School of Art Associate Dean Michael Ned Holte’s latest book Listener: Meditations on Music and Pauline Oliveros clocks in at 622 pages, but at its heart lies a mere five-word question: “What constitutes your musical universe?”
The prompt originates in Sonic Meditations (1974), written by pioneering American composer, accordionist, and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros. Drawing from Oliveros’ theory of Deep Listening—an exploration of the “difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening”—the book presents exercises designed to improve musicians’ sonic awareness. Holte’s latest publication is an inquisitive text score, responding to Sonic Meditation XXI’s “brief yet expansive prompt” through a performance-in-writing.
Holte’s book is a continuation of his research into Oliveros’ work. In 2022, he authored Bog Time, a pamphlet about Oliveros’ early tape and synthesizer music. Listener grew largely out of Pauline Oliveros for Artists, a class Holte taught in 2019 in the School of Art. In 2022, Holte committed to performing a written response to Sonic Meditation XXI each day of the year, leading to what Holte described as a “daily improvisation of listening, reflecting, reading, and writing.”
To give form to these meditations and insights, Holte enlisted the help of CalArtian Vivian Sming (Art MFA 13), founder of the publishing studio Sming Sming Books. Holte credits Sming with transforming his “unruly Google doc into a book,” and for also serving as the work’s editor and designer.
More about Listener: Meditations on Music and Pauline Oliveros from the publisher:
As a performance that documents its own making, the text also serves as a reflection on time, memory, improvisation, silence, solitude, loss, friendship, teaching, visual art, taste, and material culture, among many other subjects summoned in its daily pursuit.
A School of Art faculty since 2011 (following his stint as visiting faculty two years prior), Holte is a Los Angeles-based writer and independent curator. In 2022, Hyperallergic named his Armory Center for the Arts exhibition how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith one of the year’s top exhibitions. Holte currently serves on the artists’ advisory board for the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (ICA LA). He was previously on the board of directors of the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) and was a founding member of the Varese Group.
Sming is a Bay Area-based writer and publisher and the 2018 recipient of the Shannon Michael Cane Memorial Award from Printed Matter for Sming Sming Books. Through her studio, she has published books and editions by various fellow alumni, including Johanna Hedva (Art MFA 2013, Critical Studies MA 2014), Vanessa Holyoak (Art MFA 19), Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (Art, Critical Studies MFA 12), Kang Seung Lee (Art MFA 15), and Alice Wang (Art BFA 10).
Order a paperback or e-book of Listener: Meditations on Music and Pauline Oliveros at Sming Sming Books.
