SP, 2004 by Dennis McNulty

“On a rainy afternoon in Dublin’s Meeting House Square, 4th July 2004, I found myself planted, katzenjammer, facing the proscenium. All present in public solitude.

Dennis took to the stage. What followed was unexpected. Transient sounds, radiating and resonating actively throughout the space. For a moment in time, I was buoyant in this strangely familiar atonal harmony.

It was in fact the second public transmission of his series of sound performances using vocal samples from The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album as source material.

Over the next couple of years, occasionally meeting by chance, I would enquire after the project, insisting without exception that some of the recordings be made public somehow. Then there’s a time gap.”

Gavin Duffy (Diet of Worms), February 2023.

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These recordings document two (of five) space-specific sound-performances from Dennis as one of Ireland's representatives at the 2004 São Paulo Bienal.

All sound pieces were improvised by manipulating fragments of an acapella version of That's Not Me from The Beach Boys universally acclaimed Pet Sounds album. Custom software was used to break up and layer looped fragments of the track, inserting rhythmic gaps into the flow of sound in order to coax the space itself into the role of an explicit collaborator.

Side 1 was performed in the parabolic modernist Baby Barioni swimming pool; side 2, under The Marquise, a huge concrete roof structure adjacent to Niemeyer's vast pavilion in Ibirapuera Park.

Each performance was recorded with a microphone, capturing a mix of the computer-generated sound and its interaction with the acoustic signature of the space, its reverberation. Each recording in turn was incorporated into successive performances.