my four-foot mandibles? Well, perhaps you have heard of the experimental technique of chopping and screwing? A-ha!

No? Well, it’s a DJ thing. Started in Houston, in the 90s. Aggressive manipulation of samples. Did you need me to look it up on Wikipedia for you?

In the name of the Neogi! Still you persist in besmirching your trousers and all that lies be-neath! OK, I’ve got to admit that your…um…performance here is throwing my game off. In fact, it is somewhat awe-inspiring in its revolt-ingness. Is that the kind of thing you could learn to do on command, perhaps? I’ve got an idea for something that would freak the shit out of some people at this art space I know about.

Could you maybe come back and we’ll work out a bit of a routine? I’m thinking that I’ll do the whole, “You! Halt!” thing, and then some-where in there, you can just let fly. What do you think? Does Wednesday work for you? No? Hmm. No, unfortunately Thursday’s not good for me. I’m burrowing through solid rock all day. Friday after the show? Yeah?

Great! umber hulks are sentient insect-like beings that live their lives underground and are eas-ily agitated by those who dwell on the surface. They have powerful claws and four foot long mandibles, presumably to help them dig deeper into unexplored regions.

Support Syphon, Submit!We want to hear from you. Send us your letters, rants, reviews and musings about any aspect of your local arts scene. Though we have ideas of our own, we welcome unsolicited material (of which we would otherwise be unaware) at a length rang-ing from 500 to 1000 words. Send them by email as MS WORD or RTF attachments to info@modernfuel.org.

Please include a short biographical note with your submission. Contact us for deadlines.

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c r e d i t f o r c e n t e r f o l d80% of dorothea paas' songs are about death!

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14 AUGUST 2013SQUARE PEGS VI Please join us for this popular Annual Video Screening in Market Square, curated this year by Modern Fuel's New Media Coordinator Patrick RoDee

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS: 24 AUGUST TO 5 OCTOBER 2013In the Main GalleryDARIUSZ KRZEMINSKI (Toronto) : SETTLEMENTIn the State of FluxERIKA OLSON

VIDEO SCREENINGS: 10 OCTOBER 2013FASTWURMS: FILMS FROM 1979 TO 1986

21 QUEEN ST. KINGSTON ON K7K 1A1 613.548.4883 INFO@MODERNFUEL.ORG WWW.MODERNFUEL.ORG