Boring Like A Drill. A Blog.

I met Tony Buck with a flashing red bike light stuck in my mouth outside the old Brisbane Museum.

2010-02-08T19:05:49Z

I met Tony Buck with a flashing red bike light stuck in my mouth outside the old Brisbane Museum (download, 23′24″, 23.43 MB, mp3)

Having set a neat little process in operation, I repeatedly find myself in the dilemma of whether or not to then break it in some way. It’s not a question of worrying about being ‘composerly’ enough, and I still find that there’s a lot to be said for letting the process do its work without further human intervention. In fact, it’s this disinclination to interfere that makes me wonder if I ought to do something to disrupt it. The question becomes one of how sounds can be heard when they become alienated from the system that produced them.

In November 2003 I wrote some simple scripts in a MIDI editor to generate a sequence of the most common cadences in Western harmony, each one continuing from where the last left off. Eventually, the sequence went through the entire circle of fifths, with every note in the octave being used as the tonic for every cadence. Rather than have this cycle repeat itself as infinitum, I made a retrograde inversion of the entire sequence, sending the whole thing back to where it started (despite it having gotten there already), only upside down.

I met Tony Buck with a flashing red bike light stuck in my mouth outside the old Brisbane Museum is performed on an organ which is very slowly going out of tune, with the higher notes gradually sliding down a semitone during the course of the piece, while the lower notes gradually slide up a semitone. To complement the sense of entropy, I patched in the cheap, nasty soundcard built into my computer and amplified the line noise (continued.)

Filler By Proxy LXXVII: The Turner Prize and the Super Bowl

2010-02-04T22:57:09Z

I care even less about gridiron than I do about any other type of football, and I would have happily ignored that Super Bowl match the Americans are having on Sunday until this popped up at Modern Art Notes. Museum directors in the home towns of the two rival teams are betting their art on the result, and the stakes keep getting higher.

On Monday, Indianapolis Museum of Art director Max Anderson proposed wagering an IMA loan of an Ingrid Calame painting to the New Orleans Museum of Art, should the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts.

That was a nice choice… but apparently Anderson wasn’t too worried about having to pay off the bet: “We’re already spackling the wall where the NOMA loan will hang,” he tweeted.

Over the past few days, the two directors have been locked in a cycle of calling and raising their bets, with plenty of trash talk about each other’s teams, cities, and taste in art. The full coverage is here.

Please Mister Please

2010-02-02T22:36:01Z

Harry Partch, “The Dreamer That Remains” (1971). Harry Partch, Mark Hoffman, Danlee Mitchell, Jon Szanto, ensemble and chorus conducted by Jack Logan.
(10′17″, 18.97 MB, mp3)

Back in the rut. Lessons learned etc.

2010-02-02T22:15:13Z

Hopefully there’ll soon be some photos or videos to show from the gig last week. It was a fine evening, all round. Here’s a few things I learned from the experience, in roughly chronological order:

On Windows XP: System Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, Disable Wireless Network Adapter. Nothing else seems to kill the bugger.
How to make and edit a video on my laptop, sort of. (”Do you have a video to go with your piece?” Sure!)
Always check that you haven’t been unplugged from the PA before you start playing.
Switch off your phone before playing with audio technology.
Even if the phone miraculously refrains from interfering with the audio signal, nothing can prevent you from unexpectedly receiving a text from Australia halfway through playing your piece.

Gig tomorrow + World Class Anxiety (Slight Return)

2010-01-27T22:53:25Z

No updates the last few days ’cause I’ve been busy preparing for tomorrow night’s gig. Also, I’ve been gradually upgrading all of the main website to the new design, in the hope that it, too, may soon be a World Class Facility like this bucket in Melbourne:

UK première: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta)

2010-01-23T18:21:59Z

I finally get off my bum and play some music in London. After wowing audiences in Melbourne, Paris, and Hobart, String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) finally gets a live performance locally.

It’s part of Music Orbit’s Vibe Bar series, this Thursday, 28 January*, 7.30pm at the Vibe Bar in The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL. £7 on the door. The rest of the night includes performances by other string instruments, both real and imaginary, films, and more, probably. If you want to catch my act you better get there early.

* Yeah, I know it’s short notice. I just found out myself.

Filler By Proxy LXXVI: Poème Electronique

2010-01-19T00:04:19Z

Jodru at ANABlog went to see the virtual recreation of the Philips Pavilion from the 1958 Brussels World Fair, and has posted a fascinating summary of little-known aspects of the project.

The design of the pavilion, which housed a presentation of Edgar Varèse’s tape composition Poème Electronique, was attributed to Le Corbusier at the time. The title was in fact Le Corbusier’s idea: “I shall not create a pavilion, but a poème électronique. Everything will happen inside: sound, light, color, rhythm…” He then got Iannis Xenakis, his assistant, to design it for him.

At ANABlog you can see a photograph of the World Fair site, showing the size of the Philips Pavilion, compared to those of the USA and the USSR, along with surprising photographs of the pavilion other than the iconic image on the left. There are also more details about how Varèse tried to exploit the acoustic properties of the pavilion’s interior to the fullest, creating an immersive, spatialised sonic experience (and nixed Le Corbusier’s plans to lecture the audience over the top of his music.)

Plenty more goodies at the Virtual Electronic Poem site, including a Dutch documentary made at the time of the pavilion’s construction, and photographs of the other pavilions at the fair. There’s a lot of retro-futuristic architecture, but there are also the names: Atomium, the USSR, the Tobacco Pavilion, Kodak, Pan Am. Watch the film, and see the world in which the pavilion was built, and the fact that this all happened over a half a century ago really hits home. This temple to modernity was planned by hat-wearing men, built by workmen driving creaky lorries and spraying asbestos like it was whipped cream. It’s a future that never happened, but it’s amazing that it got as far as it did.

A Slow Start

2010-01-20T14:02:39Z

I’m still more interested in redeigning the website than in posting any new content at the moment. I’ve finished updating the categories in the sidebar, thus rendering the old subject index obsolete. The index of names is still there, still out of date. New content soon, with the rest of the website looking ~~better~~different.

“…since they are dead are ghosts and as such inhabit the same world we do.” — John Cage

2010-01-20T14:04:05Z

Please Mister Please

2010-01-09T15:12:27Z

Henry Brant, “The Fourth Millennium” (1963). American Brass Quintet.
(9′16″, 12.44 MB, mp3)