Events

Reviews

many’s largest and most prestigiousfestival for new media art. Today, thefestival is divided into two parts: theTransmediale (T05) that, reflectingits origins, is dedicated primarily tomoving image art, and the Club Trans-mediale (CTM; further informationcan be found at clubtransmediale.de/),a parallel platform devoted to musicstarted in 1999 to bridge the gap be-tween “art and Berlin club culture”(electronic dance music).

The vast program of T05 encom-passed some 11 conferences, 27 lec-tures, 27 exhibitions, 8 performances,100 screenings, a prize competition,15 workshop exhibits where visitorscould construct their own digitalgadgets and robots, as well as myriadpartner exhibitions. CTM encom-passed further concerts, dance events,cinema screenings, and installations.Director of it all was the loquaciousAndreas Broeckmann, who managedto moderate or comment on almostall events simultaneously.

In contrast to the broad festivalthemes of recent years, such as “re-mainders of utopian potential,”globalization, or public space, T05questioned the “basics” of contempo-rary culture in the areas of biotech-nology, politics, and media art. “Ourperception of what constitutes ourbasic needs must continually be rede-fined . . . The festival investigates theaesthetic and ethical foundations of afrantic and hyper-potential cultureand presents models of artistic prac-tice whose ethics derive not frompast value systems, but from an ap-propriation of an extreme and con-tradictory contemporary culture.”What in the program booklet had theflavor of a leftover modernist mani-festo turned out in practice to be aplayful, imaginative, and many-sidedfestival (the program can be down-loaded from www.transmediale.de/page/files/download/download/tm05_schedule.pdf).

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[Editor’s note: Selected reviews areposted on the Web at mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Computer-Music-Journal/Documents/reviews/index.html. In some cases, they are eitherunpublished in the Journal itself orpublished in an abbreviated form inthe Journal.]

Events

Multimedia FestivalTransmediale 05 in Berlin

International Media Art Festival,Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin,Germany, 4–8 February 2005.

Reviewed by Joyce ShintaniStuttgart, Germany

Under the patronage of the GermanMinistry of Culture and with half amillion euros per year guaranteedfor the next five years, the multime-dia festival Transmediale 05 (www.transmediale.de/page/home.0.2.html)opened its doors in the Haus derKulturen der Welt in Berlin from 4 to8 February 2005. The fact that theMinistry of Culture has admitted theTransmediale to its elite group of“beacon” projects of best-practicecontemporary art alongside theDonaueschingen Music Festival, En-semble Modern, and other mediaevents such as the Kassel Documenta,is an indicator of the importance theGerman government attributes tonew media art.

The festival began in 1988 as “Video-fest,” a sub-project of the BerlinaleFilm Festival, long before the days ofpopularized internet, digital art, andelectronic-ambient music, and mor-phed into “Transmediale” in 1998. Ithas since established its place as Ger-

However, before “getting down tobasics,” the thorny definition ofterms had to be dealt with. Multime-dia; electronic, digital and sound art;Klangkunst; sound installation; time-space collage; audio-visual art . . . thearray of terms was nearly as varied asthe panoply of definitions. Artists,curators, academicians, and philoso-phers from the USA, Asia, and Eu-rope offered background, history, anddefinitions. No final consensus wasreached, nor was one sought. The di-versity of approaches and lack of es-tablished canon are testimony to thefact that the new media area is still inits baby shoes; technology and theoryare developing more rapidly thanthey can be analyzed and classified.The charm and innovation of the ex-hibits owed much to the unselfcon-sciousness of a new field, as yetunshackled by convention.

Theme “Basics”

The theme of the conference, “ba-sics,” turned to the fundamentals ofart and to the ethics of contemporarysociety. It also represented (to thisAmerican viewer) a notable attemptto escape the navel-gazing oftencharacterizing traditional art in “oldEurope.” The exhibits in the “base-ment” venue reflected the confer-ence’s theoretical underpinning andoffered dialogue with artists and in-sights into their approaches. Portableshelters developed with and for streetpeople (paraSITE, USA) or prisoners’sinventions (Temporary Services,USA) drastically marked the “groundzero” of basic needs. A Geiger counterfor “corporate fallout” was a mor-dantly witty device, using bar codesand a database of genetically modi-fied foods and corporate behavior todetect the ethical status of groceriesat the supermarket (James Patten,Visible Food, USA).

The “basics” theme gave an ethi-

cal aspect to most of the festival con-ferences and also contributed to arich variety of works and thought,from the serious to the slap-happy:presentations of art initiatives inSoutheast Asia, a discussion on aWikipedia article on media theory,freshly composed cellphone ring-tonedownloads, or a bring-your-sine-waveparty, as examples. A desire was ex-pressed for more African and SouthAmerican entries, and after OkwuiEnwesor’s benchmark Documenta 11focused on Africa, it is hoped thatT06 succeeds in opening up geo-graphically while keeping its varietyand high level.

Another theme that has resurfacedin the German multimedia scene andthat ran throughout Transmedialewas the old discussion of how tocombine different art disciplines.The first panel discussion, “ListeningOut,” questioned the separate-but-equal co-existence of the two Trans-mediale festivals. And with goodreason. Most of the works and ex-hibits witnessed at the visually ori-ented T05 were either silent or theyemployed sound or noise, but notmusic. One couldn’t help but ask, “Ifworks at the Transmediale employmultiple media, why isn’t music oneof the media?” But the current dis-cussion surpasses previous discus-sions on Gesamtkunstwerk orsynesthesia, which were intent oncombining visual and musical formsof “high art.” At Transmediale, vi-sual art was heavily represented withacademic and theoretical panels, andits integration with CTM’s popularclub music might appear to be aunion of non-equals. But is it?

Throughout the twentieth century,film and photography fought theirway as new art forms into the highart canon as did visual pop art fromAndy Warhol onward. Electronic mu-sic, the “ancestor” of club music andelectronica, also managed to box its

way into the canon thanks to the ef-forts of Pierre Schaeffer, KarlheinzStockhausen, Herbert Eimert, et al.But in the course of the 1990s, aschism of sorts took place. Whileelectronic music remained in itsivory-tower institutions, personalcomputers and affordable softwaretook off for the dance floor. The goodold rotating, reflecting, crystal discoball of the 1970s gradually evolvedinto laser and other lighting effects,then video. Finally, in the 1990s, digi-tal technologies permitted visual me-dia to play a more prominent role,and, as a natural consequence, thetwo media began to interact in theclub atmosphere—the popularGesamtkunstwerk of the digital erahad arrived.

Club Transmediale

Today’s “club” music still has solidroots in popular art, as demonstratedby the lively CTM concerts per-formed in the Berlin discotheque“Maria am Bahnhof,” but it remainslargely marginalized in the high artcanon, dramatically so in Germany.(The latest examples of this were theGerman Musicological Society’s con-gress in Weimar and the symposium“Critical Composition” in Stuttgart’sSchloss Solitude, both of whichlargely ignored popular music, asidefrom gender aspects of rock singersand abundant ethnological treatmentof folk musics.) It is obvious that thisalternate club culture is giving birthto a healthy new current of electronicmusic. The seriousness of CTM’s en-deavors was underscored by the pres-entation of the book Gendertronics, atheoretical text from the venerableSuhrkamp publishing house docu-menting the discussion of gender andelectronic music of last year’s festi-val. Jean-François Lyotard may haveproclaimed the end of the great narra-tives 30 years ago, ostensibly leading

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to the dissolution of divisions be-tween high and low art. Yet, in manycases, this convergence is not takingplace, and the burden of straddlingart “classes” and generations compli-cates the already onerous task ofmerging media formats. In this sense,CTM and T05 have existed sepa-rately for six years, and the openingpanel rightfully posed the question:“Quo vadis?” For all that, is the di-vergence perceived at Transmedialethe result of a clash between high andlow cultures, between various media,or simply a generation gap, with vi-sual art already “over 30” and clubmusic still in its lively youth?

There was some evidence of rap-prochement between club and elec-tronic music cultures at T05; forexample, the panel “Sound Art Vi-sual” (Anthony Moore, Edwin vander Heide, Elena Ungeheuer), whichbravely asserted that “the dominanceof the visual in media art has brokendown.” Christian Ziegler’s perfor-mance was another case in point,where low-tech DJ scratch techniquemet off-the-shelf samplers, filters,and synthesizers. In the work Turneda DJ scratches live, placing variousparaphernalia (rubber bands, post-its,etc.) directly on the amplified LPwhile a “composer” transforms thescratched sounds in real time and adancer interacts with video projec-tions. In this video-sound-dancepiece, the scratched sound material istransported throughout the multiplesegments of the piece in quasi leit-motif fashion. Though the workunited many intriguing aspects ofdifferent media, the loosely boundsegments and techniques did not coa-lesce into an intense artistic experi-ence. The conundrum of mergingmedia in art was reflected from manysides at T05, and it is to be hopedthat the exchange will continue anddeepen. From the musician’s point ofview, there is much to be gained.

Events

Transmediale Awards

The climax of the festival was theawarding of the Transmediale prize.In yet another manifestation of theturbulence of this young art form,prize categories from the past such asinteractive, video, software, CD-ROM, internet, and image, were jetti-soned this year in an attempt to“re-evaluate the connection betweenart and media technologies.” In theend, three equal prizes without cate-gory were awarded: to Camille Utter-back (USA) for her installationUntitled 5; to Thomas Köner (Ger-many) for his video Suburbs of theVoid; and to the Austrian duo 5volt-core for its work Shockbot Corejulio.

Shockbot Corejulio is a self-destructive hardware/software sys-tem (www.5voltcore.com). A robotarm is attached to a computer and re-ceives command signals from thecomputer and then attempts to getthe computer to produce short cir-cuits inside itself. From this interac-tion, a series of images is producedand deconstructed on the monitor;ultimately, defective command sig-nals arrive, and the system breaksdown completely. The work, in thegenealogy of Jean Tinguely’s ma-chines that destroy themselves andGeorges Bataille’s “beauty of destruc-tion,” highlights the performative as-pect of software and redefinesrelationships between hardware/soft-ware components. In Shockbot Core-julio sound was present only as anoise component.

Camille Utterback’s installationUntitled 5 translates physical move-ment in the exhibition space into im-agery that is painterly, organic, andevocative while being algorithmicallygenerated (www.camilleutterback.com). The work consists of a largewall projection, a walking area inwhich viewers are detected by a videosensor, and Ms. Utterback’s own pro-

grammed painting software, whichtransforms movements into projectedimages. With body motions, theviewer interacts with the softwareand sees the result on the screen. Us-ing colors and painterly gestures rem-iniscent of abstract expressionist JoanMitchell, the work brings to the fore-front the interaction between theartist, the viewer, and the viewed.The relationship between passiveviewer and static object is broken,thereby creating new subject/objectrelationships between artist, work,and viewer. Despite lacking any au-dible element, the installation wasnonetheless a delight to watch and tointeract with.

Suburb of the Void, a 14-min in-stallation combining visuals andsound by the established video artistThomas Köner, was the only prizework to incorporate sound. For thejury, the work represented the “per-fect combination of sound and im-age.” Drawing on his declaredpredilection for “cold” climates andsounds, Mr. Köner used 2,000 photosof a traffic intersection in Finland inwinter for the visuals, taken by sur-veillance cameras over a period ofseveral months. He assembled thephotos into video form and underlaythem with the analog filtered soundsof Finnish children playing.

The grainy images change veryslowly from night to day, from colorto black-and-white, bringing gradualchanges of mood. In this impression-istic play, actual pictorial elementsappear blurred, recalling ClaudeMonet’s Rheims cathedral studies or,more recently, the white-gray mini-malist landscapes of Luc Tuymans orQui Shi-Hua. In all cases, the poeticambiguity of what is seen is one ofthe aesthetic charms of the works.Congruent with the grainy, ambigu-ous images, Mr. Köner created mini-mal, white-sound, ambient music,white noise à la Morton Feldman. Al-

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though most viewers had difficultyremaining at the installation forlonger than one or two minutes(chairs would have been welcome),viewing all 14 minutes revealed thesubtle and understated interplay ofthe images with the music, and itwas this evocative interaction thatparticularly convinced the jury.

For the artist, the permanent coldin the north of Finland is connectedwith the deceleration of the imageand thus with a sharpening of theviewer’s senses. Mr. Köner tries toengage the visitor in the observationof the passage of time. But does theslow-motion picture/sound drone ac-tivate the imagination, or lull it tosleep? In the tension between high-tech and concept art, abstract andconcrete, Suburb of the Void with itsunder-cooled statement succeeded ineliciting controversy. Mr. Köner’sworks have been widely performedand received numerous awards, andthere’s certainly no arguing with hisearnest investigations into sound, si-lence, and their implications for a so-ciety overwhelmed with audiomassages (c.f. his Ars Electronicaspeech, found at www.koener.de).

However, in the context of theTransmediale, it seemed that bothartist and jury accepted the primacyof the visual image, whereas the mu-sician has a different set of criteria tohear by. And there’s the rub. On theone hand, the question was omni-present: “Is this all music has to of-fer moving images?” On the otherhand, how does the musician emptythe ears of tradition in order to en-gage in creating sounds based onnew criteria to match new art forms?The astonishing variety of worksand approaches presented at theTransmediale gave ample room forspeculation on new media art and itsaesthetic questions in a continuingheated and productive art–technologydiscourse.

3rd Spark Festival of ElectronicMusic and Art

School of Music, University of Min-nesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota,USA, 16–20 February 2005.

Reviewed by A. William SmithLethbridge, Alberta, Canada

The third annual Spark Festival ofElectronic Music and Art, held at theUniversity of Minnesota (UMinn)School of Music, 16–20 February2005, was so much fun that I want togo to the next one. Ranging fromsampled sounds of the hip-hop scenewith the kick-off event—DJ Spooky—mainly for UMinn students, to elec-troacoustic and other events such asan eight-channel concert, there was avenue for every facet of the electronicmusic genre, it seemed. Although Iwas particularly impressed by the in-tensity of pianist Shiau-uen Ding inher own concert as well as with theNeXT Ens Ensemble, I was rewardedby attending all events. The diversityof the experience is what I foundvaluable.

On Wednesday evening, DJ Spookybridged popular culture and academiaand promoted his new book at thekeynote event by passing out freeCDs to the hundreds of students inattendance. He attempted to connectgraffiti with music created by contem-porary DJs. Coming from the moreserious side of sound, I wondered atfirst if this were an appropriate wayto begin an international festival, butit was an attempt to reach out toyoung people at the university focusedin other ways. It was disappointingthat those hundreds of students atthe first event rarely attended othersof the diverse programming.

Thursday began with papers, fol-lowed by a panel session, “The Polar-ized Composer: Addressing theConflict of Musical Upbringings of

Today’s Young Composers.” The pa-pers and points of views of the pan-elists are concisely summarized inthe elegant conference program(available online: spark.cla.umn.edu/archive.html), and the gist of thepanel discussion centered around aca-demia as the “keeper of importantcultural material.” The panelists, allvery articulate, struggled with theideas of what is worthy to study andseek as a career path regarding sound.It seemed that central to their argu-ments was the nature of authorityand endorsement. Indeed, isn’t it?

At the famous Weisman Art Mu-seum designed by Frank Gehry, onthe other side of the UMinn campus,approachable by a walking bridgeover the Mississippi River, a 4 p.m.concert featured visuals with adjudi-cated sonic environments. Amongthe six works, 60x60 was an hour-long event with minute-long compo-sitions culled from 60 electronicmusic artists throughout the worldand sequenced by Robert Voisey. Thisserial event was important conceptu-ally, and unity of the discrete soundexperiences was attempted throughvisuals created by a single artist,Shimpei Takeda. Although everyoneseemed to be able to appreciate theuniqueness of each of the 60 compo-sitions composing the entire work,some of the audience members indi-cated to me that their interestseemed to wander about 20 minutesinto the piece and that they were notable to connect emotionally with theone-minute pieces that did not dis-play any developmental relationshipto the others. Nevertheless, one ofthe ends of the creators was to intro-duce audiences to a broad range ofpracticing electronic artists, andwhile it would have been very diffi-cult to identify a single piece becausethere were no visual cues such as anumber or name in the visuals associ-ated with a particular 60-sec segment,

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60 more artists must be encouragedby performances throughout theworld of that miniscule fraction oftheir creativity.

To complete the first full day of thefestival there were two experimentalperformances in two different ven-ues, one on campus and the other off.The first featured five performancesinvolving real-time processing ofsound as well as interactive graphics.The Whole in the Coffman Center,a basement space that is similar to atheatrical black-box venue, had acash bar, although most attendeesseemed more interested in talkingthan in taking refreshments. Circulartables with lighted candles provided awarm and comfortable setting for en-joying performing groups of up to sixpeople on a small, lighted stage witha screen for video projection. J. An-thony Allen with his group of perform-ers calling itself Ballet Méchaniquewas memorable with his glove-controlled clips of a drum performeron video that formed the backbone ofa work with drum set, bass, trumpet,and other instruments. The idea ofusing found or borrowed material res-onated with the pop cultural openingof the festival.

In the evening, various performerssometimes were hard to see in theTown Hall Brewery, a microbrewerywith the absolute best dark beer I’vehad in ten years. The stage was notraised and there wasn’t enough seat-ing, but the food was great and thesetting very informal. On the firstevening, Jamie Allen and his suitcasewith sensors in it gave a physical per-formance, but the audience also en-joyed Ray Dybzinski with hissound-driven lasers and guitar play-ing in Sounding Spirals. A similarevent was held on the Friday and Sat-urday nights after the evening con-certs, with performers such as SeijiTakahashi and Michi Yokota fromJapan, Neil Rolnick from New York,

Events

and others. What a way to end thedays . . . but this made for an intenseexperience for someone like mewanting to hear every paper, meeteveryone, and listen to every work.

On Friday, the festival again fea-tured lectures by artists and scholarsas it did on Saturday and Sunday, andincluded a masterclass by PhilippeManoury, artist-in-residence. Mr.Manoury also gave the keynote lec-ture on Saturday afternoon and had apiece with flute played by ElizabethMcNutt on the Saturday nightElectroacoustic Concert at the TedMann Concert Hall. I found his work,Jupiter, to be very well crafted, ele-gant as a fine sonic wine with atten-tion to detail in sonorities. This andother events were available to thepublic, though on this particularblustery evening, many forewent theexperience. Clarinetist Esther Lam-neck, who is specializing in intersec-tions of live and pre-processedsounds, explored her instrumentthrough Musicometry I by LawrenceFritts and Cigar Smoke by RobertRowe. She made many of us want tocompose for her.

As well as the informal venues inthe evening, and capstone Saturdaynight concert, there were events inthe In Flux Auditorium, an irregu-larly shaped space, and the LloydUltan Recital Hall. The audio immer-sion concert (Friday, 4:30 p.m.) fea-tured audience seating surroundedby eight loudspeakers. One of thevirtues of this venue is the sensitiv-ity of the artists to the spatializationof sound. A first-year compositionstudent at UMinn, Josh Clausen, hadthe closing work, Phoneme Play, andthe piece had a dynamic intensity toits influence of popular culture. Ihope to hear Mr. Clausen’s work nextyear based on this promising debut.

At the Friday 8 p.m. concert, press-and-play fully realized standalonesand a variety of instrumentalists per-

forming with electronic means werefeatured. Dennis Miller in his fakturahad stunning 3D graphics (as I alwaysfind) created by POV-ray, and togetherwith Noel Zahler’s Gothic Tempestadded variety through visuals. Dr.Zahler, one of the drivers of the bien-nial Arts and Technology Symposiumat Connecticut College at New Lon-don recently became director of theUMinn School of Music. ConnecticutCollege’s loss is UMinn’s gain. Hispiece, created in the late 1980s, hasheld up very well. I delighted in ex-periencing it at its premiere at thesecond Arts and Technology Sympo-sium, and found again the aestheticsto be very secure and filled with asense of wonder about nature.

Tae Hong Park performed Bass XSung on bass guitar and Cory Kasprzykon saxophone performed RobertHamilton’s Is the same . . . is not thesame. The variety of work on thisFriday 8 p.m. concert and for the en-tire five days was staggering. SparkFestival Director Douglas Geers, whoprogrammed strong works in severalvenues, is one of the major drivingforces behind this event. Work fromthroughout the electro-musical worldwas solicited for at least a dozen for-mal and informal concerts/perfor-mances. I saw the boxes and boxes ofsubmissions that Mr. Geers and histeam had to adjudicate. Much workwent into the planning and executionof this festival and I found the resultsexemplary. I feel much richer for hav-ing been able to attend.

Finally, I hope to hear more ofNeXT Ens, a student group fromCincinnati dedicated to performingnew works of interactive acousticand computer music. Its concert wasscheduled Saturday at 11:15 a.m. Se-cret Pulse by Zack Browning had thedrive I’ve always loved from parts ofthe Béla Bartók quartets. They makemusic that crests like a wave.

The submission call for the annual

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Spark Festival comes again in the au-tumn (see the festival Web site,spark.cla.umn.edu, for details), and Ilook forward to returning.

Amnon Wolman, Ron Kuivila,Phill Niblock: Sound Art at Gasp

Neil Leonard, Curator, Gallery ArtistsStudio Projects, Brookline, Massachu-setts, USA, 4/5, 12, 19 March 2005.

Reviewed by Alexia RosariBoston, Massachusetts, USA

“At Gasp we believe art is a powerfultool that enriches, reflects, and pro-pels change that affects human expe-rience . . . the art of today is producedin a context where differences shouldbe tolerated, distances are negotiated,and otherness must be embraced.”This statement by Gasp co-ownerand co-founder Magda Campos Ponsis a token of the positive energy andenthusiasm that flows through thisnewly established gallery in Brook-line, Massachusetts. Ms. CamposPons and husband Neil Leonard aretwo remarkable artists, teachers, andentrepreneurs, both internationallyacclaimed for their work in video,photography, painting, and sound art.Together they founded Gasp in Sep-tember 2004, creating a unique venue“by artists for artists,” which notonly functions as a gallery but also asa space for studios and projects. I hadthe pleasure of visiting a three-partevent in March 2005 by the title“Sound Art,” curated by Mr. Leonard.This was my first time visiting Gaspand I was impressed by both thebeautifully open gallery layout andthe exceptionally warm reception Iwas greeted with by the gallery own-ers and their staff.

The first exhibition, End of Devia-tion, which ran on Friday 4 Marchand Saturday 5 March, was an instal-

lation by Amnon Wolman, a soundinstallation artist and composerwho splits his time between Israeland New York. His works includecomputer-generated and processedsounds, symphonic works, vocaland chamber pieces for different en-sembles, film music, and music fortheater and dance.

End of Deviation consisted of twonotebook computers, four loudspeak-ers, and two projectors. The installa-tion was set up in the back room ofthe gallery, allowing the visitors tocomfortably relax on pillows whilequietly absorbing the sounds and vi-suals. The concept of the installationwas simple: the computers were eachrunning a Max/MSP program produc-ing stereo sounds and visuals of sixindependent clocks and manipulatedphotographs (see Figure 1). Theclocks controlled the sounds and thechanges in the visuals. I personallyfelt myself drifting into a timelessspace and losing track of chronologi-cal time while being carried by the

soothing sounds; I profusely enjoyedMr. Wolman’s installation.

Appearing quiet and reserved atfirst, Mr. Wolman soon revealed hispassionate and playful nature bysharing with me what sparked theidea of this installation:

I got excited about the idea ofparallel “clocks” that measuredifferent time units and that ledto the sound and visual pro-cesses. Each of the pieces so faris a solution for some problemthat is raised by the clocks andtime issue in the previous piece.So far I have been lucky becauseevery solution created anotherproblem, which got me excitedand was a reason for the nextinstallation.

End of Deviation challenged the ideaof physical time and proposed its ownway of measuring time, both acousti-cally and visually. According to Mr.Wolman, “Time is measured in spe-cific drops that hang before flying

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down. Images and sounds are used toportray the time between a single oc-currence and another, dividing thisunlimited time into smaller unitsthat progress in parallel dimensionsof time.”

As I was enjoying the sound instal-lation I struggled to make out whatthe photographs represented. Albeitthis was primarily a sound installa-tion, I was quite intrigued by theimages. To my amusement, Mr. Wol-man conveyed to me that they wereimages of men’s chests, a collectionof which he happened to own andtherefore ended up using. “This is be-cause I am gay and also because Iworked on another piece, Peter andMr. Wolf, with the great video artistHD Motyl, which was based onmen’s chests. It’s fun for me to knowthat men’s chests are the source forthe images, but it really is irrelevantto the piece . . . the clocks are the im-portant visual part.” If you want tofind out more about Mr. Wolman andhis work, visit his Web site (www.amnonwolman.org).

The second event took place on12 March, featuring Ron Kuivila in aone-hour sound art gesture and per-formance comprising “two and a halfpieces.” Mr. Kuivila is a conceptualartist and composer who has pio-neered the use of ultrasound and whohas explored compositional algo-rithms, speech synthesis, and liveperformance sound sampling, toquote only a few of his many acousti-cal adventures. He has performed andexhibited his work throughout theUnited States, Canada, and Europe.Mr. Kuivila is a faculty member ofthe Music Department at WesleyanUniversity.

Mr. Kuivila’s installation was pre-sented by means of six loudspeakers,placed in thoughtfully selected loca-tions within the main room of thegallery. The speakers were carefullypositioned so as to allow sound to be

Figure 1. Image from Endof Deviation by AmnonWolman.

Events

played back, re-recorded, then sentback out through the same sound sys-tem with the goal of playing with thegallery’s acoustics, creating feedbackand ringing effects. Curator NeilLeonard pointed out to me that Mr.Kuivila spent a significant amount oftime “tuning” the room by experi-menting with the positioning of thespeakers.

The first piece, Outgoing Message,was a sound collage of “sounds syn-thesized based on the specificationsfor dial tones, ring tones, and busysignals,” as Mr. Kuivila explained.The piece began with individualtones being tastefully laid out in in-tervals, creating a feeling of suspenseand anticipation. It later progressedwith a collection of increasingly sus-tained tones building up to a sensa-tion of “waiting,” filled withintensity up to the end of the piece.

The second piece, Architectoni-rama, was composed of two sections,the impulse structure being the samein both. Mr. Leonard explained:

Architectonirama is a study thatintertwines the expansion andcontraction of time structure(the concept of irama) with theperfect regularity of electronicpulse. The algorithm for acceler-ation is based on Jim Tenney’sSpectral Canon for Conlon Nan-carrow. As Mr. Kuivila performsthe piece he records each succes-sive iteration of the piece andplays it back in the space, intribute to his teacher AlvinLucier who explored the use ofarchitectural space in his I amSitting in A Room.

In the second section of the piece,the impulses were picked up by a mi-crophone which was in the signalchain of an amplitude-triggered phaseshift network. In Mr. Kuivila’s ownwords: “The second part brings outtonal qualities of the room while the

first part is more in relation to therhythmic properties such as flutterechoes, etc.” Mr. Kuivila’s work al-lowed the audience to intensivelyexperience the acoustical three-dimensionality of the physical spacethey were in. I personally find it espe-cially stimulating that this installa-tion will always be a unique variationof itself, depending on the shape anddimensions of the venue in which itis being performed.

The March “Sound Art” serieswrapped up on the 19th with a four-hour sound installation and perfor-mance by legendary andworld-renowned minimalist com-poser, photographer, and filmmakerPhill Niblock. Mr. Niblock lives inNew York and has also been knownas the director of the ExperimentalIntermedia Foundation since 1985.The evening opened with the mid-1960s underground classic, TheMagic Sun, a 17-min experimentalblack-and-white film shot and di-rected by this artist. He used aunique negative process to create thisbeautiful, almost fluid black andwhite photography-like masterpiece.To my personal delight, this film hasrecently become available on DVDthrough the Atavistic label (MusicVideo Distributors).

The Magic Sun was followed by anapproximately three-and-a-half-hour-long presentation of three individualvideo projections, simultaneouslydocumenting people at work in ruralAsian areas, crafting shoes and tex-tiles, fishing, working in fields, andforging iron. The videos were accom-panied by an underscore based on tenpieces of Mr. Niblock’s thick andloud, drone-like signature music run-ning off a notebook computer. Thedrones had been meticulously con-structed by means of layering andshifting single pre-recorded notesplayed by instruments such as saxo-phone or cello. The subsequent rub-

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bing of the different harmonics andfrequencies created a modulation ef-fect resulting in this drone-likesound. Mr. Leonard added a live com-ponent to several of the pieces by im-provising to the rich sound texture onsoprano, alto, and tenor saxophonesas well as clarinet and bass clarinet.By slowly walking through the facil-ity while playing his instrument, Mr.Leonard contributed a moving ele-ment to the frequency spectrum ofthe drone sound. This loud, dark,and rumbling underscore combinedwith the colorful and laboriousfootage induced an almost trance-likestate within the spectators. It was aquite impressive and intense sensoryexperience.

Sound Art at Gasp proposed threevery distinct sound installations andperformances, and proved that thereare indeed no limitations to the pos-sibilities of how sound can be ex-pressed, challenged, and at the sametime intertwined with visuals. Theseries was a stimulating and enrich-ing feast for the senses, consistentwith the driving force and innovativespirit behind the gallery’s statement.Sound art fiends would be well ad-vised to take note of the Gasp Website (www.g-a-s-p.net) in order to re-main informed on upcoming eventsof this nature.

14th Florida ElectroacousticMusic Festival, 2005

Black Box Theater, Phillips Centerfor the Performing Arts, Universityof Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA,7–9 April 2005.

Reviewed by Larry AustinDenton, Texas, USA

The 14th annual Florida Electro-acoustic Music Festival (FEMF), di-rected by its founder, James Paul

Sain, was presented at the Universityof Florida, Gainesville, 7–9 April,2005, with Morton Subotnick asguest Composer-in-Residence. Nineconcerts of new electroacoustic/com-puter music compositions included abroad spectrum of fixed-media audio,video, and DVD pieces, as well asvarious mixed-media combinationsof instruments, voice, soloists, en-sembles, electronics, and dance, manyworks performed with interactivecomputer music/video involvement.

All FEMF concerts were producedin the University of Florida, PhillipsCenter for the Performing Arts, BlackBox Theater, an intimate but excel-lent sounding venue equipped witheight-channel playback, the loud-speakers surrounding the audiencefor optimal listening. Five of the nineconcerts were “juried concerts,” in-cluding works submitted for consider-ation, then selected for performance.Two ongoing programming tradi-tions, instituted by Mr. Sain in the1990s, provide FEMF with a national/international flavor: (1) invited/curatedconcerts by other well establisheduniversity/college electroacousticmusic studios in the USA; and (2) anannual concert of European electro-acoustic music curated by FEMF As-sociate Director Javier AlejandroGaravaglia. Additionally, Mr. Sain car-ries on an established FEMF practiceof welcoming works for performanceby past FEMF Composers-in-Residence, giving festival partici-pants an opportunity to hear recentcompositions by widely recognizedpractitioners—your present writerincluded, I’m gratified to mention.

Concert 1: Electroacoustic Musicfrom the Florida ElectroacousticMusic Studio (FEMS)

The first of four curated concerts waspresented by the resident Universityof Florida studio, FEMS, as a morning

concert on the first day. Cast as abeat-oriented metaphor for the disori-entation experienced by a personwith Attention Deficit Disorder,composer Tim Reed’s harmonicasounds seemed to wander aimlesslyabout the space in his Invisible Vec-tors. Russell Brown’s Catchpennyfeatured violist Sally Barton in dia-logue with pre-recorded viola pizzi-cati, then arco, then patterns, scales,and sustained sounds, all about dis-crepancies between just and tem-pered tuning—playing out a ratherdry essay on same.

The title of Patrick Pagano’s DVDpiece, Taking a Picture of Taking aPicture, tells it all: mixed sonic tex-tures combined with visual collabo-rator Amy Laughlin’s album offlickering photo images. The programcontinued with Chan Ji Kim’s Await-ing, nicely mixed, with sustainedtones, and reflectively soulful. As an-notated by the composer, Joo WonPark’s Binge was a “textural variationon seven percussion samples,” loopedand variously combined imagina-tively, much as a human percussion-ist might have improvised. NewReactions, by Samuel Hamm, color-fully sets a short, recited poem of thesame name by Neil Flory, expertlyexploring a variety of time-stretchingprocesses. The last and best piece ofthe concert was What the Bird Sawby Suk-Jun Kim. The beautifully cho-sen and creatively diffused soundswere, as the composer described inhis notes, “bits of oblivious memo-ries . . . watching what a bird wouldsee and listening to what a birdwould hear.”

Concert 2: Music from theCincinnati Conservatory ofMusic

The afternoon concert of the first daywas curated by composer Mara Hel-muth, director of (ccm)2, the College-

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Conservatory of Music Center forComputer Music at the University ofCincinnati, featuring performancesby its own resident NeXT Ens En-semble. Three mixed-mood, fixed-media pieces opened the concert:Maria Panayotova-Martin’s DVDpiece, Il Semforo Blu (heard again infull stereo in Concert VII), with anima-tion by Fang Zhao; Kazuaki Shiota’sCrumble; and Matthew Planchak’setudes (. . . scapes), the best conceived/realized of the three.

The remaining six pieces on theprogram were for different combina-tions of the instruments of the en-semble (flute, piano, violin, cello,percussion) and electronics, juxtapos-ing more musically evocative experi-ences. Cassini Division, by MargaretSchedel, for four instruments withprogrammed Max/MSP computer in-teraction and video projection, ex-plored abstract formulations of theharmonic series, sustaining attrac-tively complex sounds and sights,like the gravitational resonances ofSaturn’s moons, her metaphorical al-lusion. Jennifer Bernard’s oxymoronicPure Dribble, for several instrumentsand recorded basketball game sounds,was great fun for players and audiencealike, complete with a seventh-inning stretch (sic). Gabriel Ottoson-Deal’s Scintillating Fish followed: ashort, cute, minimalist piece, mainlyfor flutist Carlos Velez, whose impro-vised cadenzas interacted cleverlywith a Max/MSP patch. In his pro-gram notes, Christopher Bailey char-acterized his piece, Balladei, forpiano and CD, as “a twisted mish-mash of fragmented medieval-European musical syntax . . . NorthIndian Shenai music, medieval dancerhythms, Irish jigs, and more.”Enough said. In contrast, composerIvica Ico Bukvic provided no notes atall, yet his piece, Tabula Rasa, forflute, cello, piano, and electronics,swelled and elaborated beautiful

Events

sonorities, well-suited for this classicensemble. Mara Helmuth’s The Edgeof Noise, for the full ensemble andelectronics, rowdily finished the pro-gram with noisily fascinating instru-mental/electronic flourishes.

Concert 3: Juried Concert A

Outrageous! A totally soused (butbrilliant!) soprano calling herself“Steve” (Janet Halfyard) stumbleddown several stairsteps to the stagefrom an emergency exit, still cradlinga drink, uttering epithets, cacklingand mocking the score that she dis-dainfully threw aside, page by page,still somehow managing to “sing”the piece. GSOH, for voice and elec-tronics, by Simon Hall, was a won-derfully funny, theatrical surprise tobegin the first evening concert! Andwhat piece could follow such a hilari-ous event? It was Kristine Burns’sDVD piece, Liquid Gold, a cool, qui-etly minimal piece presenting, as shenoted, “an abstract distillate of asymbiotic relationship betweenmetallic sounds and . . . monochro-matic synthesized video.” This is abeautifully crafted composition.

Next, Neil Flory’s CD piece, Imag-inary Cities, eloquently recounted itstale of sounds in future cities “filledwith activity, technology, danger, anddiscovery,” as his notes described. Avirtuosic piece in every sense, Law-rence Fritts’s Musicometry I, “To,from, and for Esther Lamneck,” forclarinet, live and pre-recorded/processed, presents Ms. Lamneck ather best: the consummate impro-viser, fast and furiously filling everyelectric moment with hundreds ofnotes. What a piece, what a performer!Punctuation, by Isaac Schankler, foroctophonic fixed medium, exploitedthe sound and sense of words inspace, the vocalized words originallyrecorded by Aleise Barnett.

David Durant’s excellent CD

piece, Hazeur’s Curve, metaphori-cally takes us to this so-named Mo-bile, Alabama, street with a cityscapeof big, fast, and exaggerated sounds.The Last Castrati, a CD piece by Ri-cardo Climent, is an excellent mon-tage of vocal sounds, transposed andtransformed imaginatively. The finalwork on the concert was OrlandoGarcia’s piece, Separacion, bravelyperformed by soprano saxophonistGriffin Campbell, whose sounds wereall but subsumed by the tape and whodizzily breathed circularly its longtones amid a wall of recorded saxo-phone tones and tunings, the mostradically unrelenting work of theevening . . . nay, of the festival so far!

Concert 4: Juried Concert B

The second day of concerts beganmid-morning and opened quietlywith a beautiful flute and interac-tive computer piece, Fluctuation, bySeung Hye Kim. The breathy soundsand classic, birdsong-like gestures—reminiscent of classic solo flutepieces by Claude Debussy and Lu-ciano Berio—were sensitively per-formed by flutist Kyung Lee. EdwardMartin’s Drift began and ended withnoticeable tape hiss, and continuedwith whooshes and transformedmetallic sounds. This was a standardelectroacoustic catalog of processeswith standard technical language,definitely drifting in and out of myconsciousness, as the composer’stitle metaphor explicated.

Before presenting his piece, Wan-dering Around the City, Erdem Hel-vacioglu invited the audience toenjoy a Turkish sweet he had pro-vided for the intermission, a deli-cious after-taste of the Istanbulsoundscape his CD piece provided,smooth cross-fades between city-scenes he had mixed and recorded.(As I remarked to the composer after-wards, I was surprised that his wan-

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derings in Istanbul were so smooth,with no sudden shifts or rough edges.)Composer-saxophonist Eric Honour’spiece, Didjeriduet, pitted the live, of-ten discontinuous, multiphonic altosaxophone sounds against the recorded/mixed/transposed samples of the folkinstrument, the didjeridoo. Neitherwon the match (sic).

The second half of the program be-gan with Colby Leider’s excellentcomposition Veritas ex Machina, forpercussionist plus real-time electron-ics, its mostly ringing-metal instru-ments performed ably by percussionistMatt Sexton. At one point in thepiece, Mr. Sexton stomped a foot onthe stage floor, at another he utteredsomething aloud, asserting a humanfrustration of some kind in this man-versus-machine piece? Singularity,by Mark Ballora, was beautifully per-formed by flutist Jui-Ghih AgathaWang, whose idiomatic patternings,sequences, and lyrical episodes werecomplimented by her electronic,computer counterpart in real time.Slowly Sinking Slower, a DVD pieceby Douglas Bielmeier, depicted auraland visual trash heaps—really!

Surging Waves 2, by ShinichiroToyoda, for this listener offered anironic paean to Pope John Paul II,whose funeral mass was that sameday; its layers of guitar/computerdrones soothed our sensibilities.Paula Matthusen’s . . . of one sinuousspreading . . . , for piano and com-puter, was gently performed byKathryn Woodard on the piano harp,interacting in an improvisatory man-ner with the composer’s computerprogram which often reversed andsustained the sounds. As in somesuch improvisatory works, the fasci-nation the composer and performerhave for the process can lead to anoverlong outcome. The final piece ofthe concert was Bologna by PaulThomas, who wrote about his CDpiece that, “Simply put, Bologna is a

short piece about things being pro-cessed on a number of different levelsand (on one level) the people whoeventually enjoy these things.” Huhh?

Concert 5: Electroacoustic Musicfrom the University of NorthTexas Center for ExperimentalMusic and Intermedia (CEMI)

The afternoon concert of the secondday was curated by Joseph Klein,composer and chair of the Division ofComposition Studies in the Collegeof Music, University of North Texas,Denton, presenting recent workscomposed at CEMI by both facultyand students. It was a rich, high-caliber sampling. Weathered Edges ofTime for CD by Jing Wang, skillfullyused space and silence to articulatethe form and sonic substances of herpiece. SYSTASIS, a DVD audio-visualpiece by Dave Gedosh, heightenedboth my visual senses in all the beau-tifully organic sounds I heard and myaural senses in the images I viewed—a true “systasis,” if I understand theword the composer coins.

Joseph Klein’s Three Poems fromFelt (after Alice Fulton), for elec-tronic sounds and narrator, was re-cited by Florida poet Lola Haskins.Ms. Haskins’s elocution was a bithard to follow, and there was noprinted text provided for the audi-ence; hence, I can only presume thatthe underplayed richness of the sonicscore blended with the sympathies ofthe poems read so plainly. Jon Nel-son, Director of CEMI, could not bepresent for the performance of hisL’Horloge Imaginaire, for octophonicfixed medium. Its pre-composed/diffused clock sounds were preciseand fascinating to follow, measuringand counter-measuring the sounds,expertly crafting their ticks and tocksin ensemble.

Composer-dancer-pianist JonathanAnderson surprised me and certainly

most of the audience by dancing withthe piano bench to the piano as thetape playback began. Then, he beganto play/dance his piece, encounter.dce.I sat transfixed through the rest ofthis piano/dance melange, a trulysensational experience! You have tosee/hear it to believe! A brief, nicelycomposed CD piece followed: Kuilasby Gabriel Lit. For the last piece,Chapman Welch’s Residual Images, alarge, extended-range marimba waswheeled on stage, followed by its per-former, Eric Willie. The piece wasvirtuosic, both in the intricate inter-play of patterned arpeggios and thesustained tremolos; its interactionwith the computer program made fora lively performance.

Concert 6: Juried Concert C

Larry Austin’s Tableaux: Convolu-tions on a Theme, for alto saxophoneand octophonic computer music,opened the evening concert of the sec-ond day. While recusing myself fromreviewing my own piece, I will writethat saxophonist Stephen Duke, whocommissioned the work, was master-ful in his presence and playing. Hemade his part blend with and animatethe composer’s convolutions of theperformer’s recordings of the com-poser’s saxophone transcription ofModeste Moussorgsky’s Promenadefrom his Pictures at an Exhibitions.

Sylvia Pengilly’s DVD piece, Pat-terns of Organic Energy, was beauti-fully composed in every way, itsalgorithmic cross-synthesis of bothsounds and imagery truly representa-tive of the best in this renewed era ofthe integrated sight-sound genre. Incontrast, Clifton Callender’s Canon,for electronic player piano, presentedan obvious type of programmed pro-lation canon, where voices combine,as they independently accelerateand/or decelerate.

Dreaming of the Dawn, by Adrian

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Moore, is a CD piece inspired byEmily Dickinson’s poem of the sametitle. Its busy montage of diverselyprocessed instrumental soundsources were expertly diffused by Mr.Moore. Next came Trajectories, byEric Lyon, an octophonic piece whosetennis ball-like timbres bouncedaround the space, then combinedwith attractive, chordal sonorities tocreate a very clear and satisfying spa-tial listening experience. Ending thefirst half of the concert was CortLippe’s Music for Cello and Com-puter, where what cellist MargaretSchedel performed was at oncesensed by the Max/MSP program,then analyzed in various parametersand transformed to join the cello in amusical dialogue, in this case a verydetached encounter.

An intensely loud CD piece, Frac-tures, by Ronald Keith Parks, ensuedafter the break (sic) for intermission.To my ears, Mr. Parks achieved hisaim of “the creation and explorationof a sound world in which the lis-tener is immersed and sometimessaturated with sounds that embodystress and pressure acting on objectsat or near their breaking point.” Fol-lowing was Benjamin Broening’s ren-dition of his work, Nocturne/Doubles,for piano and tape, gently and quitepleasantly exploring live and re-corded piano sonorities.

The chemical formula for Adrena-line constitutes the complete title forWilliam Kleinsasser’s provocativepiece for trombone quartet and inter-active computer. According to thenotes I wrote during the performance,it was true to its formulation: “Wildand wooly! Busy, angry, volatile, ex-plosive!!” I loved it! Black Ice, a CDpiece by Robert Dow, is the finalwork of his extended cycle of worksfocusing on different types of sonicmaterial, in this case crackling styro-foam and rippling water, noisily com-bined and overlong. The highlight of

Events

the concert was the last piece, RobertRowe’s Cigar Smoke, truly smokingwith excitement, interactively per-formed with Mr. Rowe’s computerprogram by ace clarinetist and Rowe’scolleague and collaborator at NewYork University, Esther Lamneck.

Concert 7: Juried Concert D

The first concert of the last day beganmid-morning with David Kim-Boylequietly performing his Valses andEtudes, for piano and computer. In-terestingly, the composer read hisscrolling, algorithmic score directlyfrom his laptop computer screen,which provided a selection of classicworks (by Arnold Schoenberg, AntonWebern, Frederic Chopin, et al.) forhim to excerpt, while the computerquoted other famous piano pieces.Tohm Judson’s CD piece, [insert timehere], was an attractive but minimalsoundscape, and Mike McFerron’sCD piece, ∆p∆x ≥ h/4π, resoundedwith continuously evolving pianosamples. So Be It, a CD piece byRagnar Grippe (Sweden), began withassertive hammerstrokes and contin-ued as a kind of retrospective montageof earlier electronic music, granulatedin time.

After intermission, we heardMatthew McCabe’s well-crafted CDprocess piece, In the Gloaming.Then, in Tom Lopez’s audio/videopiece, Underground (video by NatePagel), we experienced its audio/video trains moving continuously incleverly animated sight and soundbut ending somehow abruptly. 48 13N 16 20 O is the title and apparentlythe geographic coordinates for theCD piece by Tae Hong Park, a kind oftravel-collage and sound-tour mix ofthe composer’s recorded wanderingsabout some unnamed city. The lastpiece, David Taddie’s Luminosity, forrecorded and live flutes, was per-formed beautifully by flutist Kyung

Mi Lee, highlighting the breathy,sonorous character of the instrumentin the classic tradition of Varese’sDensity 21. Mr. Taddie’s luminousimages shined long after its too shortduration, in this mind’s ear.

Concert 8: Electroacoustic Musicfrom Europe

The afternoon concert of the last daywas curated by composer Javier Ale-jandro Garavaglia and was devotedentirely to tape music by composersbased in Europe. Magdelena Buchwaldentitled her piece, Angorum catena,meaning literally “chain of melan-choly,” an excellent collection of“non-synthetic,” Doppler-shiftednoises, combined with diversesound objects. As the composer LuisAntunes Pena describes SonorousLandscapes I and II, “in this piecenothing happens.” Ironic or not, anexpanse of virtually nothing is whatwe got. L’apparozopme do tre rugheby Roberto Doati explores all mannerof guitar musics whose recordedsamples were provided by guitaristElena Casoli and were, at length, castin a montage of different styles.

Yet another sound catalog—fire,this time—was heard next in Feuer-Werk 17 by Thomas Gerwin. Thequadraphonic . . . in the opposite di-rection . . . by Krzystof Knittel was agibberish stew of pop music out-takes. Finally, Summer Grasses byHiromi Ishii gave us a long, virtuallysilent first section followed by out-bursts of sonic events in the second,followed by a return to virtual si-lence, all inspired by a Haiku poemby Basho and described by the com-poser as an experiment in perception,albeit a very personal one, I would say.

Concert 9: Juried Concert E

The program for the evening concertof the third and last day included

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pieces by nine of the festival’s mostaccomplished practitioners of elec-troacoustic and computer music,their pieces characteristically matureand accessible for an appreciative au-dience. Richard Boulanger’s tribute tothe memory of a recently lost familymember, Moving into the Light, wascomposed for performance by hisson, cellist Phillip Boulanger, and byhimself as soloist on the computermusic instrument, the Radio Baton,along with live video processing byGreg Thompson. Cast in three con-tinuous movements, this quietlylyrical and harmonious lamentdemonstrated unequivocally howtechnology can be used effectively toexpress deeply held feelings. PeteStollery’s CD piece, Serendipitiesand Synchronicities, was also a trib-ute, in this case to the late DeliaDerbyshire of Dr. Who fame (shecomposed its theme). The piece wasshort and sweet and full of delightfulreferences to British times and elec-tronic tunes of the 1960s and after.

Then, clarinetist Esther Lamneckreturned to perform Zack Browning’sCrack Hammer, a crackerjack comboof computer and clarinetist: it was afight to the finish, both contestantsmaking me cheer! I didn’t quite un-derstand the premise of Paul Koonce’sAdolescent Aulos, for the octophonicdigital medium. It is the second in aseries of pieces exploring the synthetic,timbral properties of the oboe, thecomposer’s acoustic model for theancient aulos. Its calls and answerswere heard by me as much simplertimbres in what seemed an unfin-ished compositional experiment. Thepremiere of Javier Garavaglia’s Ho-quetas, for tárogató performer EstherLamneck and computer interaction,suffered an unfortunate false start.Partially recovering, the piece stillhad fits and starts and apparent prob-lems with its planned, interactivehockets. A pity. I trust we will have

the opportunity to hear the pieceproperly sometime in the future.

After the intermission, JamesSain’s ball peen hammer, for fluteand computer, was performed byflutist Cynthia Sain, her flute soundsmagnified, transposed, and variouslyprocessed by a Max/MSP patch/pro-gram provided by composer RonParks. Then, we were treated to themulti-sonic/graphic Archimedes:Mathematics II, by James Dashow,with dynamic video animation by Se-bastian Cudicio. The sounds and im-ages of this sequence are spectacular,truly “digital multi-art”, as Mr.Dashow describes the experience.The piece constitutes scene 2, act 2of his grand planetarium opera,Archimedes, completed over the lastseveral years. Next came HubertHowe’s Harmonic Fantasy, one of thelatest in his continuing series ofworks exploring additive waveformsynthesis, in this case the first 32harmonic partials, heard succes-sively, singly, and in combination,that process creating the form andsubstance of his piece.

The last piece of the concert and ofthe 14th annual FEMF was composedand performed with his portablecomputer by composer-in-residenceMorton Subotnick, his Until SpringRevisited. What we heard were pat-ternings in combination and mainlysynthesized/processed sounds remi-niscent of his earliest pieces, such asthe classic Silver Apples of the Moon(1967), The Wild Bull (1968), Touch(1968), Sidewinder (1971), and, ofcourse, Until Spring (1975). Themusic was attractively accessibleand imaginative, as were his twocomposer-in-residence presentations.The first, for his composer colleagues,was aptly enlightening about the ori-gins in the 1960s of his own elec-tronic music, and the second, for ageneral convocation of universitymusic students, focused on his edu-

cational perspectives on “music asmetaphor.”

Kudos go to Director Sain and hisintrepid FEMF associates and staffwho more than capably negotiatedthe audio/visual/performance intrica-cies of the complex production of thisimportant and very successful festi-val. I look forward to its 15th incar-nation next year!

Publications

Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco:Analog Days: The Invention andImpact of the Moog Synthesizer

Softcover, 2002, ISBN 0-674-01617-3,368 pages, illustrated, foreword (byRobert Moog), discography, sources,notes, glossary, index, US$ 16.95;Harvard University Press, 79 GardenStreet, Cambridge, Massachusetts02138, USA; telephone (+1) 800-405-1619 or (+1) 401-531-2800; fax (+1)800-406-9145 or (+1) 401-531-2801;electronic mail HUP@harvard.edu;Web www.analogdays.com/. In Eu-rope, contact Harvard UniversityPress, Fitzroy House, 11 CheniesStreet, London WC1E 7EY, UK; tele-phone (+44) 20-7306-0603; fax (+44)20-7306-0604; electronic mailinfo@HUP-MITpress.co.uk.

Reviewed by James HarleyGuelph, Ontario, Canada

Having gained back the right to com-mercial use of his own name, 2002seems to have launched something ofa rejuvenation in the professional lifeof Robert Moog. [Editor’s note:Robert Moog passed away 21 August2005, after this review was written.An obituary will appear in the nextissue.] In addition to this book, Ana-

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log Days, by academics Trevor Pinch(Cornell University) and FrankTrocco (Lesley University), HansFjellestad’s film, Moog, has recentlybeen released (reviewed elsewhere inthis issue). Although the book does-n’t take note (the film does), there isperhaps more interest now in theMoog synthesizer, the Theremin, andrelated technology, than there hasbeen for decades. There is, addition-ally, increased attention being paidto the history of electronic music,and this book, which goes way be-yond the scope of its subtitle, “TheInvention and Impact of the MoogSynthesizer,” contributes substan-tially to the elucidation of this field.With the Moog synthesizer as the fo-cus, the book is more a general his-tory of the analog synthesizer.

The writing is informal for themost part, aimed at non-academicreaders. Much information is basedon extensive interviews, so there ismuch anecdotal discussion, but thisdoes not detract from the presenta-tion. The authors have taken goodcare to ensure that the chapters re-tain their particular focus, and thatthe overall trajectory remains clear.In trying to tell the story of the Moogsynthesizer, they have found it neces-

Publications

sary to explore related technology,other inventors, cultural phenomena.To me, this makes good sense.

To justify their approach, the au-thors’ explain:

The paradox of history is thatsignificant events are often rec-ognized long after they occur,when it may be too late to recap-ture what went on and why . . .We try to avoid hindsight. Bytracking down and interviewingthe early pioneers—engineers,musicians, and other users—wehave tried to recreate the enthu-siasm and uncertainties of whatis was like back then . . . We seeour own task in writing this his-tory as being akin to the practiceof analog synthesis. Our sourcesof sound are the stories we re-corded and discovered in texts.We have filtered the stories tobring out certain themes andhave muted others. We haveshaped our account, giving itnarrative structure, in the waythat synthesists shaped sound.We have, on occasions, fed thestories back to the participantsand hence produced yet new ver-sion of the events. Sometimeswhen stories do not match up,rather than get rid of the incon-sistencies, we have allowed thediscordances to remain. If wehad chosen another configura-tion of quotes, we are quite surewe could have produced a ratherdifferent history. (p. 11)

In addition to an introduction(“Sculpting Sound”) and conclusion(“Performance”), there are 14 chap-ters, each divided into sections oftengiven picturesque titles; colorful quo-tations from songs or texts head upeach chapter. The introduction, forexample, is led off by two quotes:“An examination of more recent phe-nomena shows a strong trend toward

spray cheese, stretch denim andMoog synthesizers” (Fran Lebowitz,Metropolitan Life); “Holidays &Salad Days, and Days of Moldy May-onnaise” (Frank Zappa, “ElectricAunt Jemina” from Uncle Meat).

Chapter one, “Subterranean Home-sick Blues,” outlines the early days ofMr. Moog’s life and the early days ofdeveloping the synthesizer and begin-ning to promote it.

Chapter two, “Buchla’s Box,” lookssideways to the parallel developmentof modular synthesizers by DonBuchla taking place in San Francisco.

Chapter three, “Shaping the Syn-thesizer,” returns to the Moog storyand looks in more detail at the syn-thesizer design and how it evolved.

Chapter four, “The Funky Factoryin Trumansburg,” looks at the origi-nal Moog enterprise, located in a vil-lage outside of Ithaca, in upstate NewYork, and how the marketing to majorcenters such as New York City and topracticing musicians developed.

Chapter five, “Haight-Ashbury’sPsychedelic Sound,” returns to theWest Coast to explore the musicaland cultural revolution occurring outthere, and the synthesizer’s part inthat (returning to Don Buchla).

Chapter six, “An Odd Couple inthe Summer of Love,” traces Mr.Moog’s trip to the Audio EngineeringSociety convention in Los Angeles in1967, his contact with electronic mu-sicians Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause(who became sales associates), andtheir connection with the pop-musicscene on the West Coast.

Chapter seven, “Switched-On Bach,”looks at the Wendy Carlos story (toldwith no participation from Ms. Car-los), the making of that seminal record-ing, and related stories and issues. Theauthors did speak to Rachel Elkind,Ms. Carlos’s associate at that time, anddo not avoid discussing the sex-changeoperation and how that impacted pro-fessional (marketing) issues.

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Chapter eight, “In Love with aMachine,” is a portrait of musicianSuzanne Ciani and her Buchla syn-thesizer. It also provides the authors’an opportunity to address gender is-sues in the testosterone-driven worldof music technology. Linda Fisher (ofMother Mallard’s Portable Master-piece Company) and Pauline Oliverosalso make appearances here.

Chapter nine, “Music of MyMind,” spotlights Malcom Cecil andBob Margouleff who, in 1969–1970,put together TONTO (The OriginalNeo-Timbral Orchestra), a custom,multi-unit synthesizer contraptionthat eventually captured the interestof Stevie Wonder.

Chapter ten, “Live!,” surveys someof the seminal live performances andperformers of the Moog synthesizer.These include: Herb Deutsch andhis jazz quartet; Chris Swansen andhis jazz quartet (including JohnMcLaughlin); David Borden andMother Mallard; Don Preston (Moth-ers of Invention); Gershon Kingsleyand the Moog Quartet; and especiallyKeith Emerson.

Chapter eleven, “Hard-Wired—theMinimoog,” looks at the significanttransition from the modular Moog tothe all-in-one performance models.At the same time, one is presentedwith a picture of the company thatwas moving from a one-engineer op-eration to a larger entity, marking thepoint when Mr. Moog had to beginrelinquishing control.

Chapter twelve, “Inventing theMarket,” explains how the Mini-moog was brought to market (prima-rily through the efforts of David VanKoevering), to become the first synthe-sizer to be widely sold in music storesas an instrument rather than a novelpiece of audio hardware. This is alsowhere we learn that Mr. Moog soldthe company to a venture capitalist.

Chapter thirteen, “Close Encoun-ters with the ARP,” explores the on-

set of the competitors’ synthesizersthat were brought to market in the1970s, mainly the ARP line (devel-oped by Alan Robert Pearlman). TheARP was aggressively marketed, andgained great notoriety through its ap-pearance in the Steven Spielberg’sClose Encounters of the Third Kind(1977). We are also introduced to TomOberheim, who was instrumental indeveloping polyphonic synthesizers.

Chapter fourteen, “From Daleks tothe Dark Side of the Moon,” gives abrief overview of what was going onin the UK, primarily through theEMS operation led by Peter Zinovieff.(The “Daleks” reference comes from“Dr. Who,” a popular sci-fi televisionseries that incorporated electronicsounds into its soundtracks.)

The lengthy Conclusion toucheson a number of issues in its attemptto summarize.

Our story of the synthesizerdraws attention to the roleplayed by users. Designers“script” or “configure” ideal usesinto their machines . . . Scriptstry to constrain the agency ofusers, but users can exert agency,too, and can come up with theirown alternative scripts . . . Usersdo not come to technology un-prepared. They are part of a widerculture of use, and they learnwithin that culture . . . AnalogDays shows that the world ofsynthesizer production and con-sumption were not separateworlds. What our story reveals isthat consumers have played acrucial role throughout the his-tory of the synthesizer and in allaspects of its development, in-cluding design, testing, sales,and marketing. (pp. 311–312)

The book is completed with a repre-sentative discography, a list ofsources (including the who and when

of the authors’ extensive interviews),and a modest glossary of terms.

Recordings

Esther Lamneck: Tárogató: AFolk Instrument With aContemporary Sound

Compact disc, 2001, Roméo Records7212; available from Roméo Records;telephone (+1) 917-613-8865; elec-tronic mail info@romeorecords.com;Web www.romeorecords.com/.

Reviewed by Laurie RadfordEdmonton, Alberta, Canada

Viewed in a broader historical andglobal context, the small legion ofmechanical instruments to which wenow confine most music-making ac-tivities, especially in the westernworld, is a surprisingly limited andcomparatively impoverished sam-pling of the rich and diverse sound-making technologies that have beeninvented, refined, and adopted in mu-sical practice and cultural ritual overmany millennia. Recent ethnomusi-cological research, and a growing in-terest in an increasingly global viewof music-making (read: the “market”for world music), has led to the redis-covery, and in certain cases, resurrec-tion, of some of the wind, string, andpercussion instruments that havefallen by the wayside over time. Therecording Tárogató: A Folk Instru-ment With a Contemporary Soundoffers an opportunity to hear a little-known Eastern European wind in-strument expertly played and givenrenewed attention by a selection ofcontemporary composers.

The modern tárogató is a single

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reed, wooden wind instrument with aconical bore. Its fingering is similarto that of the oboe and the resultingnon-tempered scale is associatedwith a long tradition of improvisa-tion. Its origins are likely in theMiddle East where, centuries ago,“tárogató” referred to a double reedinstrument often called an Easternoboe or Turkish pipe. The soloist onthis recording, Esther Lamneck, playsa version of the tárogató built in thelatter part of the nineteenth centuryin Budapest.

Almost no written music for theinstrument exists due to its adoptionas a folk instrument integral to im-provisational traditions. Seven newpieces ranging from solo improvisa-tions to works with electronics andsignal processing are offered on thisdisc. The composers approach thetárogató with varying degrees of rev-erence for its past and curiosity aboutits future. Many of them draw uponthe improvisational character of theinstrument and its performance tra-dition while several treat it simply asa unique wind instrument withwhich to sound the voice of their mu-sical inclinations.

Through a Glass (1986) by DaryJohn Mizelle was the first work com-missioned by Esther Lamneck for the

Recordings

tárogató. It is a plaintive, hauntingsolo work employing a modal scalethat brings out the “rich dark tonesand piquant bright timbres of the in-strument’s unique non-tempered tun-ing.” Lithe ornamentation and raspyrepeated pitches permeate the grace-ful arch of the work’s design. RobertRowe provides a fitting continuationof this reflective quality apparentlyso characteristic of the instrument inhis work Shells (1992). Here the táro-gató is paired with a computer run-ning the composer’s interactiveenvironment, Cypher. The tárogató’sleaps, slides, and rapid gesticulationsare paired with ostinato reactions andaccompanying drones and counter-point as Cypher listens to the instru-ment’s performance and joins in witha variety of textural and timbral con-tributions. There are several verysuccessful passages in the workwhere a balance is reached betweenthe respective contributions of thetárogató and Cypher, and the finalmoments of the work find Cypher ef-fectively shadowing the restrained,descending melodic lines of the windinstrument.

The short work Ah Kishinev Sub-otica (1993) by Robert Cogan marriesthe tárogató’s distinct timbre withmore recently developed contempo-rary wind techniques includingmultiphonics, multiple trills, use ofthe instrument’s extreme registers,and simultaneous singing by the per-former. This little gem summons upa sense of organic sound-making viathe marriage of breath and this in-strument. Alfonso Belfiore’s Tra leCose Tenute [Among the Things Re-membered] from 1995 combines pre-recorded electroacoustic materialswith an open form score for the táro-gató player. The performer selects atrandom various notated materials forperformance and subsequently trig-gers changes to the dynamic and

registral character of the prerecordedaudio materials through an interac-tive computer system. The tárogató,suspended atop undulating bells,punctuating cymbals, and rumblingdrones, is at times lyrical and sus-tained, at other times playful andfiercely focused in its melodic gyra-tions. In choosing to keep the electro-acoustic materials subdued beneaththe tárogató’s vibrant sound through-out the entire work, the composerunnecessarily limits a potentiallyrich dialogue between the two media.

Larry Austin’s eponymously titledTárogató (1997–98) is the lengthiestwork on the disc and combines thesolo tárogató with dancers and an oc-tophonic computer part in perfor-mance. The materials for the workarise once again from the improvisa-tional traditions of the instrumentand its unique timbral and tuningcharacteristics. The computer mate-rials often function as a tárogatóchoir, wreathing the live player witha diverse and ever-changing contra-puntal fabric. It acts as both a reflec-tion of the live player and as aninstigator of rhythmic and melodicideas subsequently taken up by theperformer. The texture is rich andfull of wildly romping figures and ex-changes throughout, almost as if thetárogató is traveling through its ownsonic history.

Shadows (1998) by Ron Mazurekconsists of a short series of exchangesbetween the tárogató and an electro-acoustic part constructed from modi-fied samples of the instrument. Drawnfrom a larger work, Shadows is singu-lar in character, intense in its angularyet cohesive combination of the in-strument and the modified soundsdrawn from it. The final work on thedisc is by the featured performer, Es-ther Lamneck. The three movementSettings (1999) draws upon fragmentsof folk material to provide a founda-

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tion and point of reference for themost extensive and adventuresomeplaying that Ms. Lamneck demon-strates on this disc. A halo of delayand reverb surrounds and girds thetárogató’s rapidly repeated figures inall three movements. Use of fast iter-ations, leaps, and turns in the ex-treme high register in the secondmovement are very effective as arethe arpeggios spanning wide registersand played at breathtaking speedthroughout the piece.

Writing for a unique instrumentand a virtuoso player offers both pos-sibilities and limitations, especiallywhen a heavy dose of improvisationis involved. Nonetheless, the meet-ing between an ancient tradition andthe contemporary bent of explorationand sonic extension is a fruitful be-ginning to the rediscovery of this in-triguing instrument.

Mario Verandi: orillas distantes /distant shores

Compact disc, EMF CD 035, 2001;available from CDeMUSIC/Elec-tronic Music Foundation, 116 NorthLake Avenue, Albany, New York12206, USA; telephone (+1) 888-749-9998 or (+1) 518-434-4110; fax (+1)518-434-0308; electronic mailcde@emf.org; Web www.cdemusic.org/.

Reviewed by Laurie RadfordEdmonton, Alberta, Canada

orillas distantes / distant shores is acompilation of six electroacousticworks by Argentinean-born com-poser Mario Verandi. His studies inBarcelona and his activities as amember of BEAST (BirminghamElectro-Acoustic Sound Theater) atthe University of Birmingham are ev-ident in the finely sculpted soundpractice throughout these works. The

pieces presented on orillas distantes /distant shores adhere to two distinctcategories in Mr. Verandi’s work: theuse of recognizable sound sourcesand soundscapes in combinationwith transformations and extensionsof these same materials, and a moreextensive, abstract style of composi-tion that distances the sound sourcesfrom their associative origins.

Evil Fruit (2000) explores the worldof a selection of Brazilian percussioninstruments: deep resonant skin andwood timbres tapped out in rapidvolleys and rolls; crystalline, metalshards pulsing and bouncing acrossthe stereophonic field. Throughoutthe piece, the composer pries open thedrum’s iterative pace and revealsmoments of reflective, bell-like reso-nance. The alternation of abrupt andsubtle metallic punctuations ushersforward a series of contrasting itera-tive textures until a human voice ap-pears to modify and meld with thedrum. The evident percussive originsof many materials give way towardthe end of the piece to a broader, lessdistinct sonic image that transportsthe listener into a distant sonic space.Finally, a climactic increase in spatialproximity and sound-object densityreturns us to the drum and voice ofthe work’s origins.

Fréquences de Barcelone (1997),awarded a prize at the InternationalRadiophonic Competition in France,takes the sounds of Barcelona andthrusts them onto the sound stageamid a variety of other carefully cho-sen sound materials. The work isboth soundscape and fantasy, a recon-textualization of daily urban sounds,conversations, street music, rushingwaves, and the shrill cries of childrenat play filtered, stretched, fragmentedinto a dynamic and fascinating racethrough the sound world of this vi-brant city. Mr. Verandi judiciouslyjuxtaposes moments of traffic chaoswith the calm of late-night rain, thedin of a midday restaurant with mod-ified bells and the blur of farawaytraffic. This piece is a shapely andcolorful voyage that hints at anunderlying urban narrative of discov-ery and the magic of a living sound.

Employing spoken texts from Bo-das de Sangre [Blood Wedding] byFederico García Lorca and samples ofSpanish flamenco music, Figuras Fla-mencas (1995) straddles the real andthe surreal, from the familiar twangof the flamenco guitar and the earthytones of flamenco singing, to ghostlytextures of ringing, spiraling stringsounds punctuated by frenzied vocalincantations. The temporal design ofthe work is especially effective:dense, exciting moments of move-ment and rapid change are contrastedwith sparse, mesmerizing dronesamidst gradually evolving inhar-monic spectra, much as the art of fla-menco juxtaposes frenzy and repose,passion and calculation. The whis-pered intonations, disappearing snip-pets of transformed singing, and raspytextures of strummed guitars bring thework to its conclusion and a final solorecitation that poignantly hearkensback to the strains of flamenco sing-ing at the opening of the work.

Given the opening excursions into

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the sounds of Spanish culture, thenext work on the disc demonstrates astrikingly different facet of Mr. Ve-randi’s electroacoustic practice.Heartbreaker (1996) is based on theactivity of breaking objects “and thevarious forms of energy that are freedby this phenomenon.” Meticulousand extensive exploration and trans-formation of a particular family ofsources materials, from the breakingof bricks and glass to the tearing ofpaper and the crushing of leaves, pro-duces an extremely rich and variedpalette of sonic objects that the com-poser employs with clarity and imag-ination. Warring pulse-driven ostinatitransform into thunderous, swayingwaves of low-frequency crunching,then into a tremulous, fragile tinklingthat betrays the violent origins of thesounds. The work is a sonorous de-light and is formally coherent andshapely. The recognizable hammer-breaking-brick at the conclusionseems rather too literal and banal af-ter the riches offered up during thepreceding ten minutes.

Faces and Intensities (1996) is an-other of Verandi’s prize-winningworks (Musica Nova 1996) and an-other that delves into the abstract ex-ploration of a sound’s transformativepotential. The guiding model here isthat of continuity: slow, methodicaltransformations, changes of speed,adjustments of spatial movement andfocus. The work proceeds in slowlyevolving arches of increasing and de-creasing energy, never resting longenough to establish a point of refer-ence, always remolding the temporalflow and spatial arrangements of itscontributing materials. There is anintensity and complexity to thisshifting, kaleidoscopic ambience thatholds the listener in a suspended os-cillation of expectation.

The final piece on the disc, PlasticWater, is one of the most recent offer-

Recordings

ings, hailing from the year 2000.The work was conceived as an eight-channel work designed for perfor-mance on the Sigma 1 diffusionsystem at TU-Studios Berlin. Thestereo version presented on this discmakes one yearn for the opportunityto experience the original multi-channel work. The composer onceagain brings his considerable techni-cal prowess to bear upon a simplesound source (the crushing andsquashing of a plastic bottle) andsqueezes out some beautiful timbralobjects via his sound transformationpractice. The “water” of the title in-forms the iterative pattering thatdominates many of the textures inthe piece and an evocative plasticbottle “solo” draws the work to itssomewhat premature conclusion.

The works on orillas distantes /distant shores are now, in somecases, nearly a decade old. Theseworks by Mario Verandi maintain avivid and visceral quality that en-courages repeated audition, andmakes one eager to explore the com-poser’s more recent work.

Bone: Uses Wrist Grab

Compact disc, Rune 176, 2003;available from Cuneiform Records,P.O. Box 8427, Silver Spring, Mary-land 20907-8427, USA; electronicmail cuneiway@aol.com; Webcuneiformrecords.com/.

Reviewed by Ross FellerOberlin, Ohio, USA

Like many of Nick Didkovsky’srecordings, the cover for Uses WristGrab states: “Listen to this record ex-tremely loud and in one sitting. Openyour windows so your neighbors canhear it, too.” This reminds me ofItalo Calvino’s parody of the experi-

ence of reading in his novel If on aWinter’s Night a Traveler except thatit would appear that Mr. Didkovskyis dead serious. Unfortunately, whilesheer volume might enhance some ofthe 14 pieces contained in Uses WristGrab, it merely compounds the prob-lems in others. Regardless, thisrecording was created from an inter-esting premise, only possible throughthe use of current technological tools.

This CD contains seven pieces byMr. Didkovsky, six by UK rockerHugh Hopper (Soft Machine, Gong)and one they co-wrote. Each memberof Bone (those two plus drummerJohn Roulat of Forever Einstein)recorded his parts in his own studio.They communicated with each otherby email, and sent audio files backand forth for the purposes of re-hearsal and tweaking. The final draftswere then mixed and produced byMr. Didkovsky. As of the releasedate, Mr. Hopper and Mr. Didkovskyhad not yet met in person. The factthat they were able to create this CDfrom three separate locations pres-ents some intriguing issues. The re-liance upon current technologicalstandards for the transfer of audioseems perilous given the inevitableappearances of obsolescence and in-stability. Yet, they pulled it off. Mr.

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Didkovsky writes in the liner notes:“As I was mixing this record, I wasstruck again and again by how muchit all sounds like an organic band thatcould have rehearsed together.” In-deed, the bass/drums lock-step ap-proach does frequently sound as ifthe players had been eyeballing eachother in order to achieve synchronousprecision. But there remains muchthat is missing from the organic bandscenario, and this, I contend, is as itshould be. What is perhaps most fas-cinating about this project is that themusicians did not rehearse togetheras a unit. Unlike much rock-bandmusic, their project required the tech-nological tools they used. A sense ofdisembodiment occurs as we hear thebass and guitar parts not quite fittingtogether. This conjures a kind of tech-nological dissonance. One could saythat we hear the distance betweenthe musicians’ respective studios.

We also clearly hear differences inaesthetics. Thankfully, it continuesto be difficult to categorize Mr. Did-kovsky’s music. His employment ofasymmetrical meters, gratuitousdissonance, and tonally ambiguousharmonies rubs against the pop sensi-bility implied by the compositionalforms and instrumentations withwhich he works. As in his other proj-ects, highly idiosyncratic computer-generated melodies and rhythmstwist and turn within a torturousrandom walk. His inventive sonicreferential vocabulary includes to-kens from the bayou, heavy metal,the Middle East, Led Zeppelin, andJavanese gamelan (thanks to the useof the prepared guitar). One hears apalpable, grating friction between hiscomposed elements.

This friction is much less appar-ent in Mr. Hopper’s material, whichtends toward a lackluster mélange ofmonotonous repetition and drone-like material. He is a capable per-

former on Mr. Didkovsky’s tunes, yetas a composer he relies too muchupon ostinato and looping. The re-sults sound overblown and puffywithout much substance. Interest-ingly, Mr. Didkovsky uses two soft-ware instruments he created only onMr. Hopper’s tunes. Machinecore isan interactive software instrumentprogrammed in Java Music and JSyn.Hell Café is a pulse-based softwareinstrument programmed in JMSL/JSyn. It is available for online audi-tion at www.punosmusic.com/pages/hellcafe.

Lastly, there is the issue of mate-rial reuse. Mr. Didkovsky gets a lot ofmileage from the material he con-tributed to Uses Wrist Grab. Thefirst piece, entitled To Laugh Un-cleanly at the Nurse, was originallycomposed for the Fred Frith GuitarQuartet. According to the composer,he “aggressively rearranged” and re-recorded it for this release. Sara’sWrist Grab was originally for theSara Hook Dancers, but she ended upusing a different Didkovsky piece.Hence its appearance here. Overlife 1and Overlife 3 were composed for theJohn Malashock Dance Company,and originally performed as a duowith Mr. Didkovsky and percussion-ist Steven Schick. We’ll Ask theQuestions Around Here, Part 2 ap-peared previously on Binky Boy. Thequestion of whether convenience orrecontextualization was Mr. Did-kovsky’s motive for reusing his mate-rial is left with the listener.

In short, this disc is a lopsided ef-fort with several strong pieces by Mr.Didkovsky.

Tom Erbe, Chris Mann, LarryPolansky, douglas repetto,Christian Wolff: Trios

Compact disc, Pogus P21031-2,2004; available from Pogus Produc-

tions, 50 Ayr Road, Chester, NewYork 10918, USA; electronic mailpogal@pogus.com; World Wide Webwww.pogus.com/.

Reviewed by Steven M. MillerNew York, New York, USA

Four musicians + one assembler/editor/recontextualizer = Trios. Im-provisations recorded on two separatedates by two different trios (LarryPolansky, douglas repetto, ChrisMann, and Mr. Polansky, Mr. repetto,Christian Wolff, respectively), andreassembled, edited, and generallyreworked at will at a later date (byMr. Erbe), the music of Trios is asonic stew of postmodern propor-tions. It is a music that invites andeven revels in contradictions, oppo-sitions, simultaneities, and de-/re-contextualizations.

In juxtaposing recordings of liveimprovisations within studio-tailoredtreatments of them, Trios neatly con-fronts a number of binary oppositionsseemingly entrenched in traditionalmusical discourse: live/studio, real-time/non real-time, improvisation/composition, human-performed/computer-produced, acoustic/elec-tronic, author/interpreter, technician/creator, etc. But these confrontationsdo not consist of detailed explication

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and reasoned argumentation in eithermusical or textual language. It israther a case of problemetization-in-action. Musically, the package seemsto present all of these issues all of thetime, without specifically addressingany of them individually. The in-tensely minimal nature of the linernotes is itself a central agent in thisconfrontation. The liner notes list noindividual titles (except Track One,Track Two, etc.), and do not delineatepersonnel on a per-track basis. Eventhe recording details outlined in theparagraph above were taken from therecord company Web site rather thanfrom the disc; the recording informa-tion and respective roles are not de-tailed on the disc itself beyondidentifying individuals and their re-spective sonic/instrumental do-mains. In other words, as a packagethe disc and liner notes present thesonic results and the actors respec-tively, and seemingly not much else.But much more is implied, if only byomission. Especially because thepieces themselves are exercises in re-contextualization, by intentionallynot contextualizing them in the linernotes in familiar terms of authorship,linear process, artistic and technicalproduction, power dynamics, artisticintention, etc., the creators throwopen to question many of the prevail-ing notions of modernist musicalthinking.

Musically, the six tracks form aremarkably coherent set of pieces to-taling just under an hour. With indi-vidual track times ranging fromunder 3 minutes to over 15, none ofthe pieces is significantly differentfrom the others in overall impressionor in its particularities. Listeningfrom beginning to end is a largelyseamless experience. However, un-derneath what at first listeningseemed to me to be a largely undiffer-entiated stream of sounds, the discrevealed itself, upon repeated listen-

Recordings

ing and thinking/reflection, to be adeftly executed and skillfully pro-duced musical experience. The soundworld consists of various layers ofvoice (sometimes distinct and audible,often not), computer/electronics(sometimes processing/interactingwith the voice, at times independent ofit), electric guitar (feedback, warbling,and “notes”), piano (occasionallysounding “prepared”), with some-what more sparse touches of bass,melodica, and percussion. Distortion,crackles, and buzzes abound. Thereare localized regions where musicalinteraction is clear, and vast stretcheswhere it seems that independent si-multaneity is the primary interest.Carving out space within the often-dense textures is deftly accomplishedthrough spatial location and pro-cessing, highlighting a sense of auralperspective that is subtly manipu-lated, thereby avoiding what other-wise might have been a sonicallymonotonous and impenetrable mass.Dynamic interplay of individual ele-ments fading and/or cutting in andout, recombining in various permuta-tions, creates a sense of motion andtimbral/textural rhythm without en-gendering the perception of linear de-velopment. None of the tracks followany sort of obvious formal trajectory,but rather they seem to ebb and flowat various rates of change. Whatemerges over the course of the disc isa music full of detail and subtle varia-tion that rewards repeated listeningwith a richness of timbre and texture.

The following characterizationsare not meant to be detailed descrip-tions of the individual pieces, but in-stead highlight some of the moreprominent features. Track One (10:54)starts with a more or less monauralset of voice, electric guitar, and com-puter/electronics and crossfades to awidely panned and spatially diffuseset of piano, electric guitar, and elec-tronics. Soon, numerous individual

elements are apparent in a variety ofstatic and dynamic panning posi-tions. Foreground to background per-spective is manipulated via differingreverberation and equalization char-acteristics. Interjections from heavilyprocessed voice snippets provide for araucous focal point. Track Two (2:56)leads off with slide guitar gesturesand snippets of processed voice over/in front of “live” voice. This piecehas more dynamic contrasts, at timesdropping to single repeated pianoclusters. Its short length lends a morefocused feel. Track Three (15:09) be-gins with sustained computer/elec-tronic timbres, clouds of repeatedguitar figurations and voice. It main-tains this aggregate texture with onlyslight timbral modulations for con-siderably longer than most of theother pieces, in the neighborhood offour minutes, before introducingother timbral elements (in this case, asingle piano figure). In doing so, it es-tablishes a more relaxed feel that isstatic yet subtly changing. Aggressivetreatments of the voice enter later,snippets of bass, piano, and shortmelodica phrases follow, building amore dynamic interplay of elementsinto the texture. Track Four (14:26)opens with guitar feedback. Bassthumps and scrapes, computernoises, and eventually voice enterslowly, thickening the texture andfilling out the pitch and timbrespaces in a gradual manner. Eventu-ally the texture thins out again, un-dergoing slow changes until thecomputer and guitar fade out at theend. Track Five (4:27) seems almostaustere in comparison to the othertracks, with less overall textural den-sity and less frenetic energy overall.Sporting a relatively succinct timelength and with the familiar timbresof electric guitar and piano dominat-ing, this one could very well be the“radio single” of the disc. Track Six(6:26) features frenetic rhythmic ac-

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tivity, sonic jump cuts, and aggres-sive timbres in the first few minutes,slowly giving way to piano and slideguitar interplay with faint computer/electronics background. Percussionand more insistent piano sounds, in-cluding scraped/rubbed strings, filterin and out of focus.

Although exhibiting certain sur-face similarities to free improvisa-tion, noise bands, “onkyo,” urbansoundscape composition, and othersuch sonically adventurous musics,Trios successfully resists easy catego-rization. It prods the listener to thinkwhile it engages the ear. Musically aswell as intellectually, it challengesmuch of the status quo. Many ofthese issues have been present tovarying degrees in a wide range ofmusics, from musique concrètethrough hip-hop and electronica toWorld Beat and beyond, yet the de-gree to which Trios engages them allis still somewhat unusual.

Reviewed by Alan ShockleyPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Chris Mann’s manic, ever-unintelligible voice fills large ex-panses of this compact disc. Amidthe constantly moving and intricatelyvariegated texture, familiar soundsrecur: occasionally the friendly soundof Christian Wolff’s melodica peeksthrough the miasma, the flutter oftremolo-bar vibrated electric guitar, aslow plunking at a piano.

Five musicians contributed to themusic here. According to Pogus Pro-ductions’ Web site, the album “com-bines instrumental and electronicimprovisation with non-real-timecomputer processing and editing.”Composer/guitarist Larry Polansky,Chris Mann (narrator/poet/vocalist),and douglas repetto (computer musi-cian/live electronics manipulator/recording engineer) recorded “severalhours of live improvised material in

one session” in January of 1998.Then, in April of that same year,composer/pianist/bassist/percussion-ist/melodica player Christian Wolffjoined Mr. repetto and Mr. Polanskyto record additional material. Theproducts of both of these trio sessionswere then (in the CD’s tertiary levelof creation) offered over to Tom Erbe(credited with “recording, editing,processing” in the liner notes), whosifted through material from the twotrio improvisations and shaped theminto the six resultant CD tracks.

Overall I find the shorter tracksmore successful than the longer ones.As much as Mr. Mann’s chatteringhas to recommend it, the best track isthe last one in which there’s no rec-ognizable vocal part on the surface ofthe piece.

Track Two, the shortest of the al-bum, opens with glissando electricguitar, quickly joined by Mr. Mann’spitch-prominent delivery. A brief si-lence, and then repeated notes on the(sometimes) prepared piano (sound-ing like a glass rod resting on thestrings at times—with a metallicharpsichord-ish sonic result), thenmanic Mr. Mann is back, joined byblips of electric guitar (warmed by alittle reverberation this time). Theharshness of the filtered voice givesthis track a contemporary sheen, andthe brevity really works for this as-semblage of sounds.

Track Three has a thicker texture:slow dives of electric guitar (a muchmore distorted timbre here) or ofelectronic assemblages, Mr. Mann’svoice periodically lowered or madeharsh and distorted, occasionalwhite-noise spikes, clean guitar oscil-lations (various thirds), a meanderingmovement in Mr. Wolff’s bass. Theencouraging bleat of the melodicapeeks through about two-thirds ofthe way through the track, and then alittle bluesy piano steps in, some-times backed by sample and hold-like

blipping, or by heavily distorted gui-tar—and then there’s Mr. Mannagain. But, for a couple of minutesthe computer sounds (and computeraltered ones) keep even his burbles atbay, with a full and rhythmic sound.Heavily processed and altered voice,and quasi-minimalist piano take usto the end of the track. Track Threeis longest of the album, and perhapsits most representative. But, it justdoesn’t keep the listener’s attentionlike the two short tracks of the CD.

Track Four: electric guitar has thefirst word—long notes, distorted,faintly sinister percussive thingspunctuate the underbelly of thesound. Then, Mr. Mann’s babble en-ters and builds to his own Australianbraying. The guitar dominates thistime, though. With subtlety, longsounds take over: electronics, moreguitar, the voice’s presence recedesthen eventually returns. In its ab-sence the listener notices how muchof the rhythmic activity of the track(and the album as a whole) is carriedby this element. A delicate electronicwhine (almost the shortwave of Karl-heinz Stockhausen’s Hymnen, butnot quite) and grossly slowed voice(becoming a percussive and bassythump) end the track.

Track Six opens with rattling pre-pared piano and percussion, highglisses on clean guitar, along with amuch noisier, distorted guitar soundand a flittering of processed piano andelectronics. Then, scrabblings (pianoand otherwise) with perhaps thevoice instrumentalized and pushed tothe distant background. (Finally, Mr.Mann doesn’t dominant the tex-ture—the voice is actually absent.)Following, a clockworks sound ofhigh piano and high guitar notes re-peating, repeating, repeating. Then,nothing. This track is the most beau-tiful of the album, and a reason togive even the longer tracks anotherlisten.

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Overall, Trios succeeds. Despitethe time and distance separating thevarious contributors and contribu-tions to this CD, the result hangs to-gether as a single work. Though I findthe voice-dominated texture a bit fa-tiguing after awhile, the beauty of theend of the last track—and the mo-ments of melodica “sunlight” or ofdinky piano peaking through—keepsme intrigued and engaged through-out. Recommended.

Matthew Burtner:Metasaxophone Colossus

Compact disc, innova 621, 2004; avail-able from innova Recordings, 332Minnesota Street #E-145, St. Paul,Minnesota 55101, USA; tel (+1) 651-251-2823; fax (+1) 651-291-7978; elec-tronic mail innova@composersforum.org; Web innova.mu.

Reviewed by Peter V. SwendsenCharlottesville, Virginia, USA

Released in the fall of 2004, Metasax-ophone Colossus is a tour de forceshowcase for composer, performer,and instrument-inventor MatthewBurtner. It is a compact disc that payshomage to the great Sonny Rollins’s1956 album, Saxophone Colossus,while bringing together Mr. Burtner’sprimary work from the last few yearsand thereby providing a bookend tohis 1999 release, Portals of Distortion(innova 526). If you have been any-where near the computer musicscene in the recent past, you havelikely heard one or more of thesememorable pieces performed live byMr. Burtner on his elegantly home-brewed Metasaxophone. Anythingyou give up in hearing them on CD isquickly accounted for by the delightof having them collected in oneplace. At a time when many alternatecontrollers and extended instruments

Recordings

surface just long enough for a singlepiece or performance, it is a rare lux-ury for us as listeners and scholarsthat Mr. Burtner has developed a le-gitimate repertoire for his instru-ment, one that is both carefullycrafted and finely documented onthis new CD.

The Metasaxophone is an acoustictenor saxophone retrofitted with anonboard computer microprocessorand an array of sensors of which AdolfSax himself would be proud. Jazz istypically offered as the ultimate ar-rival of Sax’s creation, but those of uswho play the often-shunned rebelhorn of the classical world can appre-ciate the fact that Mr. Burtner’s workpays homage to the vision and pas-sion of Sax as an inventor, as well asto his computer music likenesses,such as Mr. Burtner’s former teacher,Max Matthews. But anyone who hasseen Mr. Burtner play his creation inperson knows that the instrument it-self is just the beginning of the musicproduced on it. Mr. Burtner’s playingtechnique and musical state of mindare fundamentally linked to theMetasax while also being the key fac-tors in the resulting music’s transcen-dence of mere technological noveltyto a state of engaging physicality.

Metasaxophone Colossus was offi-cially launched at a CD release party

at The Gravity Lounge in Char-lottesville, Virginia, early Fall 2004.Joined by special guests on stage andsurrounded by an eager audiencecomfortably settled in with food anddrink to the kind of welcoming set-ting that would benefit much otherelectroacoustic music, Mr. Burtnerpresented the entirety of his new CDin an impressively unified display oftechnical and creative energy. Whileevident in person, it should be madeclear here that the compositions onthis disc are not for “instrument plustape” or even “instrument plus elec-tronics.” They are, at least conceptu-ally and usually practically as well,pieces for “instrument plus itself.”

The album’s first track, S-Morphe-S,is a fitting introduction and a highlyeffective use of physical modelingsynthesis. Illustrating Mr. Burtner’sbroader reinvention of the saxo-phone, the instrument in this case isactually not the tenor-based Metasaxbut rather a hybrid of Mr. Burtner’ssoprano horn and a convincing com-puter model of a Tibetan prayer bowlby physical modeling expert, StefaniaSerafin. The piece opens with asounding of the bowl as percussivekey taps set it resonating, and the lis-tener immediately senses his or herlocation as being inside the bowl it-self. Experientially, the piece—as itthen begins to traverse a flutteringand shimmering high register—be-comes largely about the modulationof the size and shape of the bowl. Atits most precise, the piece places thelistener in the small object of thebowl itself; at its most expansive, thelistener could just as easily be in anenormous mountain bowl with soundreflecting off distant canyon walls.

Delta 2 is an emergent feedbackpiece, its slow evolution relentlesslyleading to a prolonged swell of thickand edgy sound. A cross betweenminimalist pulsing and Hendrix-inspired screeching, it argues against

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Mr. Burtner’s program notes that callit the “softer side of the electric sax.”Conversely, I find it intensely chargedand almost manic in both procedureand performance. That was certainlythe case at the CD release party,where Mr. Burtner was joined for thispiece by the wonderful jazz trum-peter, John D’earth. Having begunthe piece quietly at opposite ends ofthe stage, by the end the players wereinches from each other, red in theface, and wailing on their horns.

S-Trance-S, the longest track onthe CD, is linked by both title and ap-proach to S-Morphe-S. The funda-mental difference here is that Ms.Serafin’s physical model is that of astring instead of a bowl. Mr. Burtnerbows, plucks, and rubs this virtualinstrument with a measured and de-liberate pacing throughout the piece,which never quite finds the same fre-netic energy as most of its counter-parts (as the name suggests). This is alate night piece that one can imagineas the middle 12 minutes of an hours-long improvisation. While its grittybursts of semi-pitched noise fore-shadow the intense din that is Delta 1,it eventually leads the listener peace-fully to the disc’s “intermission.”

The intermission music itself—St.Thomas Phase—is a tribute to SonnyRollins. The only non-real-time pieceon the disc, it gathers, retains, andexpands enormous energy from thesampled Rollins music, spinning awash of sound that drifts in and outof phase and rhythmic stability. Forthe ears, it is the perfect palette-cleansing piece of ginger or scoop ofsorbet before digging in to the tastysecond half of the album.

Noisegate 67, the first piece writ-ten for the Metasaxophone, is a sea ofbreath, noise, and relentless multi-phonic textures in which the acous-tic qualities of the horn are at theirmost raw and powerful. The piece isless successful than its album-mates

at conjuring a truly unified meta-instrument, often sounding like astandard tenor sax blowing over abackground wash of computer-generated sound. Conceptual differ-ences aside, however, this is a strikingpiece that would likely prove an ac-cessible starting point for anyonecoming from the world of experimen-tal jazz or free improvisation.

Speaking of accessible startingpoints, Delta 1 will convincingly andunapologetically turn you on or off.This is non-stop sonic assault, thoughthe drums produced by Mr. Burtner’spolyrhythmicon—the same tool usedfor St. Thomas Phase—are under-powered compared to the blaringelectric horn. Flying in the face ofSpinal Tap’s “our knobs go up to 11,”this is a piece that only has to beturned up halfway to sound loud.

Relative calm returns with thedisc’s final track, Endprint. This pieceis scored for nine acoustic saxophones,perhaps suggesting that the acousticnature of the instrument is whattruly endures. Rich with electronic-sounding multiphonics, the pieceswims in and out of your head. At theCD release performance I sometimesfound its swelling resonances so satu-rating that I looked around half ex-pecting to see people’s skulls actuallybubbling and vibrating. Mr. Burtner,using an approach reminiscent ofpieces such as Maggi Payne’s Humand Hum2, harnesses the power ofthis “choir of the same instruments”to great effect.

Ironically, the originality and evenexistence of Metasaxophone Colossusis most likely the result of Mr. Burt-ner giving up the saxophone for sev-eral years earlier in his life, frustratedwith the conventional techniquesand repertoire it then embodied forhim. When he finally returned to it,he did so with a Xenakis-inspiredcommitment to always forget one’sprevious creations and start fresh.

That spirit is undeniably evident onthis fine disc, which should proveequally inspiring to performers, com-posers, tinkerers, and inventors,while also challenging and rewardinglisteners from a variety of musicalbackgrounds.

Multimedia

Ludger Brümmer, Compositions;Silke Braemer, Videos: Thrill

DVD-Audio/DVD-Video/DVD-ROM,2003, Wergo Edition ZKM WER20595; available from Schott MusikInternational, Weihergarten 5, D-55116 Mainz, Germany; telephone(+49) 6131-246-0; fax (+49) 6131-246-211; Web www.schott-music.com/shop/3/1000083/1660295/show,137067.html.

Reviewed by Alan ShockleyPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

This DVD-Audio/Video/ROM releasefrom 2003 gathers together five multi-channel audio works by composerLudger Brümmer, two of them pairedwith video work by artist Silke Brae-mer. This is a smart release in that itincludes multiple versions of eachtrack: the audio is available in linearPCM format, 16- or 24-bit resolution(depending on original source files),with a sampling rate of 48 kHz.Paired with the video parts of theDVD, the music is also encoded instereo, Dolby Digital surround, andDTS formats. (Inferno der Stille, orig-inally created in an eight-channelversion is available in a five-channelmix, eight channels being normallyunavailable in DVD player outputs,but Mr. Brümmer even provides theindividual eight channels of audio as

92 Computer Music Journal

AIFF files in the DVD-ROM partitionof the DVD.) In these ways, the com-poser allows listeners some way toexperience this music, be their play-back means ever so humble.

First, the audio-only tracks. Thedisc opens with Phrenos, an 18-minwork from 1997 that won the GrandPrix—Pierre d’Or as best work in allcategories at the 1997 Bourges Com-petition. It was commissioned byand realized at the Zentrum fürKunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM)Institute for Music and AcousticsKarlsruhe. A sharp, sudden openingbecomes string orchestra/choir-likesustained sounds. These build to asecond outburst, briefly climaxing intape-loop-iness. The next outburst re-leases some human speech and thecomic arpeggiation of speed-changedvoice recordings—providing one ofthe rare moments of non-abstractelectronic sounds on the entire disc.These sounds are then looped andthey circle the listener, slowing downand returning to the bed of sustainedpads. These fade to silence. Gradu-ally, the faintest, most delicate blipscolor the quietude. Another shortoutburst and then the sonic wallpa-per of a starship continues. Abouthalfway through the piece, cascadesof tinkling loops become audible;these circle and crescendo. A fewferal gasps sound through this chim-ing orchestra of circling material. Af-ter a diminuendo to almost nothing,the faint “wallpaper” returns. It ac-celerates, a spinning arcade of soundtransforming into a helicopter. Thisflying machine slows until anotheroutburst (much like that of the open-ing) wakes the listener. Faint sustainedsounds—now vaguely string-quartet-like—are followed by a longer out-burst, miasmic, taking us into thefinal minute of the piece. A gradualdiminuendo and the clink of a smallhammer on glass ends the work.

Track three is the next audio-only

Multimedia

work, de la nuit from 1999. Finally,Inferno der Stille from 2000 (trackfive) closes the disc. I find Inferno tobe the most engaging work of this re-lease, comparing it to both of theother audio-only tracks and to thetwo tracks with video. This “Infernoof Silence” draws source materialfrom the Introitus section of Wolf-gang Mozart’s Requiem. Mr. Brüm-mer also mentions developingmetallic sounds through physicalmodeling procedures and details analgorithmic approach to this compo-sition in the liner notes. The openingresembles a reversed and stretchedsound capped by a sudden decre-scendo. This is succeeded by ex-tremely faint sounds, sometimessounding mandolin-like. Close-to-inaudibility reigns until almost sevenminutes into the piece, but then acrescendo begins, joined by brusheson metal, culminating in forte mate-rial at about nine and a half minutesin. Lovely, sustained choral-likesounds take over and Mozart’s stringsbecome recognizable, eventuallycrescendoing to an abrupt cut-off. Afaint tinkling returns, then somewhispering-like coiled metal, fol-lowed by a large crescendo depositingthe listener at a loud and activeplateau. With about five minutes re-maining, the piece grows quiet again;there are distant sustained sounds,the brushes on metal again, and agradual crescendo begins. Cascadeswash over the listener, eventuallyclearing for about a half-minute ofMozartian translucence. The slowfading and dismantling of this soundtakes us to the work’s conclusion.

As mentioned above, this hybriddisc also includes two audio worksmated with video works created bySilke Braemer. One of these is thetitle work, ->Thrill<-/Le tempss’ouvre from 1999. (->Thrill<- isMr. Brümmer’s title; Ms. Braemer haschosen an independent title for her

video work.) The earlier of these twoaudio/video works is the 1997 LizardPoint, created as a commission fromthe International Computer MusicAssociation for the InternationalComputer Music Conference inThessaloniki in 1997. This 20-minwork opens with a metallic “scream”of sound and the image of a standingmale figure bathing in a garden. Wedrive by spectral blue trees as toy-piano and marbles-in-the-clockworkssounds enter. Hands undulate on theleft of the visual field, and a tireswing tilts back and forth into view.We begin to see bobbing circles andsome percussive tiny bell soundsbuild, leading to a distorted guitar-like outburst, and then to a metallichammering. The screen, mostly blackand white throughout the video, istinged briefly with blue/blue-greenlines, and the bobbing white circlescontinue while a distant human fig-ure begins an approach. The colordrains out, and the bobbing and thefigure’s approach continue. As we getmore and more space in between thesounds, the figure finally seems rightbefore the viewer. There’s a loud,spinning interruption, mated withquickly changing/moving images,then we’re back to the approachingfigure, almost frozen, again overlaidwith the bobbing circles. A whitescreen and a woman jumping into thearms of a man are matched withfuzzy, white-noise infused sounds,and slow upward glissandi.

At this point essentially all of thevisual materials for the piece have al-ready appeared, as have most of theaudio ones. There are some gradualtransformations—the metallic ham-mering gradually comes to resemblea train bell, and after a somewhatsinister stretched-bell crescendo,“church bells” ring and ring. Thebobbing circles return and returnnever much changed, but the undu-lating hands morph into blue threads

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across the screen that mimic the ear-lier movement. The ghostly treeslose their color in future iterations;the male bather returns, accompa-nied by sparkling high notes. Thehammering returns, more bell-likeand fades slowly to nothing at theend of the work.

Mr. Brümmer explains that the pri-mary musical material he used forLizard Point was a set of intervalslifted from the second movement ofRavel’s Gaspard de la nuit. The notesfurther explain the video: “The aimin the collaborative process of creat-ing the video was to investigate themoment of tension between real anddigitally produced realities and move-ment qualities and to present themaccording to media-specific aspects.”

Despite the somewhat restrictedsound palette for Mr. Brümmer’sworks represented here, I’m nottempted to label him a minimalist,but there seems no more fitting labelthan this one for Ms. Braemer’s videoworks. A 20-min video piece repeat-ing essentially three images seems toembrace a limited aesthetic. Almostall the images in both pieces here areblack and white, and when color doesoccasionally tint the screen, it is al-most always blue. Video technologyhas come a long way since 1997, anda viewer’s expectations have beenheightened by the extremely well-funded eye candy of popular movies.Unfortunately, this makes thesepieces seem a bit crude. The limitedpalette grows old after awhile.

Mr. Brümmer’s compositions inthis release, whether paired withvideo or not, definitely sound like asingular voice. I do find myself hop-ing for some more referential sounds—a few glimmers of the real world, or,if not literally concrète ones, at leasta few more that remind us of familiarsounds. Because of this hope, for thislistener Inferno der Stille is the mostapproachable work here: in it we

hear Mozart and recognize somethingfamiliar.

Hans Fjellestad: Moog

DVD (NTSC), 2005, plexiform 018;available from Flexifilm, 45 MainStreet, Suite 504, Brooklyn, NewYork 11201, USA; telephone (+1) 718-643-7300; fax (+1) 718-643-7320; elec-tronic mail info@flexifilm.com; Webwww.plexifilm.com/moog.html orwww.plexi.co.uk/.

Reviewed by James HarleyGuelph, Ontario, Canada

After having made the festival circuitin 2004, Moog, “the name that broughtelectronic music to the masses,” hasbeen released on DVD. [Editor’s note:Robert Moog passed away 21 August2005, after this review was written.An obituary will appear in the next is-sue.] Robert Moog is, of course, a cen-tral figure in the history of electronicmusic. This film, along with the 2002publication of Analog Days: The In-vention and Impact of the Moog Syn-thesizer by Trevor Pinch and FrankTrocco (reviewed elsewhere in this is-sue), signals the attention recentlybeing paid to his place in the field.

The film is produced in an easy-going, documentary style. Mr. Moogis presented in many settings: encoun-tering important musicians associatedwith the Moog synthesizer (and theTheremin); in his workshop/produc-tion plant; at home; in historic clipsfrom earlier in his career. The introduc-tion features an interesting waveform-derived animation (created by fizzy eye)and an amusing cartoon sequence inwhich a Simpsons-esque Bob Moogcharacter introduces his wild-lookingmodular synthesizer, finishing withthe humble line: “Well, I appreciateyour comments, what you think thepotential of a contraption like this is.”

As director Hans Fjellestad notesin his written introduction includedwith the DVD:

[W]e decided early on that weweren’t interested in taking aconventional approach to theMoog story. The film does nottrack the history of electronicmusic. It is not a chronologicalhistory of the synthesizer. Noarchive still photos, no narra-tion. Moog is focused on theman today, in his own words.

Mr. Moog, who was pushing 70 dur-ing the filming, is clearly no longeryoung. He speaks haltingly, and occa-sionally lacks focus. (He is, it mustbe said, an official “geek,” with apocket protecter and a bunch of penshandy!) But, the spark is still therewhen speaking of what he caresabout. He gets mystical at times.This bent ranges from commentsheard at the beginning such as, “I canfeel what’s going on inside a piece ofelectronic equipment,” to thoughtson the “connection” between musi-cians and their instruments that goesbeyond the physical/rational, to his

94 Computer Music Journal

conviction that his ideas “camethrough” from beyond, “somethingbetween discovering and witnessing.”

Along with his instruments, Mr.Moog also cares about his organicgarden, located outside of Asheville,North Carolina (pity about the chick-ens!), his family, as well as the convic-tion he shares with his philosopherwife, Ileana Grams, that there “is alevel of reality where there is no timeand there is no space, there’s just en-ergy, and we have contact with thatthrough the intermediate layers . . .so, if the right connections are estab-lished, I don’t see why a piece of mat-ter . . . can’t make contact throughthis very high level of reality that hasaccess to everything, past and future.”

Along with the “solo” interviews,Mr. Moog is shown conversing with avariety of characters: from HerbDeutsch, the first experimental com-poser to work with the engineer andwho to a large extent stimulated thedevelopment of the modular synthe-sizer, to Walter Sears, an early salesassociate who did much to promotethe new instruments, to various mu-sicians such as Rick Wakeman, KeithEmerson, Money Mark, and manyothers. Some of these encounters arewonderful. One of my favorites is thesession with Money Mark (a.k.aMark Ramos-Nishita), who sits withMr. Moog at a synthesizer and tweaksknobs while talking about what hethinks sounds cool, drawing the in-ventor into playing with the soundsas well. Some of the encounters aremore stilted: DJ Spooky, for example,comes across as mostly speaking tohimself, with little connection toMr. Moog or his technology (to be fair,this is not a musician known for play-ing synthesizers). Elsewhere, we learnthat Rick Wakeman is a bit of a “lad”(crude jokes), and that Bernie Worrellequates music with sex. Yee-haw!

I viewed the film with someonewho had no specialized knowledge of

Multimedia

the history of electronic music. Fromthat perspective, the film workedwell. From my perspective, I won-dered about some of the elements ofMr. Moog’s story that were missing.For one thing, beyond Herb Deutsch,there are no composers included oreven referenced (beyond mention ofVladimir Ussachevsky). We do wit-ness the evolution of the instrumentfrom “experimental” music to com-mercial applications to live perfor-mance, so perhaps this lacuna isunderstandable. We also don’t hearanything about Mr. Moog’s pro-tracted business and legal struggles(although today, he is doing well withBig Briar/Moog Music, with thenewly won right to the commercialuse of his name, so perhaps it wasn’tnecessary to talk about what hap-pened in the intervening years). Inthe various discussions throughoutthe film discussing the history of theMoog synthesizer, there is only asingle oblique reference to Switched-On Bach. Considering the impactthis album had on the popularizationof the synthesizer, this does seemodd. In the liner notes accompanyingthe DVD, the director mentions thatattempts to contact Wendy Carloswere thwarted and that she “eventhreatened legal action.” For someonewhose career has been shaped by herinvolvement with this instrumentand the man who invented it, this ispuzzling behavior. In any case, this isa hole in the story that looms large, atleast from the historical perspective.

What does come across in the film,however, is that the Moog, and theTheremin, are alive and well. Currentgroups and musicians continue to usethem: among many others, Stereolab,Tino Corp., Pamelia Kirsten, and Char-lie Clouser (the session with him thatis included in the Extras is one of thebest; imagine Mr. Moog and his familyattending a Nine Inch Nails concert!).I think it’s especially relevant that the

director himself performs with theMoog, using the moniker “33.” Thesoundtrack is filled with a variety ofMoog-based music, new and old,from artists who appear in the filmand others who do not. This continu-ing relevancy of this instrument (andman) to music-making is perhaps thestrongest message of the film, andMr. Moog does express his preferencefor live rather than studio-producedmusic. For all the effects his age andstruggles have had, Mr. Moog’s ownvitality shines through, and his legacy,his synthesizers and Theremins, arestill present, living through music be-ing performed today, still cool!

Various: -40, CanadianPropaganda Films of the 1940sReworked

DVD (NTSC)/Compact disc, 2004,csc 011; available fromC0C0S0L1DC1T1; electronic mailinfo@cocosolidciti.com; Webwww.cocosolidciti.com/.

Reviewed by James HarleyGuelph, Ontario, Canada

The National Film Board of Canada(NFB) was created in 1939 as a public

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agency “that produces and distributesfilms and other audiovisual worksthat reflect Canada to Canadians andthe rest of the world.” Over the 66years of its existence, the NFB hasproduced an impressive body ofwork, ranging from documentaries tofeatures to animations to experimen-tal films (consult the Web site:www.nfb.ca). As an aside, the NFBhas been important for the history ofelectroacoustic music in Canada.Norman McLaren, who developedthe experimental animation unit,created sound by painting/engravingon the film itself. Maurice Black-burn, a composer, collaborated withMcLaren and helped to establish the“Atelier de conception et de realiza-tions sonores,” a studio at NFB forexperimenting and creating electro-acoustic music.

The aim of the -40 project was toopen up the archives to new film-makers and musicians, reworking aset of 20 short documentary filmsfrom the 1940s. As the curatorialstatement in the liner notes states:“The collected works on -40 are verymuch a product of their times, whilealso being part of an enduring cul-tural conversation about personaland national identities . . . Using thecontemporary (de/re)constructive

modality of the digital remix to bringthe past into sharp focus in an elec-tronically altered present, the artistsoverlay technologies, new over old;and the global, political and personalinterweave.”

The project was divided into twoparts: ten artists reworked the film(transferred to digital video) whileleaving the original audio intact; tenother artists reworked the sound-track while leaving the original filmintact. It would have been particu-larly interesting to have two artistsrework the audio or video of the samefilm, but in this case, 20 differentfilms were used, a unique one foreach participant.

The package includes a CD con-taining the ten tracks of reworkedaudio, and a DVD containing theten reworked videos and the tenoriginal films with the reworked au-dio. The bilingual (English/French)liner notes include a curatorial state-ment (no author credited), an essayby journalist Marc Glassman, andfilm credits with biographies for the20 artists.

From my perspective, the audioremixes cover a fairly narrow range,generally falling into the beat-oriented,“techno” category. Having said that,different tracks tend more towardone or other of styles such as “ambi-ent,” “glitch,” “hardcore,” etc. Most ofthem present fragments of the origi-nal soundtracks, mostly clips of nar-ration. By far the most experimentalof the set is the The Guinea Pig Club(originally titled New Faces ComeBack, from 1946) by Venetian Snares(a.k.a. Aaron Funk, from Winnipeg).The film shows officers from variouscountries at a “club” recovering fromreconstructive surgery, many of theirfaces horribly disfigured. The imageof these men attending a piano recitalis accompanied here by wildly dis-torted piano sounds, with both tempoand pitch fluctuating widely. In a

sharply ironic way, the music fol-lows the “narrative” of the filmclosely, and, uniquely, makes no at-tempt to create a “beat” to dance to.

The other track I found most inter-esting is You Choo-Choo-Choose Me?(originally titled Trans-Canada Ex-press, from 1944) by Secret Mommy(a.k.a. Andy Dixon, from Vancouver).Original sound material from thefilm is subjected to various treat-ments: slicing, looping, distorting,etc. The music adds a disturbing, butplayful, tone to the images of trainsand related people, technology, andlandscapes.

Definitely Not Internment Camps(originally titled Of Japanese Descent,from 1945) by Meek (a.k.a. MikeBaugh, from Montreal), includesenough of the original narration tounderscore the—from today’s perspec-tive—heartless propoganda whichpretended that shipping Japanese-Canadian people off to camps in iso-lated locations “has resulted in theimprovement of the general healthlevel.” The beat-oriented electronicmusic that gradually evolves from un-derneath the narration makes obliquereference to Japanese ethnic music.

Akufen (a.k.a. Marc Leclair, fromMontreal) constructs his remix en-tirely from samples of the originalsoundtrack for Dynamisme des on-des (same title, from 1942), often slic-ing the sounds up very finely tocreate an engaging beat, continuouslyevolving. What is apparent to me isthat while I may not find many ofthese tracks interesting to listen toon their own, at least for long (and Irealize others may well disagree),they all add an interesting perspec-tive to the original films. They arebetter heard by watching the DVD, inmy opinion.

Other contributions include: Di-vide and Fragment Remix (originallyBattle of Brains, 1941) by Knifehand-chop (a.k.a. Billy Pollard, from

96 Computer Music Journal

Toronto); Ordeal by Ice (same title,1945) by prhizzm (a.k.a. Brendan Del-landrea, from Toronto); ChildrenFrom Overseas (same title, 1940) byDJ Dopey (a.k.a. Jon Ryan Santiago,from Mississauga); Action Stations(same title, 1943) by Lowfish (a.k.a.Gregory de Rocher, from Toronto);The New North (same title, 1946)by Hellothisisalex (Mark Prier andMelissa Creasy, from Toronto); andTrees That Reach the Sky (same title,1945) by Deadbeat (a.k.a. Scott Mon-teith, from Montreal).

Turning to the other set, the re-worked videos preserving the originalsoundtracks, I don’t have the techni-cal expertise to comment on the digi-tal editing. Altogether, the videospresent a veritable compendium ofeffects and styles. They are all worthchecking out. The dated(?) propa-ganda style of many of the films pro-vides a ripe target for postmodernintervention. Some of the videos areblatant in their irony, some are moresubtle, particularly that of MattBurke, who carefully manipulates thespeed/rhythm of the original (footageof Hitler) to alter our perceptionwithout being polemic (the narrationis pure anti-Nazi propaganda, com-menting on Hitler’s own propaganda).

The contributions to the reworkedvideos include: Amen (Terre de nosaïeux, 1943) by David Lemieux (Mon-treal); Inside the Atom (same title,1948) by Josh Raskin (Toronto);Power Valley (same title, 1946) byShawn Chappelle (Vancouver); Vol-untaire (Les héros de l’Atlantique,1941) by Nadia Duguay (Montreal);Oil + Water (Battle for Oil, 1942) byCreatrix (a.k.a. Erin Lewis, Toronto);Postcard to an Unknown Soldier(Geopolitik: Hitler’s Plan for Empire,1946) by Wayne Jung (Edmonton); En-grenages (L’Abitibi, 1949) by Cinétik(a.k.a. Frédéric St-Hilaire, Montreal);Bonjour, Voisin (same title, 1949) byMartin Lalonde (Montreal); Luna-

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parc. Lunapar (Métropole, 1947) byChantal Durand (Montreal); WhenYou Address the Massess (The WarFor Men’s Minds, 1943) by MattBurke (Toronto).

-40 is an interesting project. Onehopes that more historical sourcematerial can be made available forremixing and reworking, from theNFB and elsewhere. The creative his-torical dialogue that results can bevaluable and provocative.

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softVNS 2.0 is listed for US$ 350.Current versions are softVNS 2.19dfor Mac OS X, and softVNS 2.17 forMacintosh OS 9. Contact DavidRokeby; electronic maildrokeby@sympatico.ca; Webhomepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/softVNS.html.

Reviewed by Margaret SchedelSan Francisco, California USA

David Rokeby developed the VeryNervous System in 1986 as an instal-lation that enabled a computer totrigger sound and music in responseto the movement of human bodies.His computer was not fast enough toanalyze streaming video data so hecreated a rudimentary camera out of64 light sensors and a plastic lens.Using the Very Nervous System withits dedicated external digitizers tocapture, convert, and extract motioninformation from live video, he hascreated installations for over a decade,adding hardware and software mod-ules as needed. Since 1993 Mr.Rokeby has sold his technology as

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The tracking algorithms in soft-VNS 2 are unbelievable. I’m suregiven enough time I could build simi-lar patches in Jitter, but Mr. Rokebyhas had 20 years of experience track-ing movement and it shows. A keycomponent in classic softVNS mo-tion tracking is used in v.motion,which is implemented by subtractingthe current frame from the previousone—the differences are generallycaused by movement in the image.There are many other tracking algo-rithms: v.edges shows the edges ofmovement; v.heads tracks multipleobjects at once; v.track follows aspecified small object; v.bounds

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draws a rectangle around the bordersof the object and gives its center (seeFigure 1); and v.centroid gives thecenter of gravity of an object. It is fas-cinating to compare the center of anobject as measured by its boundariesand its center of gravity. Togetherwith objects that massage the incom-ing video stream to make it easier totrack, these following objects are thestrongest reason to purchase softVSN2 if you already own Jitter.

The other half of softVNS allowsvideo playback and manipulation. Inhis own installations, Mr. Rokebyhas always had video and sound re-acting to body movement, and he de-veloped softVNS before Jitter andNato were available. Working withvideo artist Charlie Woodman, I cre-ated a patch that tracks the move-ment of a dancer who controls over60 parameters of the sound and 10 pa-rameters of the video. Previously, Ihad created video patches for Mr.Woodman with Jitter, but he wasmore than happy with the video “ef-fects” in softVNS 2. Although wedidn’t have to use the v.jit object, itworks perfectly.

Getting started with softVNS 2is pretty easy; there is no tutorialper se but there is a patch calledsoftVNS_2_Overview that introducesthe softVNS 2 objects and allows easyaccess to example/help patches foreach object. The objects are dividedaccording to type including sources/capture/display, spatial transforma-tion, and tracking/analysis. I found itmuch more useful to simply workmy way down the help files in alpha-betical order. It may sound absurd,but there are only 183 objects; manyof them are minor variations of eachother such as the arithmetic opera-tors or QuickTime effects objects.The help files are extensive and showsome of Mr. Rokeby’s coding tricks tomake the tracking objects work theirbest; my only complaint is that some

of these files use bpatchers, making ita little less convenient to pirate sec-tions for personal use.

Mr. Rokeby has been using softVNSin interactive video installations overthe past two years. Some of these arepermanent exhibits that have beenrunning all day every day for well

over a year without downtime. Whilemy own experience with softVNS hasbeen more performance oriented, Ihaven’t experienced any problemswith it crashing. There was a notice-able slowing down of processingwhen using several of the trackingobjects at once on my 1.25-GHz

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Powerbook G4 with 1.5 GB of RAM.The computer could handle thetracking, but as soon as I added 60streams of MIDI messages things gotugly. The CPU load for the trackingobjects is very high, but it is defi-nitely worth it.

softVNS 2 is coded for the Macin-tosh G4 velocity engine, and will notrun on any earlier hardware. It in-cludes extensive support for iSight,enabling users to easily turn off theauto-focus and auto-exposure, neces-sary for accurate video tracking. Italso includes intuitive controls formy interface of choice, the ImagingSource DFG-1394-1 video-to-firewireconverter which streams uncom-pressed video directly into the com-puter from any composite or s-videosource.

Motion tracking has become morecommon since the 1980s, but thisquote from Mr. Rokeby’s Web site isa striking description of the artisticimpetus behind the development ofhis system:

Because the computer is purelylogical, the language of interac-tion should strive to be intu-itive. Because the computerremoves you from your body,the body should be strongly en-gaged. Because the computer’sactivity takes place on the tinyplaying fields of integrated cir-cuits, the encounter with thecomputer should take place in ahuman-scaled physical space.

The developer deliberately set out tooppose his art to the accepted belief ofwhat computers are good at, continu-ing a contrarian streak that started atthe Ontario College of Art. He haspursued his dream, creating amaz-ingly powerful tracking software—thankfully he has turned it into anaffordable and well-documentedproduct for all artists to use.

Figure 1. User interface forv.bounds tracking objectin softVNS 2.