Leif Brush and the Earth Philharmonic by Dave Helland NEW TIMES, December, 1974 Iowa City, Iowa--Someday Leif Brush will write a symphony, but now he is busy tuning a tree, perfecting the Insect Broadcasting System, and inventing other instruments to perform the symphony. The rough idea for his river harp is on paper: now he needs engineers to put his idea into blueprint form and roughly $500,000 to construct the instrument. His rain and draft monitors are perfected. These are all examples of what Brush calls terrain instruments, instruments played by the elements of nature. The music they make are the random, minute sounds of nature-water running down a tree, ants' footsteps, a leaf hiting a taut wire- electronically amplified and then recorded. Unlike his fellow professors at the University of Iowa's School of Art, who paint, sculpt or make prints in their indoor studios, Brush's studio is his yard and house. When the wind is strong, he monitors three steel stakes in the ground around a tree and several steel pins driven into the trunk, crotch, bark and limbs of the tree. By hooking one of the stakes or pins to a pre-amp, he can record the vibrations caused by wind buffeting the tree. Each is recorded separately, but his goal is to be able to hear them simultaneously. Soon, he'll be able to mix the recordings to bring out the most interesting sound taking place at any given moment. Five wires of different gauges strung between two trees serve as his cricket and cicada monitor. Insect noises cause the the wires to vibrate slightly, but when these vibrations are amplified electronically they can be recorded. While recording this monitor, he heard strange noises he couldn't account for until he noticed that ants were crawling across the wires of the monitor. Terrain Instruments, Eleanor Heartney, EAR Magazine Ra d i o V.8. N. 5, March 1884 ...The Terrain Instruments exist, like sculpture, in space, but mirror sound which is less familiar and less connotative than that of a violin or piano. Current sound works employ use of microprocessors. and the listener/viewer of my radio-performances is asked to use new ways of perceiving this traditional, and artistic, source, the natural environment. ...Despite the unconventional nature of Brush's almost totally non-visual are (there are plans to convert aural information into visual images), it is closely tied to traditional notions of the link between art and nature. He is a populist and probably the most revolutionary aspect of his works is his transfer of control of his art from the artist to its audience.

Colorado Daily November 21, 1975 by Jennifer Heath-- Wagner's Ring Cycle exploded ("...Surf the Ring. It's quite a ride.") at the Music Hall on Tuesday night without benefit for vocalists or melodies. Instead, the jarring atmospheric sound effects that Wagner might have used--had he access to electronics and Leif Brush's Terrain Instruments--were performed alone. Brush, the University's visiting artist this week, makes these effects with what he calls Audible Sculpture. With "Cricket Chord Monitors," glass rods, transducers, magnesium "Signal Discs," modulated lasers and scanning electron microscopes, Brush records the movements of water, wind, bushes, thunderstorms, insects and snowflakes. He then spontaneously blends the sounds on tape, unorchestrated and un-choreographed. A synthesizer was used in his second piece, 1975-1976 Network Mode: Brush Passaroundsound--not by Brush, but his friend. However, much of the concert had the sonorous purity of a synthesizer rather than the soft subtle redundancies one associates with nature's voice. Nevertheless, Leif Brush's technology and art is strong and original. A scuffed assistant professor of art at the University of Iowa, brush began his career in radio and television announcing. The army taught him basic electronics--he claims to know very little electronics and calls in engineers or physicists to help put his ideas to work--but he dead-ended because "there was nothing I was doing that was my own." Finally, he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received a Masters in Fine Arts, found "thinking time" and an outlet for his "science-art." Directed by the premise that there are "scores in nature" that can be tapped with the "right kind of sensors and interceptors," Brush began in 1968 to organize the trees, bushes and grasses into an earthly symphony. His obsession is the scientific methods for using these "instruments." Excited by technology, he appears to be a man divided between science and art. His philosophy of art, however, denies art's restrictiveness to itself. "After my visual training, I'm kind of prejudiced against the eyes having it always and always. Art is probly going down for the last time if it overlooks some kind of integration. Science is going to steal the show. There are more things that have greater impact, as a body, than visual art. Science is bearing down on us. You need a force to match a force and the artistic force alone isn't going to do it. Creativity is up against the phenomena and imagery that science is coming up with. "After four years at Iowa, my decision is to devise a curriculum so that the art student has access to any resources in the university--no door would be closed. For example, there would be something going on in physics that the art student could use in the form of a foundation course. Leif Brush is one of the very few artists who are developing a technological art, though there are others who are using sound, John Cage, for example, recorded traffic, footsteps and silence. Brush is "bored"by man-made sounds, except where man is reacting to the rhythms made by natural instruments. The player of the Signal Discs is not inventing his rhythms, but responding to those of the tree. Brush does not necessarily use musicians either but people who are "really curious to satisfy the nooks and crannies of their minds and have never met satisfaction with any other kind of sound. It triggers some really dormant things in the head." Brush is filled with ideas about recording more sounds--the growth of a tree root, for instance--but he is not (sic.) interested in making visual images from his recordings. He feels that he has opened up new subjective images for the exploring artist to experience and use. But if most man-made sounds are garbage to Brush, he also says that "a lot of stuff I'm interested in, science regards as noise. If they're seeking these enormous large-scale computer models, there's lots of noise they don't want--interference. Their by product stuff is of interest to me." Science's trash, in other words, is used in the same way that some artists are using video feedback. And, of course, Brush is not only anxious that artists look outside of art for inspiration, but that scientists look into art perhaps for humanization. Brush doesn't want anyone's mind "cheated out of anything." In the fall of 1976, Brush will receive a grant to further his explorations--this time with a satellite to receive the noises made by people in Iowa counties. The noise will be specific to what the noise-makers' choose and will culminate at the satellite in one full symphonic sound. Whatever the results, Brush's vision is to "survey, explore and overhear the natural dynamic goings-on." He would like to take his tapes to Germany next summer and use them in an upcoming performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen ) That would probably suit Wagner just fine. Anyone who is interested in hearing a 90-minute cassette of Leif Brush's Terrain Instruments is invited to write him c/o the University of Iowa, Iowa City, 52242 ... http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/U%20O%20Iowa%20Faculty.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/!lbrush/EAR1984.pdf http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/Projects/City_Sounds+Tuning_of_the_World.php

teleSUONOhologram http://www.d.umn.edu/%7Elbrush/lbarchivesTELESUONOVISION.html http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/teleSUONOhologram.jpg http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesf4.html#anchor139283 teleSuonoQUAD http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesf4.html#anchor396507 Ear to the Ground http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesf4.html#anchor1182749 http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=PFv2b35C9H/WORKS-FILE/278660047/123

Riga, October 3 2013 hi rasa

Please forward this RE NEW Riga Latvia to ::TECHN)-ECOLOGIES - Panel B:: Chair: Chu Lea Cheang Category: "Techno Ecologies"

http://renew.rixc.lv/sessions/techno-ecologies.php?s=leif-brush Title Seeing the wind 3 4, Windinch, Six Ws +

Guided by media-wiki linkages, contributing members could include realtime challenges which enlist community participation to my projected 2015 Rhizome proposal by (a) identifying, sorting, defining, and the sharing of overall project outcomes, comprehending these and, eventually assembling Nano-based technologies within a selected terrain-site, and would be capable of, and eventually collect and collate the sought audible-results results - at any given time and space; and, these realtime orchestral responses would come from prehistoric-old, naturally-occurring terrestrial sounds of nature. These attained through the listening-learning processes, and will inform and guide us toward an eventual assembling of these; the objective being to establsih an interactive procedure affecting all 2-way monitorings of global's fluxing whole's phenomena ( #2 ref/note) Starting from scratch, our aural and visual (video) collations would, ephemerally mirror, and eventualually sustain generational inputs and outputs globally. (b) Requisites for each nodal site to be successful, local, community, and potentially global nodal sites will require upgradable computer-wide useages and comprehensibe Nano-based-technologies and hardware. Though expandable, this list includes nano-based electronics: software, coding, debugging, processors' tweeks to setups/testing/checking out of RF transceivers, antennas, repeater stations, modulated laser throughput alignments, and multiplexing/demultiplexing handshakes and compatibilities for its neighborhood to neighborhood to get underway. Input monitoring's backbone will require: (c) NIST/GPS-syncing, (d) Lat/Long positions( #3 ref/note),(e) inputing, mutlplexing all at-the-moment sensing collections, (f)- outputing these moments-in-time-and-space (#4 ref/note), demultiplexing all scans of Global's realtime waveforms (#5 ref/note), (g) that the resultant syncd-collations - potentialy from all cardinal points- are to be in realtime, momentarily mirroring prehistoric terrestrial "sound tracks." At home, via their handhelds, each participant is asked to sync their specific data re emerging whole - of this time and space- to this emerging whole, Summary, Synchronicity assured - by having used 2-ways: solar-powered electronics, the net-contrutors' input/output and inter-connecting hardware/software handshakes will have several options as to how to output there packets; suitable solar power appliances, have utilized FM transmitters from the site-to-computer-to internet, etc, RF-reflecting dishes, discarded home satellite dishes, FM transmissions: wifi or lifi laser, FM transceivers, and, hardware and appropriate software apps. Having been perceived, received, acted upon by all contributors from neighborhood to neighborhood, these ephemeral "constructs" (#6 ref/note) can reaffirm the "naturally" possession of ancient sounding sources which have been otherwise drowned out.
kindest regards leif brush

Thank you so much for dinner last week!Inbox x Joellyn Rock
Oct 2 (2 days ago)
Dear Gloria and Leif, Thanks again for the lovely group dinner at Zeitgeist last week. It was wonderful to meet Doug Kahn, who is a fascinating guy. It doesn't surprise me that he would find his way to our local genius, Leif! It was fun to catch up with everyone and talk about other-worldly things too. His book "media trees" will be published in Fall 2014 and Leif will be mentioned in Chapter 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Kahn

I'm afraid I was coming down with a cold that night, and I dearly hope I didn't pass it to either of you. It's going around UMD now, and both Rob Wititg and I have been pretty under the weather this week. I hope you are well, and enjoying the sunny fall days...Gloria luxuriating in making art without all the niggling interruptions of teaching and committee work.

Now I have a date on my calendar for Leif to visit my Digital Arts: Interactive Media class. Let me know if this still works for you Leif...

Monday November 25 at 5pm in ABAnderson room 335. We can discuss what you would like my students to view or read about your work before you visit. re http://weblackwhole.net

* "Earth Sound Earth Signal" is out now ,and Doug's next book is due out in fall of 2014: Title "Media Trees," and Leif will be in chapter 2.

Thanks again, Joellyn ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joellyn Rock Assistant Professor University of Minnesota Duluth www.d.umn.edu/~jrock2

quickie December 2013 recap My work, then, has striven to transcend commercialized music vs sound connotations through use of upgraded electronics and associated materials for overhearing our own natural voltages on "Spaceship Earth". (Presently, local solar, low voltage net-nodes sustain a key baseline which will ultimately place sound on par w/music.) I left commercial, carbon-copying radio broadcasting in 1960. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1964-72), I focused upon atmospheric sound phenomena. In 1970 I initiated a sound course, Audible Constructs (http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesb1.html), and later left SAIC with an M.F.A. in sound sculpture, where I'd developed concepts employing the overhead Clarke Belt satellites - as potential "conductors,"- for GPS/NIST syncing- in realtime by artists-scientists- and began prototypical Terrain Installments (http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1574849?uid=3739736&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103154888481) to sustain these interactive concepts. I think that natural radio sounds (http://www.spaceweathersounds.com/sndbites.htm ) should be directly available, concurrently with terrestrially available sounds globally, from all analog-based sources, without any packaging, and be transmittable @ home (http://rhizome.org/commissions/proposal/2588/ ) via prompting from the telephone's keypad. My Permanent Forest Terrain Instrument has contributed to this concept of global sources and world playing. Although synthesized libraries arc widely available and clearly the popular choice for "sound tracks," the demand for natural sound sources could well expand. Current http://weblackwhole.net Researc-mergings w/Global's community, Nano-based sensor networks, coordinating among local, neighborhood GPS/NIST-synchronized recontextualizations to achieve international terrestrial analog-analog to digital "ephemeral orchestrations"- via one-to-one coördinated mesh, + nets. http://rhizome.org/search/?q=leif+brush http://blog.lib.umn.edu/jrock2/art3018/2013/11/leif-brush-artist-talk-6pm-monday-nov-25.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/jrock2/art3018/2013/11/interactive-art-environmental-works.html#comments http://www.upv.es/laboluz/master/metodologia/textos/information_art.pdf http://books.google.com/books?id=sHuXQtYrNPYC&pg=PT148&lpg=PT148&dq=leif+brush,+bio-ecology+science,+art,+sound&source=bl&ots=pI8YnL2gHN&sig=HFvOl-ObvlCWh9v8MdmNB5eD5oc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XyK3UuCwBeaHygHyu4GACg&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=leif%20brush%2C%20bio-ecology%20science%2C%20art%2C%20sound&f=false Artist in the Anthropocene http://blog.zhdk.ch/marcusmaeder/materials/ http://aita.ellieirons.com http://biodigitalgames.com/category/database/type/artistic/ http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/nunavut-cap-sites/conversations/topics/417 http://www.streamingfestival.com/archive/2013/interview.php?id=60&f=Leif&l=Brush&s=sound http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html http://www.davidddunn.com/~david/writings/wilder.pdf http.nomad.net.au/file.pdp?f=XwDK15.wQQh7j22