FO(A)RM no. 4 (topography) treats the movement over, through or across a landscape and the act of documenting, utilizing or noticing an interaction with that landscape. It concerns a mapping of the points between self and space – traversing and/or transforming natural and urban environments. Within these pages, intelligent perspectives find fertile soil.
Included within are essays by sound theorist Douglas Kahn (Noise Water Meat) on spherics and and cultural theorist Steven Connor (Dumbstruck) on listening to sound-art, lengthy interviews with minimalist luminary Phill Niblock and Whitney Biennial artist Julianne Swartz, revealing articles on sound-installation projects by composers Marc Behrens and Eric La Casa, conceptual artist Sreshta Premnath’s carbon-paper traces of lived experience, public interaction and social sculpture by Swiss artist San Keller and Portland-based sculptor David Eckard, composer/improviser Jean-Luc Guionnet’s series of “Linescape” drawings, an historical essay on the holy Wu-T’ai mountains in 11th century China by Eliot Weinberger, Charles Stein’s striking visual language works, poems by William Fox, Haleh Hatami, André Spears, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, and Rachel Daley and a delicately vibrational cover by sound-artist Seth Cluett.
(Topography) also includes, in conjunction with Sedimental records, the never-released and radically different sound-work by Phill Niblock, Ghosts and Others. This CD is only to be found in FO(A)RM.