Research
Before writing my proposal i began researching the work of composers, and sound artists such as Alvin Lucier, Steve Reich, Max Neuhaus and David Cunningham.
Alvin Lucier's most well known work is called "I am Sitting In a Room" and in it he records his voice then plays it back into the room and rerecords it. He repeats this process until the rooms resonant frequencies make his speech unintelligible yet strangely musical. This is an incredibly simple yet profound piece of sound art that shows how a space can have it's own identity.
Max Neuhaus is a highly respected sound artist and I particularly like one of his permanent installations in Pulheim, Germany outside the Stommeln Synagogue. Here is his description of the piece.
‘In Time Piece Stommeln I’ve†managed to make a sound that you really don't hear until just before it actually disappears. Over the past several weeks, working with the complex sounds of traffic moving around the small square adjacent to the synagogue, I've built a sound texture which transforms these sounds. It integrates itself within them by blending with them and tracking them, changing itself with their changes. This texture is made up of low, powerful ingredients that have a wonderful kind of grace. As it grows you realize that there is also a fundamental harmony within it. It is only at the very end of each sounding that it emerges from its ambient, shows itself and disappears.’
It is only as it stops that you realise that it was there and I love how this refreshes passers-by's ears, making them suddenly aware of the everyday sounds around them.
Proposal for Interactive Sound Environments Module
Background
I
want to create an interactive and partly indeterminate composition in
which the audience act as the orchestra. The piece is strongly
influenced by Phil Kline's Unsilent
Night which
is a massive moving sound cloud made up of hundreds of people
carrying portable cassette players (boom boxes). The boom boxes all
contain Kline's preprepared material and are started simultaneously.
The machines playback at varying speeds and the people carrying them
move and interact with each other and this produces a constantly
changing and evolving soundscape that achieves amazing complexity
from very simple source material.
Duckworth
(2005)
Kline's ideas can be seen as a continuation of Steve Reich's piece It's Gonna Rain which uses two tape loops that gradually go out of phase producing endless variations before gradually returning into sync. Kline may also have been influenced by Glenn Branca who he worked with as part of Branca's guitar ensemble in New York during the 1980's. Branca wrote pieces for large groups of specially tuned guitars that produced dense clouds of sound and also explored micro-tonality.
“If
any one piece of music can be said to represent the technically
sophisticated, but non-Internet related, world of interactive music
of the 1990's, it is Phil Kline's Unsilent Night, a forty-minute,
genre-blurring, musical tour de force employing dozens, if not
hundreds, of boom box tape players carried by the audience as they
parade through and perform in the streets of downtown New York.”
Kline's ideas can be seen as a continuation of Steve Reich's piece It's Gonna Rain which uses two tape loops that gradually go out of phase producing endless variations before gradually returning into sync. Kline may also have been influenced by Glenn Branca who he worked with as part of Branca's guitar ensemble in New York during the 1980's. Branca wrote pieces for large groups of specially tuned guitars that produced dense clouds of sound and also explored micro-tonality.
Aims
My intention
is to use mobile phones and computers instead of boom boxes and to
keep the performance within a room such as Scott 105. Kline's and
Reich's pieces use analogue machines and tape which by their nature
do not play at exactly the same speeds. With digital technology the
speed of the playback will not fluctuate. However, it would be
impossible for a large group of people to all press play
simultaneously so there would be timing differences immediately and
if the material was rhythmic this would produce interesting
poly-rhythms. Also, if the material that the audience/orchestra have
downloaded to their phones varies slightly in tempo and length, the
effect would be a constantly changing and morphing rhythmic cloud
that could produce some granular like effects.
If the
phones are producing one layer of rhythmic sound then the computers
with their inbuilt speakers could be used to produce another layer or
multiple layers of melodic or new rhythmic patterns. My plan would
be to compose some melodic and drone-like loops and have these ready
installed on the computers ready to be played by an
audience/orchestra member pushing the space bar at a given signal. If
these pieces of music were being played through Max MSP then the
player could be given some control over their particular sound via
midi controllers, such as filter cut off, resonance and any other
desired parameter.
At this
point it might be possible to introduce some live acoustic
instruments to add further textures to the sound cloud. One
possibility would be to have a guitar ensemble similar to Branca's
where a number of guitars would be tuned to the same open tuning that
would work in conjunction with the material on the phones and
computers. This would mean that the players would not need to be
expert, as simply strumming the open strings in any way would add to
the overall effect in a pleasing way.
Method
and Issues
The success
of this piece would depend on having a fairly large number of people
with mobile phones capable of playing audio and for them to be able
to download the relevant material to their phones in a simple and
understandable way. Research would need to be done to find the most
efficient way of doing this. If more than one piece of audio is to be
used then it would be necessary to find a way of making sure this was
distributed evenly throughout the orchestra in order to achieve the
most effective results.
Preparation
and organisation would be key to the success of the performance and
it will be important to research and develop the right kind of audio
to play from the phones and computers. There is a temptation to
overcomplicate such a performance by adding too many elements and
giving audience/orchestra members multiple roles that might make the
execution too complex. I would propose to develop a number of pieces
starting with a very simple one that would only use a small number of
phones. This would allow me to identify problems and develop material
and systems that work on a basic level and then to gradually increase
the layers and numbers of participants.
It would be
necessary to build a network of people willing to participate in the
development of the piece and this could be done by using social
networks such as Facebook and SoundCloud. SoundCloud would be a
useful way of making the audio material I compose available to the
participants and could also perhaps allow other composers to
contribute material to the performance. This could potentially make
the piece even more interactive and would move it on from Kline's
piece which is highly interactive but only features one composer. For
this to work, certain conditions would have to be set such as a
general key and a time restriction of some kind.
Some kind of
instruction and arrangement would be important and this could be done
using powerpoint and a projector. Perhaps dividing the participants
into three colour coded groups each with a separate file to download.
The projection could then indicate when each group was to start the
audio from phones and computers. This system for orchestrating the
performance would be equally important as the music created.
Another
avenue to explore would be using a network to control the computers,
this would allow me to control multiple computers simultaneously and
therefore simplify the role of the audience/orchestra members. This
technique has some interesting potential for further developing the
piece and I will do some research into it. However, I think this will
come at a later stage after I have explored my basic idea further.
Phil Kline's Unsilent Night. A moving sound sculpture for multiple boom boxes and inspiration form my project.
Bibliography
Duckworth, W. Virtual Music (2005) Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
Cipriani, C and Giri, M. Electronic Music and Sound Design (2010) ConTempoNet
Emmerson, S Music, Electronic Media and Culture (2000) Ashgate Publishing
Niblock, P. 2014. Phill Niblock [online]Available at: http://www.phillniblock.com Accessed 28.04.2014
Locus Sonus. 2014. Locus Sonus – Audio In Art [online]Available at: http://locusonus.org/ Accessed 28.04.2014
Grant, J. 2009. The Fragmented Orchestra by Dan Jones, Tim Hodgson, Jane Grant, John Matthias, Nicholas Outram, Nick Ryan. [online]Available at: http://www.academia.edu/4067716/The_Fragmented_Orchestra_by_Dan_Jones_Tim_Hodgson_Jane_Grant_John_Matthias_Nicholas_Outram_Nick_Ryan Accessed 28.04.2014
Loock, U. 2007. The Time Piece for the Stommeln Synagogue. [online]Available at: http://www.max-neuhaus.info/bibliography/Stommeln.htm Accessed 28.04.2014
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