Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

It started out as a normal Saturday. I got into work, checked my email, and handled some business. At five o’clock, however, instead of heading to the nearby over-priced cafeteria, I met up with my comrad Michael Capio, and we made our way six blocks south to a free performance of the complete organ works of György Ligeti.

We entered Sant Thomas Church to find the pews full of an audience eagerly awaiting sermon. After seating ourselves towards the front, the organist, John Scott, LVO, stepped outs spoke briefly of his pleasure being here today, before walking down the aisle, holding a score, which appeared as one elongated black trapezoid, covering a good octave below and above bass and treble cleffs, with a number of instructions on the parameter. People laughed, and he smiled back, flipping to a later page, that he described as his “favorite.” A thick wavering line indicated an upward / downward motion in pitch, without being too specific on the exact notes.

This was the score to “Volumina,” a piece that begins with all the keys on the manual pressed down and all of the stops pulled out. The score instructs the organ to be switched on after the initial gesture, resulting in a dense wall of color, that eventually swirls like a tornado. Similary, the piece ends with the organ being switched off, while a single decaying high note remains. When “Volumia” was premiered by Karl-Erik Welin at the Götenberg Cathedral, Bremen Germany in 1962, the electrical circuits were overloaded from playing too many pipes played at once. Onlookers experienced the smell of burning rubber, which resulted from the insulating layer of eletrical wires melting! Thanks to modern electronics, this was not the case on Saturday.

When you think of church organ music perhaps a certain sound comes to mind–steady patterns of major and minor chords resolving in cadence whenever possible. These pieces were far from that. They were so far out, that I didn’t even think ot taking communion–not that it was an option. The performance begin a the complete organ works of Jonathan Harvey; a preparation for what was to come. The first Ligeti composition was “Ricercare: Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi” (1953); very chromatic, ominous, and hinting at twelve-tone music, which was banned by the Communist regime in Budapest at the time of its conception. This was followed by two Etudes, “Harmonies” (1967), noted for the fluctuating pitch of half-drawn stops, an excerise in other-wordly intervalic relationships; and “Coulee,” a piece that Ligeti requested should be played as fast as possible, so that indivual notes were not recognized. Then finally, “Volumina” (1962). The cathedral resonating with the music of Ligeti, was transformed into a different space; it’s displaced rows of pipes transmitted tonal clusters that moved around the listener in an array of acoustic multichannel sound. Life-sized stone sculptures of Christ and his disciples looking on with a strange approval. At times the sound could be so high and thin, that it hung in the air like the hum of a street light or cicada. At other sections it bellowed to unison with a nearby passing subway, traveling out of the church like an exorcised demon.

Come out to hear the organ works of Iannis Xenakis, Milton Babbit and other twentieth century composers at Saint Thomas Church on February 11th. http://upcoming.org/event/142938/

Lawnboard is an interface comprised of 16 CTS Series 252 miniature joystick controllers with synthetic grass blades affixed to each; a total of 32 parameters along the X and Y axis. The user interacts with the device by waving their hand through the lawn, triggering small movements of the various joysticks, connected to an Arduino board, which in turn controls computer software.

My inspiration for Lawnboard arrived through my exposure to the joystick, and its function as a fluid 2D controller, as well as two projects at the 2006 ITP Winter Show, that involved patterns of growth and communication with plant life. Lawnboard uses a modeled plant structure as the sensory apparatus.

Specs on CTS Series 252.

Josh Knowles “The Botanical Garden.”

Robert Faludi, Kate Hartman, Kati London, Rebecca Bray “Botanicalls.”

Peter Gabriel has been a huge influence on my musical approach. Countless melodies featured in my poppier track are subconscious variations of his awesome hooks. I decided to put the track up after a scenic train ride through the English countryside, closer than ever to his own Realworld Studios.

This track was made by cutting up samples from “Big Time” and triggering them via soft sampler. The video is a screen capture of a piano roll style MIDI sequence that triggers the elements heard in the track. Color processing and perspective adjustments are added to enhance the presentation.

In the future I’m envisioning a project where MIDI data from a session in Logic or Protools is passed into Max/MSP Jitter via Rewire and processed visually onto live images or vector graphics.

View video here.

Cory Arcangel is an Artist whose work, among other things, involves hacking and reappropriating video games such as “Super Mario Brothers.” He is also responsible for “8 bit Contruction Kit,” a vinyl disc that contains lofi samples for DJs, and even an entire program, which can be recorded into the Commodore 64 computer. I will be assisting Cory this semester with projects at the Eyebeam Gallery.

www.beigerecords.com/cory/
www.columbia.edu/itc/soa/dmc/cory_arcangel/
http://www.eyebeam.org/