When asked how long he has worked in coffee, conceptual sound artist Sean Sumler immediately responds that it’s been a long time. After eight years in the coffee business, he says, “I’m about ready to have tenure.” Yet a barista position is not a bad fit for Sean, a creative individual who is able to engage with his art on the job. He has been at The Fresh Pot on Mississippi St. in Portland, OR for four months, a transition from Random Order Coffeehouse, where he worked for the better part of his duration in Portland, since moving from California almost five years ago.
The Fresh Pot, a fantastic space for contemplation, chilling, and people watching (and arguably less productive for more formal and focused study) is a comfortable place for Sean, who is, unequivocally, a thinker. He spends much of his work days engaged in socializing with customers and friends, as well as musing on his creative projects, and shrugs admitting, “I’m in my head a lot.”
Sean is able to take advantage of his barista post as a space to rehearse ideas, which he’ll later go on to apply to related artistic tasks he cares for, not just limited to music, but building things (including a recent interest in motors, due in part to mechanical complications with his charming little motorized scooter), and what he describes as “conceptual sound projects.”
When it comes to defining his art, music is a term he balks at since most of the work he does is based in composition that happens in his head. His creative process being based in conceptualization, he says, “I do a lot more thinking than practicing.” The articulation of the idea is easy, while “the fun part is conceiving the idea in the first place.”
While his music/sound projects evade any specific genre, he acquiesces to the word “experimental” since, “I like to experiment with ideas.” While he admits the sounds he makes might not be entirely new, Sean is interested in the rearranging of elements within a performance: taking sounds that he or someone else has made and sending them through his particular process.
Specific categorization is not applicable to his sound projects, but he says there is something industrial about it, a metallic quality that is, of late, satisfying. The most appropriate articulation of his music might be: the percussive use of synthesizers to “paint a cold picture.”
Rejecting the accumulation of hoards of equipment, Sean believes resolutely that his humble library of machines and sound tools are everything he could possibly need. He describes himself as minimalist, stating bluntly that a vast collection of instruments is unnecessary for him to make art, to make music; preferring, as he does, to draw from his environment and from himself, rather than from a myriad of tools.
In his basement dwells his small, but organized sound studio, consisting of a mixing board, several keyboards, a computer, and various other handsome gadgets. He is presently enamored of a minute device called the Arduino Microcontroller, a popular tool amongst artists, which senses input from its surroundings. When connected to a computer, the Microcontroller can perform functions such as running lights, motors, and other instruments with mechanical motions. Sean is also interested in engaging with everyday technologies and consumer electronics, since they’re easily accessible. It is common knowledge that an iPhone has an almost infinite bag of tricks, and Sean has taken this to a new level, turning his into a remote/instrument, the device acting almost like non-contact bow that activates the computer’s figurative strings. As he dips the iPhone from side to side, the computer across the basement warbles and burbles in response, an awesome and inventive artistic use of a quotidian device. Furthermore, this remote works long-distance, and can effect the sounds his computer makes, even several blocks away.
While Sean is also involved in a regular collaborative musical project, and enjoys engaging others creatively through performance, he does find great reward in working solo. “I can do whatever I’m into that week. I grant myself the freedom to express my current interests,” he explains. And through this philosophy he is apt to make curious decisions, ones that he may not even recognize as subtly rebellious. A recent solo show at Valentine’s bar (one of his preferred venues) in downtown Portland, for example, began to run late. As the audience became more tired and drunken, and he was yet to start his show, Sean made an executive decision to play a short set… a set that, in fact, lasted just about five minutes.
This was a move that favored his audience, his venue staff, and himself, by the end of the performance, leaving everyone, in his word, satisfied. He has no interest in boring himself or those who experience his sound projects, and believes that if people are engaged with the performance and like it, they’ll come to another show.
His set up at Valentine’s was simple, including four tape players connected to a mixing board. The tape players issued percussive sounds he had created, which, for the live performance, Sean arranged, muted to varying degrees, and sent to different spaces, running the sounds through filters to create something new. He finds the freedom in this sort of performance exciting.
ASSS, his project with Alex Smith (the name of the band comprised of the two band mate’s initials), has been dormant performance-wise in Portland, but will be touring the UK again this summer, playing shows and visiting friends. The two are presently recording, with hopes that the new record will be ready for the tour.
Alex and Sean have been friends since the latter’s move from the Bay Area about five years ago, a friendship that, based in similar ideas about music, immediately spawned a punk band that Sean says was productive and enjoyable. ASSS was birthed from the idea that the two friends could use instruments and tools they did not yet know how to play, initially drumming and vocals, without any prior experience. When they took on the challenge of electronics, it began morphing into what is now a solid and popular Portland project.
Next month, Sean will also be performing a show with the talented Portland musician, Brian Mumford, of Dragging an Ox Through Water, Sun Foot, and numerous other musical exploits. Of the opportunity to know and work with Brian and his almost unanimously esteemed facility for music, Sean declares, “I’m beside myself.” This collaboration will be Sean's third show run entirely off of a generator (you can rent one for $60, apparently), which will supply all the required power, enabling the performance to be anywhere. His past generator-based shows have taken place on a hot, sandy, isolated beach on Swan Island, and during a dreary day of rain underneath the freeway overpass at the bottom of Mississippi Street, both well-received little events.
One of the most fascinating elements of Sean’s artistic principle is his absolute lack of propriety over his artistic work, which is a beautiful and radical approach. He encourages people to check out his set-up at shows to see what he’s concocted. “You can’t steal [my ideas] if I’m giving ‘em away,” he says simply. A performance is enjoyable in part because he’s able to share information, for he believes a collective pool of idea sharing and advancements into how people think and what they’re doing is “really important for the creative community.”
His most rewarding performances consist of two elements: what he gets out of a set on a personal level, and the equally crucial engagement from his audience. A show is an accomplishment when the listeners appreciate or understand where his work is coming from. “That connection is amazing,” he says, comparing it to a moment of elation that leads to pounding fists with a friend. Sean states, “things I create cannot be bought or sold.” He is similarly uninterested in the “hoarding” of ideas, admitting that, as any good artist does, he nods to other artists’ works. He contentedly states that he hopes that someone could find his ideas and information relevant, and might borrow from them, a nod toward his work that he will definitely have earned.
Sean’s recommended artists working with sound: Brian Mumford, Oregon Painting Society
Click images to enlarge, photos by Justin Schwab. Check out Justin's group MFA Visual Studies 2013 First Year Exhibition June 23-July 20 at Disjecta/ Opening reception Saturday June 23, 6pm.
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