Foward to Concert 1
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Tim Barrass |
Swarm |
Gallery 1 |
Melbourne |
Swarm is a computer-generated orchestration of the complex motion through space of hundreds of individual "flies". The resulting naturalistic impression slowly unfolds as an evolving tonal composition and is intended as an ambient piece combining chaotic complexity with a recognisable sense of harmony.
A personal symbolic image I invest in the work is one of a shimmering cloud of electronic insects feasting off a data-riddled mountain of rotting info-compost, an over-organised, corpulent body of information putrefying and giving ground to a strange new living chaos.
I would like to dedicate Swarm to Centrelink/CES, for the alarming inaccuracy of their client data-base.
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Michael Whiticker |
Aborigines in sport - the soundscape |
Gallery 1 |
Queensland, Australia |
The exhibition, Tries and Tribulations, Aborigines in /Sport is being shown at the Penrith Regional Gallery from October 24 1997 to February 1, 1998. The curator of the exhibition are Michael Crayford, Michaels Brogan and Lee-Ann Hall. The soundscape to accompany the exhibition was composed by Michael Whiticker with the technical assistance provided by Paul Lawrence.
A large number of exerts of "grabs" were utilised in the creation of this soundscape. The following people are credited and thanked for these materials. Colin Tatz for Aboriginal sports people biographies found in his book Black Diamonds (Allen and Unwin, 1996)ABC, excerpts from the Sports Factor, May 2, 1997, presented by Amanda Smith. ABC for excerpts from Awaye May 2, 1997, presented by Lorena Allam and Lilly Towhite. Producer Graham McNeice for audio excerpts form the video That's Boxing (Centaur Pictures, 1996) narrated by Mike Gibson and written by Grantlee Kieza. Aboriginal sports people Maurice Rioli, Wes Patton, Robi Armat, Gary Ella, Steve Carfino, Anthony Mundine, George Brachan and Jack Hassan for excerpts from interviews they have given. Commentators Colin, Treavour Ellis, Gordon Bray and Keith Connor. Midnight oil and the Fabulous Warupi Band.
|
Herbert Jercher |
Box On |
Gallery 1a |
Melbourne, Australia |
Box On incorporates the same guitar as in 1994, in conjunction with the Ebo, mini amplitude or loudness, wooden box and road map. The audience is invited to come into close proximity. To quote Leon Theremin: " The human body possesses electrical capacitance just as the circuits of the Theremin do. The forces involved in capacitance, being electrostatic in nature, can operate at a distance. The hand and the antenna, held in proximity to one another affect one another's capacitance. They thus together form in effect another variable capacitor, this one controlled not by a knob, but by altering the distance between the hand and the antenna. The antenna is attached to one of the oscillating circuits of the Theremin so that changes in it's capacitance affect the tuning of the circuit" (Keyboard, Feb. 1994)
|
Roger Alsop |
Someone is a moment of transition |
Hallway |
Melbourne, Australia |
Someone is a setting for St Dympna's Bells, a poem by Barry Dickins on the death of Ronald Ryan . Barry's reading is heard through the piece. The entire background is made up of the word someone.
|
Robin Whittle |
Spare Luxury and Tanglewood Interlude |
Gallery 3 |
Melbourne, Australia |
These are minimal, abstract, spatial pieces with straightforward harmonies and very long notes. There is no single rhythm, social discourse or compositional gymnastics.
Both pieces were generated entirely with Csound - the publicly available software synthesis program by Barry Vercoe. This is purely sound calculation by computer software - there is no recording or electronics involved. My version of Csound has a number of additional functions. Some - which make it easier for instruments within the program to communicate - are now a part of the standard Csound. The additional feature which is most evident in these pieces is a binaural processing "unit-generator" which simulates the delays, volume and filtering, which sounds are subject to as they travel through the air and encounter the human head and outer ears. Its not a perfect replication by any means, but when listened to on headphones, there is an intimate feeling of being in a space and hearing multiple sound sources travel around (and occasionally through) your head. All sorts of gee-whiz and unnerving things can be done with this binarual process. However, these pieces are simple, abstract and with pleasing harmonies. The cycles of movement and almost every detail of the piece resulted from loose exploration - rather than being deliberately constructed with particular ends in mind. For instance the highest of the sounds in Spare Luxury turned out as a series of "pweeks". I like these sounds, but they were not deliberate. They result, I think, from anomalies in the flanger instrument I wrote in Csound. There are no samples - just simple fixed angular waveforms and highly strung flangers in Spare Luxury. In Tanglewood Interlude the sounds have eight harmonics where each harmonic has random pitch and volume fluctuations - and the sum of the harmonics is gently distorted. These sounds could conceivably have arisen from physical and/or electronic processes. Spare Luxury had its genesis in something I made around 1983 with a Casio keyboard, a flanger and a four-track tape recorder.
These pieces are a small tribute to the subtlety and beauty of the world we find ourselves in. A fly buzzing around a room involves processes of sound generation, movement, reverberation and acoustic processing by the listener's head and outer ears which are more sophisticated than anything currently possible with computer software.
|
Sarah Peebles |
Suspended in Amber |
Gallery 3 |
Canada |
Transforming Temple was the title and theme of the concert during which the first three compositions on this recording were presented. Held at Shukôji, an intimate, historic temple situated in a small remnant of countryside amid the urban sprawl of Kawasaki's Asao borough, the concert experience was intended to transcend the contemporary Western notion of the concert hall. Stepping off the train and walking up the long path through bamboo forest to the temple, the listeners began a physical, sonic, and spiritual journey. Late-afternoon gagaku in the temple's inner garden opened the musical cycle; as dusk descended, a mixture of contemporary sound, architectural elements, calligraphy, and Buddhist-inspired ritual followed within the main hall. The concluding music and dance, held in the inner garden, was accompanied by the loud ringing noises of insects, rustling bamboo in the cool night breeze, and the glowing moon above.
2.-7. Tomoé (revolving life) (version 4, 1991-1993) 39:59
An improvisational tableau for three musicians, calligrapher, temple, and autumn evening soundscape, in six parts: Pre-Dawn, Spring, Summer, Autumn, The Big Sleep, and Rebirth Hiromi Yoshida, shô/û, Ikuo Kakehashi, percussion and MIDI Katcontroller, noise-makers Sarah Peebles, MIDI keyboard, sampled sound, electronics, shô, noise-makers . Tomoé is a work about cycles and process in which Japanese and North American perspectives are explored through environment and sound. It draws upon the most basic natural elements: the seasons, creation, death, rebirth. The shô, loons, bells, and water weave a sonic and allegoric thread throughout the piece. Music of the shô is historically believed to provide a trail for Shinto kami (deities) between this world and the nether world; the loon, with its distinctive calls and "laughs", inhabits a treasured place in the hearts of people of the northern woodlands of North America. The birthplace of all life and a symbol of purity-the ocean-finds its parallel here in the Great Lakes. Impermanence, infinity, the intangible, transition in time and space-all are embodied in the lingering tone of a bell. I initially developed the idea for and structure of Tomoé from an original concept for avant-garde shôdô (calligraphy) performance with musician, based on the Buddhist concept of rinne tensho- literally, revolving life or "revolution" (originally entitled Kai)-by the Japanese shôdô artist Ono Toshihiko. Version 4 of this sixty-minute work features shô and û, folk toys, prayer bells, keiseki (a tuned stone used in Buddhist ritual), electronics, sampled sound, and tape. Three musicians and a calligrapher performed in various areas of the temple's main hall and outer garden. Two of the musicians triggered sampled sounds via MIDI keyboard and Katcontroller; one musician controlled sampled materials in real time, choosing from twelve different "instruments". Collaboration and improvisation are essential to the performance.
Home Page http://www.interlog.com/~speeb
|
Garth Paine |
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Activities Room |
Melbourne, Australia |
Spaces of entrance and exit utilises video sensing through the Very Nervous System. The control of the sonic environment is a product of behaviour and movement within the eye of the camera. The data output of the Very Nervous System quantifies the dynamic and mass of the moving object.
Spaces of entrance and exit creates an ever changing underscore of piano notes and a collage of snippets of architects talking about their perception of what constitutes a doorway.
The doorway becomes a threshold, a metaphor for change, a psychological boundary which does not necessarily require a physical presence.
|
Warren Burt |
|
Project Room |
Melbourne, Australia |
Most interactive installations and games try to create a sense of fantasy or personal power in an imaginary world. This installation, on the other hand, tries to represent a reality: the reality of dealing with the bureaucratic, academic, commercial or establishment worlds. When you enter and leave the room, you break a sensor beam, just as you do when you use an automatic door. This changes many aspects of the music - speed, instruments, ranges, etc. Likewise, when you leave the room, the music also changes. While you're in the room, though, you have no control whatever over the sound. Just like dealing with a bureaucracy or an establishment, see ? You can change it by joining it or leaving it, but once inside - it's more powerful than you. Change from the inside, that myth beloved of half-hearted reformists everywhere, is here revealed as the corrupting sham it truly is. Observation and learning remain our only weapons. Further, once you're in the room, the music may be seductive, but it's based on chaos, and even though it might sound repetitive at times, its behaviour is fairly unpredictable - again, just like a bureaucracy! And to top it all off, the music uses a very strange random tuning system, so that even though it occasionally sounds sweet, or almost normal, it actually has nothing to do with either common sense, or everyday reality. Does this sound familiar?
(Technical notes for those interested: The interactive device is a Buchla Lightning infrared motion to MIDI converter. The computer is a Toshiba Pentium laptop running John Dunn's Kinetic Music Machine software, which is controlling a Roland Sound Canvas synthesizer. The internal logic of the music is provided by an emulation in software of a "shift-register feedback" circuit, which was the basis for much "random" voltage generation in the electronic music of the 1970s. The output of this circuit exhibits many chaotic characteristics. The tuning system is indeed truly random. Each different instrument is tuned to a scale of 12 randomly chosen microtonal pitches. There are 72 of these different randomly chosen pitches in the total tuning of the piece. Tuning then, is unpredictable, except perhaps after long term listening.)
|
Erik Belgum |
Bad Marriage Mantra |
Broom Cupboard |
USA |
My wife and I listened through the wall to a spectacular verbal fight in the room next door to us in a Toronto hotel. It lasted through the late evening and most of the night. The argument, although you could scarcely call it that for no points were ever made or countered, had a great deal in common with many musical and literary traditions: the use of intense but slightly varied repetitions coupled with sparsely chosen materials. Bad Marriage Mantra is not a re- enactment of this fight, but a stylised realisation of a different fight with the same deep structure.
It goes like this: THE HUSBAND. THE WIFE. THE BAD MARRIAGE MANTRA.
Listen to Bad Marriage Mantra through the wall of an adjoining room, or play it straight out and get on with your life. Play the CD as an installation piece at music and theatre events, especially during intermissions, or at parties. Start it playing on the radio, then sit back and wait for the FCC to show up. Perform Bad Marriage Mantra as an instrumental piece with the instructions being simply, "Use your instrument to censor the profanity."
For a copy of the CD, the score or further information about the piece,
contact Erik Belgum at belgu003@gold.tc.umn.edu.
|
Sever Tipei |
ANL-folds |
Cafe Courtyard |
USA |
ANL-folds (1996), for computer generated tape, is a manifold composition or a composition class. It is produced with a computer-assisted composition program reading the same data for each member of the manifold. All such members start and end with the same chordal structures and include in the middle the Argonne chime : seven sounds spelling the name of the national laboratory (A, R=re, G, O=sol, N, N=non pitched percussive, and a large E gong). Between these pillars are modules that can change density, loudness, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, and transients according to chance. Even when all these features are identical, simply starting the random number sequence with a different seed will result in a new arrangement of sounds.
ANL-folds is also intended as a demonstration of some of the types of sounds DIASS, a Digital Instrument for Additive Synthesis developed at the University of Illinois and at the Argonne National Laboratory can produce. A member of the manifold may be performed in public only once; if interested in presenting a realisation of the ANL-folds, please contact Sever Tipei (s-tipei@uiuc.edu) to obtain a personal version. Fifty variants of ANL-folds were produced for today's event; their subtitles are "Sonic_0" - "Sonic_49".
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