With Boktryck Hanna Hartman continues what se began in Glas (Glass), sound arting through the basic handicraft trades, which this time finds her in a printing office where books are printed.

The piece opens up inside an ambient but seemingly closed space, all the little grains of self generated audio floating about in a plasma state, with the general impression of something gearing up, waiting to happen. Then a short, muffled stroke, heavily across a surface, and another one, plus tearing of some material, repeatedly, and longer, heavy strokes followed by minuscule papery sounds, calling to mind some pieces by John Cage, like the work with the long title “But What About The Noise of Crumpling Paper Which He Used To Do In Order To Paint the Series of Papiers Froissés Or Tearing Up paper To Make Papiers Déchirés? Arp Was Stimulated By Water (Sea, Lake, And Flowing Waters Like Rivers), Forests” – Yes, that is the title, longer even than much of what La Monte Young (famous for his elaborate titles) ever managed…

You hear the soft hammering of a felt hammer, perhaps (I’m doing guesswork here, no information is provided except the sound itself), and the tiny paper-tearing sounds – which might be something completely different, perhaps even some glued-together surfaces being separated – are panning back and forth across the soundspace, close by your face as you listen with closed eyes. I can smell glue, leather, ink, the cold steel of heavy machinery and the grease that eases friction, and the lurking shadow of Mr. Gutenberg hovers over the proceedings.

I think about the three major revolutions of mankind: Fire, Book Printing and the Internet; three giant steps making the transition from body to spirit more possible, more likely, even self-evident… and I get so tired of this body that makes me do all these things just to nurture it…

The hammering, though soft and careful, increases, as a male voice asks in German about the correct term; Japanische Blockbindung or Japanische Heftbindung. The sounds inside the closed space of the printing office gather momentum, as a swooshing motion repeats mechanically. The atmosphere of a creative space is convincingly conveyed through the masterly dexterity of Hanna Hartman and her postproduction fingertip accuracy, always in an atmosphere of sensuality, which she, probably intuitively, always renders her sound art.

Hanna Hartman’s art sometimes moves in and out of the disciplines of the documentary report and pure sound art. She shifts seamlessly between the disciplines. She often layers the two disciplines, mixing their characteristics in a fluency of sounding expression. You may, for example, hear voices discussing matter-of-factly, as you, simultaneously, hear slightly processed sounds collected in the vicinity, sort of coloring, amplifying the atmosphere at hand. This is one of the beauties of her oeuvre. On the one hand she walks in the footsteps of the documentary master Britt Edwall, while she on the other hand paints with the brush of, let’s say, maestros of electroacoustics and musique concrète like Francis Dhomont or François Bayle! These artists are mentioned just to give an idea of Hartman’s art, not to say that she in any way has copied anything. Her art is one all to herself, which is why I am so attracted to it. Her art is honest and serene, and incredibly skillful.

Gradually the swooping, swishing sounds take on an aura of dreams, as Hartman manipulates them ever so slightly through her electroacoustics. A melody from afar, way behind these closer printing office dreamscape sounds, slowly emerges and immediately recedes, and I’m not even sure I really heard it anymore… and everything comes to a halt, stopping dead in reality’s printing office again, the sounds fully real, tangible, definable, dry, close… but then the flapping of birds taking off – perhaps pigeons – pull me back into uncertainty again…

The printers shove about calmly in their working space, assessing their object of attention, mumbling unto one another, as the crumpling sounds once again crumple right at the entrances of your auditory meatuses… and laughter is heard, as some measurements are being made, the final humorous remark, referring to Galileo Galilei, being mischievously uttered: “Und Sie bewegt sich doch…”

In the end an angelic soprano rises out of the machinery’s mechanical motions hither and thither, like the soul and spirit that rises out of the work at the printer’s office, and which is something completely different than the sum of glue and paper and ink and steel, but yet a final result of all these efforts, enabling the transition of the author’s thoughts and dreams to the many hungry-eyed readers of these magic signs poured out across all these bound pages of the BOOK!