SoCal Exchange Concert 

for Eliane Radigue who taught me the different ways to listen

burial arbor is a continuation on a conceptual line of thought first developed by Paul Klee as "Andacht zum Kleinen" (a devotion to small things). From the study of the miniscule, the slightest detail, the smallest manifestation of form within the every day landscape/soundscape, it is possible to understand (in Klee's words) the "magnitude of natural order." Thus, from a study of minutiae and its interrelationships, one can deduce the unseen outlines of complex forms.

All of the sonic textures contained within the work were excavated from a single source recording of a duration just under 3 seconds. This material was dissected into micro-fragments and then recombined using various analogue and digital techniques, ranging from 1/4in. tape manipulations to custom-authored programs written in SuperCollider. This arborescent collection of relations tracing outward from the original source recording form the databank of material, which has been the basis for all of my audio works since 1998.

The strategic fiction used to produce the structural relations in the work, is the erosion of form. Worn organic connections, self withering mechanisms, leaking detritual pools of acoustic ecosystems, weathered maps, the delicate stuttered buzz and click of insects left vibrating within glass slides, dendirfomic sub-terrain tendrils, and infected water tables.

Special thanks are due to Marcella Faustini, Stefanie L. Ku, Curtis Roads and Ioannis Zannos, for their (sometimes inadvertent) advice and encouragement.

Brian O'Reilly is an intermedia artist working with video, sound installation, kinetic sculpture, assemblage books, and electroacoustic composition. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a merit scholarship for sculpture, where he completed a BFA in 1997.

In 1998, he moved to Paris to study composition, and work with the UPIC system of Iannis Xenakis' at Les Ateliers UPIC, becoming the renamed studio's (now the Centre de Criation Musicale Iannis Xenakis) musical assistant in 1999.

He has worked as double bassist, sound projectionist, video accompanist, and music assistant to wide array of individuals some of which include Alain Bancquart, Douglas Ewart, Luc Ferrari, Nicholas Isherwood, Joelle Liandre, Eilane Radigue, Hal Rammel, Curtis Roads, Carol Robinson, and Kasper T. Toeplitz. Currently he is a graduate student and lectures on digital video, in the Media Arts and Technology program at the University of California Santa Barbara.

The ambient soundscape of this piece is based on a patch I used for an installation, Joseph's Dream, which was exhibited in Los Angeles earlier. Based on additive synthesis, a number of oscillators are assigned to each of the four speakers, and generate instances of sine waves at randomly chosen harmonics of a changing fundamental. Because of factors involving phase angles and psychoacoustics, the actual characteristics of the resultant sound (i.e. which harmonics one hears) depends partly on the physical location of the listener. The parameters of this soundscape are randomly generated within the limit set by the time dependent function, which can be regarded as the "score" for this composition. In addition, there is live processing of the audio signal from a single microphone, which allows for a live improvisation to contribute to the soundscape. As the title suggests, this piece uses no samples, and aims to create the soundscape of a ____ dream (fill in the adjective of your choice).

Originally born in Tokyo, Japan, Masahiko Sunami has lived in the United States for the last 13 years. His musical background as a performer covers wide-range of musical cultures, including Western Classical, Jazz, Japanese, West African, and North Indian. As a composer, he is interested in an integration of computational processes with natural and improvisational processes to create extraordinary soundscape. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Music from Brown University and currently studies Composition New Media at California Institute of the Arts.

http://shoko.calarts.edu/~bigmas

In Insta-pene-playtion the expressive, human sound of a single flute is reproduced multiple times and fractured by computer processing to create a complex polyphonic texture. The sound of the solo flute evokes a sense of solitude, the multiplicity of flute sounds evokes a sense of community and improvisation, and the insistent regularity of the computer processing evokes the interaction between humanity and technology.

The piece was produced with a computer processing technique devised by the composer, using the MSP programming environment. The technique involves using moving "windows" of different sizes to reveal different portions of the flute sound. The windows move through the flute sound, but may progress at a rate slower or faster than "real time", and the sound within the window may be played slower or faster than originally recorded. The effects achievable with this technique include comb filtering, echo, and time compression/expansion. Each effect displays a different aspect of the sound material of the flute. The source music is sixteen four-second phrases written by Christopher Dobrian and performed by flutist James Newton.

Christopher Dobrian is Associate Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine. He is the director of the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio and the Realtime Experimental Audio Laboratory (REALab), and is producer/director of the Gassmann Electronic Music Series. Previously he was acting director of the iEAR Studios and the graduate MFA program at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and executive producer of the Electronic Arts Performance Series. He holds a Ph.D. in Composition from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied composition with Joji Yuasa, Robert Erickson, Morton Feldman, and Bernard Rands, and computer music with F. Richard Moore and George Lewis. He is vice president of the Electronic Music Foundation, a non-profit organization for the preservation and distribution of electronic music, and is the author of the original technical documentation and tutorials for the Max and MSP programming environments by Cycling '74. His work in computer music focuses on the development of "artificially intelligent" interactive systems for composition, improvisation, and cognition.

Scattering of names like Achilles, Braiseis or Chryseis can only come from the old world. The probability of selecting such a name while in Ibero America might well be very odd. This is like choosing characters for a play or a novel, a login name for haut mail, a password or perhaps a new weather phenomenon in the Caribbean. Nevertheless this name sounds like two syllables barely pitched if whispered but very flexible if shout. Achilles, Braiseis or Chryseis are expressive while sung in bossa nova or at la cosa nostra.

This is yet another composition for systems which mimic the vibrational properties of a musical sound. In this case Scanned Synthesis developed by Bill Verplank and Max Mathews at CCRMA during the last years of the past century, was used as the underlying material. The process for achieving this timbre was solved by scanning and manipulating several types of springs which give different and time mutant spectra. Control is achieved by mathematical modeling the haptics of the spring.

Scanned Synthesis is based on the psychoacoustics of how we hear and appreciate timbres and on our motor (haptic) abilities to manipulate timbres during performance. It involves a slow dynamic system whose frequencies of vibration are below 15Hz. The system is directly manipulated by motions of the performer. The vibrations of the system are a function of the initial conditions, the forces applied by the performer and the dynamics of the system.

This piece was composed using the Common Lisp Music and Common Music environments on Linux at CCRMA.

Born in Barranquilla Colombia, Juan Reyes holds degrees in Mathematics and Music Composition. Since 1989 he has co-organized the International Contemporary Music Festival and periodic electro-acoustic cycles in Bogota. He was also professor of art, music and a research associate at La Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota. Currently at CCRMA, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics of Stanford University, his research topics include physical modeling, and spectral modeling of musical instruments, algorithmic composition and their use for expression modeling. Among his works are Equus and Resonancias, a collection of computer music works for the stage and also several compositions based upon instrumental sound subjects like Boca de Barra, for trombone, and Sygfrydo for cello. In the context of sound installations his works ppP and Los Vientos de Los Santos Apostoles have been presented in museums and galleries of Colombia. His writings have appeared on severa international publications and his music has been performed around the world as part of contemporary music radio broadcasts and festivals.

"Suppose I wanted to replace all the words of my language at once by other ones; how could I tell the place where one of the new words belongs?" --Ludwig Wittgenstein

Cristyn Magnus was born in San Diego in 1975. While pursuing her bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science, she devoted most of her energy to DJing a weekly radio show, producing and directing a simul-cast TV/radio program promoting local bands, running a small all-ages concert venue with several other students, and managing the student-run radio and TV stations. When she realized that this was sucking the life out of her, she turned to computer music to get her music fix. It's not clear that this has solved the problem-- but that's another issue. She is currently enrolled in the computer music graduate program at UCSD.

Christopher Williams is a freelance composer, contrabassist, and teacher residing in San Diego, where he studies at UCSD with Chaya Czernowin and Bertram Turetzky. He has performed with La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music, is currently thinking and writing about the music of Benjamin Carson, and will have his "Gnot" premiered by the Hutchins Consort in the fall of 2002.

Sometimes when two people are very close, it becomes difficult to attribute the source of an idea to one person or the other. This piece was spawned from our collective consciousness, so to speak. In spite of what may be seen as light subject matter on the surface, we feel it raises some interesting questions.

Michael Gurevich. Born in Winnipeg, Canada. Endured 21 frigid winters, 4 while in Montreal completing a B. Mus in Music Technology at McGill University. 23, 5'8" brn/brn, likes scuba diving, ice hockey, long moonlit walks on the beach, and interactive performance.

Lindsay Manning is a 2001 graduate of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. Her focus was on sound in media, with interests in electroacoustics, acoustic ecology, gender and music, and linguistics. Her time has recently been spent memorizing GRE vocabulary and learning the quixotic ropes of sound editing for feature films, with her first credit in Lasse Hallstrvm's The Shipping News.

Imagine a spherical object, floating in mid air. Like an orange dripping with juice and pulsating with life. The orange is not only a visually pleasing object in the mind's eye, but really an embodiment of sound. A massive amount of noise is compacted into the orange. Like countless pulsating particles with a life their own, they fight, push, and repel one another, but at the same time they thrive to stay together, as though awaiting an orderly dispersal... but, from what? And to what?!

The gigantic orange of a sound starts to peel, but not in a way any ordinary orange would usually peel. It is more like an apple being shaved of its skin; a perfect, non-stopping loop that seems to unwind endlessly. The peeling strip begins to emanate sound. Or rather, the sound is the strip itself.

The strip of sound unwinds itself around the space it occupies, soon enough the space and those that are within the space will be encircled in a spiral of sound. The loop continues to unwrap and morph as the orange is stripped down to its bubbling, lava-like core. By this time it becomes impossible to distinguish whether the sound is around or among. Everything will melt into everything else while bathing in the bubbling juice of the fluorescent orange core.

As a member of the Media Arts & Technology Department at UC Santa Barbara, sound composer Stefanie L. Ku (b. 1977) has been writing extensively for the electronic and new music medium.

The PowerBook duo Tog, http://www.tognet.org/, (Roddy Schrock and Robert Duckworth) has concertized extensively in Japan, America, and Europe. Tog's fellow performers and collaborators are legion, and have included Mark Applebaum, Bevin Blectum, Kazumoto Endo, Fred Frith, Brent Gutzeit, Toshimaru Nakamura, Chris Penrose, Atau Tanaka, Otomo Yoshihide. Tog will be touring Japan in support of a new album in December 2002.

New media artist Robert Duckworth (b. 1974) is currently pursuing a master of arts degree in composition new media under mark trayle at the California Institute of the Arts. He has studied at various seminars, workshops, and symposia around the world with such figures as Pierre Boulez, Julio Estrada, Gerard Pape, Curtis Roads, Karlheinz Stockhausen. His research has led him to live in Tokyo for two years as a special training composer for the Japanese agency for cultural affairs. Under his mentor Takehito Shimazu, Duckworth researched the Japanese contemporary music scene. Future plans include a research orientation invitation to STEIM this summer. After graduation, Duckworth will return to Japan in order to pursue language studies at Keio University and computer music-related activities at IAMAS.

Roddy Schrock (b. 1976) makes acoustic and electronic music, rarely combining the two. His primary focuses in college were sociology and music composition, which he studied with Mark Applebaum. In addition, he has studied with Yuji Takahashi, Christian Wolff, Fred Frith, among others, both independently and at symposia. Due to a combination of chance and circumstance, he relocated to Tokyo in 1999 and founded (with Robert Duckworth) the new media/sampling duo Tog. Most recently, his work entitled Porridge! Feed muted collider tangos circumlocuting the raizer maide., a collaboration with video artist Rasmus Joergensen, was premiered in London. Roddy is currently pursuing a Master of Arts degree in music composition at Mills College in northern California.

Fei-Tian is the music to a work by dancer/choreographer Chung-Fu Chang. Fei-Tian literally means gliding. The choreography was inspired by a painting in the cave of Tunhwang, which is located along the Silk Road and dates from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A. D.) When businessmen and other travelers went on trade along the Silk Road to the West, they would often hire artisans to paint or sculpt a variety of Buddha and other ancient Chinese deities for good luck in trading and a safe return to China.

Musically, the piece is composed of slowly shifting harmonies through which acoustic and synthetic instruments make various interjections. This reflects the nature of the choreography, and more conceptually, the notion that time unfolds slowly and continuously, but within which our short lives are bound.

Ben Israel graduated from UCI in '97 with a B.M in Guitar Performance and in '99 with an M.F.A in Composition. While at UCI he wrote a number of pieces for Dance and Drama Department student productions in addition to various absolute music compositions. In 2000 he wrote the score to a full-length Dance/Theatre production of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, directed by Annie Loui. A shortened form of Alice was accepted to, and attended the 2000 Monaco Danses Dances Forum in Monaco. Presently, Ben works in the Digital Contents Design Center at Yamaha in Buena Park California.

Untitled I (1999) takes as a starting point a form of music-making involving the use of consumer electronic devices such as turntables, tape recorders, synthesizers, etc. The composer uses the flaws of these devices and, where possible, seeks to induce in them malfunctions of various sorts. In Untitled, this idea is extended to the digital domain. Not only do defective analogue devices provide source materials, but they inspire the application of a similar concept to digital technology. DSP software is pushed beyond its intended use to provide a rich wellspring of digital artifacts. The idea of the defect, the artifact, or the by-product serving as the subject for yet further processing--and hence, the creation of even further removed by-products--is the focal point of the work. Formally, the work is concerned with an abstract, vaguely articulated periodicity. The formal period is a series of processes and transformations to which the materials are subjected. The main signposts to the listener in this cycle are the recurrence of chorale-like 'pitchy' material (which introduces a cycle) and of a baldly iterative motoric passage (which ends a cycle). The polarity expressed by these signposts suggests one of the subjects of the work's structural 'middle ground,' namely the Stockhausian notion of relatedness between sustained materials and iterative materials and the fact that the two can be made to approach one another through changes of rate or the application of modulatory processes. Against this idea, a second dialectic is played out, in which sine-based materials alternate with noise-based materials and certain points in the formal period call for them to impart qualities to one another. The entire formal period is heard three times, each shorter than the last. The work ends at the start of what may be a substantially malformed fourth cycle. The ending is significant in that its behavior encompasses both a timbral stasis and a form of iteractivity, suggesting an uneasy resolution of one of the work's dialectics.

Chris Mercer received a B.M. in Composition from the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1995, where he was repeatedly awarded the composition department's Gianini Scholarship. Since 1995, he has pursued graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego, receiving his M.A. in Composition in 1997. He is currently finishing the Ph.D., studying instrumental music with Chaya Czernowin and electronic music with Roger Reynolds and Peter Otto. Since 1997, his work has focused on multi-channel tape music, making extensive use of experimental spatialization software by Peter Otto. In 2000, he was Artist-In-Residence at Sound Traffic Control in San Francisco, working with that facility's 12-ch playback system; he was also a participant in June In Buffalo, where his Untitled for 6-channel tape was performed. In 2001, he received the UCSD SONOR commission.