Porch Swing Orchestra
is a website and art project by Barry Stone that explores the interplay between still images and sound.Photographs and musical improvisations build a framework for deep listening and visual contemplation. Barry Stone plays acoustic guitar with a Fahey-inspired picking style mixed in with electronic effects, like My Bloody Valentine for a campfire. The sounds of the outside—bird calls, stray conversations, passing cars—become part of the music.
Stone scrambles the code and layers images taken on-site to produce new imaginaries. We discover fresh ways to see and hear everything.
Since 2018, PSO has collaborated with dozens of musicians, artists, poets, writers, and activists to publish over 240 unique combinations of images and sounds.
Most PSO pieces are made on Stone’s front porch in Austin, Texas, but PSO has traveled to Spiral Jetty in Utah, the border town of Del Rio, Texas, Maine, the San Juan Islands, and performes live in unconventional venues such as the James Turrell Skyspace, The Color Inside as a part of The University of Texas Landmarks Songs in the Skyspace Program.
Selected PSO images and field recordings
Visit the site at PorchSwingOrchestra.Org for the newest piece and information about upcoming performances.
Listen to the PSO Podcast for conversations with collaborators.
See + Listen past recordings and images on the PSO Jukebox.
PSO on Instagram
Porch Swing Orchestra is a project by Austin-based artist Barry Stone. Simply put, it is a webpage with one image and an embedded audio track play button. Another crucial component is an email from Stone when the next installment is up. The single website images are typical of Stone’s pictures — landscapes, sometimes with a figure — that are often modified by way of manipulating the digital image’s file code. You can hear a short audio clip of (most likely) Stone playing guitar, and the atmosphere of his surroundings. It sounds something like an accidental field recording, or something you’d find in your Voice Memo recordings. It’s not amateurish or casual — it has the feel of a personal experience, a recording you would make for yourself and not something to be shared for “likes.” Stone’s project is rooted in a critique of the production of “likes” as part of the larger commodification of digital content — both personal and as fine art.
–Chad Dawkins for Glasstire
–Chad Dawkins for Glasstire