Observatory / Lisa Joy is a generative audiovisual installation created by two multidisciplinary artists, Barbara Held (USA/Spain) and Benton C Bainbridge (USA). It is currently on view as part of “Escuchar con los ojos. Arte sonoro en España, 1961-2016”, a group exhibition of Spanish Sound Art from the past half century at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid. Tones and flute from Held’s software system (coding by Ariadna Alsina) are used as control voltages to shape sinuous lines from Bainbridge’s modified videogame console.
Observatory, a sonification of helioseismological measurements, translates numeric data into another numeric structure: the overtone series of a sampled flute note, filtered and reinforced in the rhythm of the sound waves produced by solar oscillations. Like an oscillation between a microscope and a telescope, Held varies the intensity of harmonics (the building blocks of sound) to highlight the rich deep abstraction of pure tone and the immediacy of the breath, while Bainbridge’s system divides the sound into component frequencies which are visualized onto the display, creating calligraphic patterns from the same electronic signals. Observatory was first created for Bioderivas, Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Tenerife. (Data thanks to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, audio software created by Ariadna Alsina).
Benton C Bainbridge’s Lisa Joy generates electronic drawings with an analog video synthesizer and a modified video game console. Bainbridge assembled a set of unique Eurorack modules into a custom system to create the abstract moving paintings. The lissajous patterns emerge from the relationship of 3 signals which guide the electron gun from left to right, top to bottom, and up and down in brightness. The shapes vary as the 3 waves dance in relationship to each other and the sound frequencies.
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An improvised performance for a specific space that activates an evolving 4 channel sound installation. The flute tunes around a very soft high-pitched drone that seems to change location depending on the room’s acoustics.
Una performance improvvisata che “collabora” con lo spazio acustico, trasformandosi in un’installazione sonora in evoluzione continua.
28 may – 6 june Reial Cercle Artistic de Barcelona
David Baker, José Manuel Berenguer, Blake Carrington, Melissa F. Clarke, Seth Cluett, Andrew Demirjian, Tom Chant, Brian Chase, David Galbraith, Richard Garet, Lorenzo Gattorna, Sandra Gibson-Luis Recoder, Wolfgang Gil, Andy Graydon, Jim Haynes, Barbara Held, Victoria Keddie, Kenneth Kirschner, LoVid, Katherine Liberovskaya, David Linton, Daniel Neumann, Phill Niblock, Yann Novak, Ursula Scherrer, Pinkcourtesyphone (Richard Chartier-Rob Parrish), Yapci Ramos, Phillip Stearns, Pilar Subirá, Fernando Velázquez, Byron Westbrook, Florian Wittenburg.
LOOP Barcelona 2015, The Real Circulo Artístico de Barcelona, Hangar, Eyebeam Sound Research Group, PHONOS (University Pompeu Fabra Barcelona) and the Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre de Tenerife present “Senses of Place”, a program of exhibitions and screenings of audiovisual work, installations and performance that respond to space.
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Exhibitions:
An Immanence of Nature | collective exhibition with the artists Richard Garet, Barbara Held y Yapci Ramos | 11.00h. – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Gallery Space
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In this exhibition artists make use of technology to capture and display images and sounds that re-contextualize how we perceive the world. Through close listening, focused sight and careful attention to perception, these artists have created a micro-environment that rewards active exploration and encourages thoughtful contemplation of how we understand the world around us through our senses of sight and sound.
Winter | sound installation by Richard Garet, 2008
11.00h. – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Blue Zone.
Winter is a surround 4.0 sonic construction focused on Winter as a subject. This interpretation was made from aural material recorded during December 2007 and March 2008 within the same 16-foot perimeter location in Astoria, Queens, NY.
Dark Before Dawn | video by Blake Carrington, sound from the album “Ulysses Syndrome” by Soundwalk Collective
11.00h. – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Hall
Reial Cercle Artístic LOOP2015
“Dark Before Dawn” explores the subjective choreography of sound and image, the feedback loop between the two that informs and shapes what we think we see and what we think we hear. It takes the viewer through a slowly shifting, minimal and foggy color space that follows the contours of the album “Ulysses Syndrome” by Soundwalk Collective. Commissioned by Soundwalk Collective for their album “Ulysses Syndrome”.
Acoustic Imaging the Hudson | video by Melissa F. Clarke
11.00h. – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Hall
Reial Cercle Artístic LOOP2015
Acoustic Imaging the Hudson shows a subsoil and underwater topography and past glacial movement; a particular profile of deep time and space history reaches the surface through sound signals and image data sent over. The installation shows the relationship between sound and image, water and sound, and with the sediments beneath.
Color Tones | sound installation by Wolfgang Gil
11.00h. – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Courtyard A site-specific, generative sound installation that produces its sonic content in response to the sounds occurring in the space in which the piece is installed. Comprised of slowly shifting tones and textures diffused over a multichannel sound system, the installation invites the audience to enter into a meditative dialog with the listening space. The piece is punctuated by periodic silences, during which the piece listens to the room and produces new content.
A project of the Sound Research Group at Eyebeam, New York
The Sound Research Group is a working group to focus on the what and why of sound art through critical discussion, collaborations, presentation of works in progress, and public events. For more information:http://research.eyebeam.org/sound
Recollections | video by Seth Cluett
11.00h. – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Courtyard A single, unedited, wide-angle shot of the edge of a forest, this video contains monaural audio of the sound of a person walking from the left to the right of the screen. The visual occlusion of the forest combined with audio whose close-mic’d detail provides no cues for locating the position of the walker. The viewer is forced to search, knowing that there must be a connection between hearing and sight, but is forced to rely on scanning the video carefully in search for alternative clues as to location of the sound source.
Screening:
Screening | program of audiovisual works. Curated by Richard Garet and Barbara Held.
11.00h – 21.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Sala Atlants
A program of audiovisual works from artists working with sound, expanded cinema and video, presenting works of David Baker-Florian Wittenburg, Blake Carrington, Melissa F. Clarke, Andrew Demirjian, David Galbraith, Lorenzo Gattorna, Sandra Gibson-Luis Recoder, Richard Garet, Andy Graydon-Kenneth Kirschner, Jim Haynes, Victoria Keddie, LoVid, Katherine Liberovskaya-Phill Niblock, David Linton, Yann Novak, Ursula Scherrer-Brian Chase, Pinkcourtesyphone, Phillip Stearns, Fernando Velazquez and Byron Westbrook.
Concert:
Concert | performance by Aetherart
4 june – 21.00h. – 22.00h | Reial Cercle Artistic – Courtyard
This performance is a collective exploration of architectural acoustics, the interactive environment of Wolfgang Gil’s installation and Seth Cluett’s score system that utilizes concepts from machine listening research to enable performers to take on the role of adaptive listeners with a score. A visualization of the scored-work in tandem with the sounds of the ambient environment will drive a thin wire with mirrors placed at acoustically significant points along it. A thin strip of a video projection will be reflected throughout the courtyard, modulated chaotically by the sum of the sounds in the space. Barbara Held, Tom Chant, Pilar Subirà, Jose Manuel Berenguer, Daniel Neumann, video by Yapci Ramos.
A project of the Sound Research Group at Eyebeam, New York
This is an introduction to the use of statistics for audio processing in real time.
The focus on sound composition is based on the definition of “sections” or states of a stochastic system, and “transitions” between sections, using a series of modules that I have created in Max/MSP, a graphic tool that permits logical computation of sound using visual objects.
New York-based Venezuelan sound artist and programmer Wolfgang Gil explores the interrelationship of sound, the listener, and the space of listening. In his experimental work, it is in the listener’s willingness to engage in a personal dialog with the sound and space that the work finds its purpose. He is director of Eyebeam’s Sound Research group, and since 2012, Gil, Richard Garet y Daniel Neumann direct the portable gallery/platform for sound installation work on Contour Editions.
http://wolfganggil.com/about/
Non-Representational Spatial Sound | workshop by Daniel Neumann
Hangar – June 2 & 3
This workshop is part of the investigation into the architectural space as strategies for exploring sound, sound material and its modulation by space and situation. The workshop will give a historical overview on the subject with some technical background and explore aesthetics and techniques for spatialization. Listening will be practiced as a phenomenological activity: the listener immersed in inner spaces / distance and continuity / sound as intersubjective space. The loudspeaker is an instrument, a resonating exciter, and the space is the resonator, like the wooden body of a violin.
Daniel Neumann is a sound artist based in Brooklyn, professional sound engineer with master’s degree in media art from the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. His main focus is the investigation of how sound interacts with space and how spaces can be shaped by sound. As curator, he directs the CT-Swam monthly series at Eyebeam, New York. He has presented work at Fridman Gallery, MoMA PS1, Pratt Institute, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, Sculpture Center New York, Eigen & Art Gallery Leipzig, Skolska28 Prague, Lothringer13 Munich and many more.
Many musicians, improvisers, composers, and sound artists were asked to record 7 minutes of sound-making using any method familiar and/or exciting to them. Suggestions, meant to be helpful (and to be taken, or not), included: recording in one pass, devising one’s own structure, imagining shared sonic space, and incorporating stillness or silence. The music could be improvised, composed, or created with any combination of methods that suited the artist.
In this installation, four recordings by four different contributing artists play simultaneously, each recording through its own speaker. The four sound files are chosen at random from all contributed files, forming impromptu quartets. Each quartet lasts for 7 minutes, with a 30-second pause before the next one begins.
The speakers are Baritone Hemisphere Speakers, which produce localized sound emanating from each speaker’s position and interact with a room’s natural acoustics. Each speaker is suspended from the ceiling at equal distance to one another, allowing installation-goers to traverse the space of the installation to experience different mixes of the quartets. The display shows which artists are currently being heard in each speaker.
The format of QUARTETS provides an avenue for participation for those engaged with sound-based art practices, some of whom perhaps do not have a performance practice, do not sell music objects, and/or cannot physically be present at the OPENSIGNAL festival (May 2014), for which this piece was created. The installation denies the power structures common to music performance (such as headliners, openers) by giving everyone’s contributions the same weight and equal footing in a unique setting. Additionally, it provides a platform upon which four artists, who might not know one another, may perform together. The result is a series of incredibly compelling surprises from the chance-determined quartets, as their sounds share time together.
There are 86 artists featured in this installation, allowing for a total of 2,123,555 possible quartets. Listening to all possible combinations would require 30 years and nearly 4 months.
QUARTETS is a sound installation by Stephan Moore in collaboration with OPENSIGNAL. First showing at the inaugural OPENSIGNAL Festival on May 16-17th, 2014 at the Granoff Center. Created to celebrate the Spring 2014 OPENSIGNAL project at Brown University, led by Asha Tamirisa and Caroline Park.
CONTOUREDITIONS is pleased to present another installment dedicated to multi-channel sound installations, this time featuring two works – by Barbara Held and Kenneth Kirschner. Both pieces aim directly to the intersections of focused listening, experience, material, and space transforming the temporal make up of reception, and the perception of where the work is being presented. The listening situation is considered to be an integral part to the pieces, which is the general idea behind ContourEditions Installation. The label is committed to serve the pieces by ensuring adequate conditions for listening, care for the situation, attention to scale and space, its characteristics, layout, context (surroundings, conceptual framework), chosen equipment, and visitors flow. The programming of the label focuses on sound works that are consequences of a process, in which both content and format are equally relevant and conceptually intertwined. Topics of interest are sound phenomenology (perception, localization, physicality), sonic semantics (identity, meaning, context, structure) and topology (a broader study of spatial phenomena). ContourEditions Installation favors pieces that don’t compromise technically or aesthetically.
software development, Ariadna Alsina and Wolfgang Gil
“Observatory“ was originally made as part of a sound design project for the consortium of museums in Tenerife, Canary Islands. Using data obtained from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, it translates one natural phenomena into another by using the rhythm of wave motion on the sun to filter and artificially reinforce the intensity of frequencies of the upper partials of a flute sound. This is similar to the performance practice of instrumentalists who shape the timbre of a musical sound by changing air pressure with the lips, or the pressure of the bow on a string. The piece was first presented in “BioDervias” at the Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Tenerife with Yapci Ramos and Richard Garet.
Video: Yapci Ramos
Flute: Barbara Held
Media: 2 Digital Video HD
Duration: Indeterminate
pared left 3´49´´ / pared right 3´35´´
Year: 2014
Fuerteventura
Ed 3 + A/P
Video Editor: Adolf Alcañiz
Sound Mastering: Ferran Conangla
Created for La Isla Imaginada II, Centro de Arte Juan Ismael, Fuerteventura in 2014, the island was imagined by capturing an image of one concrete point in the landscape of the island. Like the wall of volcanic rock that once separated the island of Fuerteventura into two Guanche (the ancient natives of the Canary Islands) kingdoms, “la pared”, these videos picture two sides of an imaginary line, one to the right and one to the left. The soundtrack was composed to be heard on headphones only. The sound was recorded in close proximity to a stereo microphone, with the flutist moving from one side to the other. The listener will experience the sound intimately, as it moves just behind and on either side of his or her head.
Directional pattern, Neumann microphone
La Isla Imaginada II, Centro de Arte Juan Ismael, Abr 10, 2014, Fuerteventura – LOOP#14, Barcelona
2 Monitors mounted horizontally as one piece / diptych
2 Digital Media Players Loop system
closed stereo headphones mounted at the midpoint of the two monitors, with cable long enough to be able to see both monitors at once
Observatory Movement II, generative sound installation by Barbara Held software created by Ariadna Alsina
The roots of the natural sciences lie in the fertile soil of discovery and an embrace of the unknown. At their core, the sciences mediate the surprising mysteries and mundane realities of the world around us. Through careful observation, we collect, catalog, and translate from geographic region to socio-cultural region, from ecosphere to biosphere, crossing boundaries of language and discipline to arrive at an understanding of the complexities of the environment. BioDerivas presents the work of three artists, Richard Garet (USA/Uruguay), Barbara Held (Spain/USA), and Yapci Ramos (Spain). The core activities of these artists has a strong resonance with the mission of the museum; by observing the world around us, they use technology to collect and present images and sounds that re-contextualize how we perceive the world. Through close-listening, focused sight, and careful attention to perception Garet, Held, and Ramos have created a micro-environment in the museum that rewards active exploration and encourages thoughtful contemplation of how we understand the world around us through our senses of sight and sound.
These pieces present a continuum between the environment we inhabit and the mechanism through which make sense of it. The work of Yapci Ramos shown here is forceful in its subtle simplicity. In Bruma, her soft, stark images of pino canario printed on cotton paper are juxtaposed against their slowly moving video counterparts on the opposite wall. The moment captured by each is deeply engaged with its site, drawing on the tension between the viewer’s memory of similar locations and the limits of perception.
These works were developed in collaboration with the composer, performer, and sound artist Barbara Held. Her focused and unfaltering audio work occupying half of the space both emphasizes the stillness of these works and draws attention to their movement. In, Observatory, Ramos and Held create an evolving immersion that highlights the sublime quality of flora. The up-facing camera, the smooth, faster than walking pace, and the steady careful development of Held’s sound work sonifying the gases of the sun creates an other-worldly distance from which to contemplate the source material. Held’s headphone sound work Bucio on the other hand has a documentary approach, employing the conch shell to investigate the manner in which the pre-Hispanic Guanches communicated across the terrain of the islands through sound.
In contrast Richard Garet’s work explores concepts of transformation and translation between audio and visual information in its raw form. The silent vertical video works were developed using computer algorithms that took sound as an input and after generating the video the sound was taken away, creating a visual image that mirrors sound in its manner of movement. In the two audiovisual works, Garet explores the relationship between a desirable signal and an undesirable noise. Esion – Nothing is Something uses computer processes to degrade image and sound creating a form of data erosion while IP, Iota Expansion Varation I builds up from a simple black and white frame that results in almost planetary imagery suggesting the emptiness of space.
The common link between the earliest Cabinets of Curiosities of the renaissance, the natural history museums of the 17th century, and the modern centers of discovery common today is the thoughtful display of objects that implore the public to appreciate the experience of the new. Both on their own and in their interaction, the work of Garet, Held, and Ramos simultaneously draws attention to perception while presenting the unfamiliar alongside the commonplace and expanding our understanding of sound and image within our environment.
Seth Cluett
Las raíces de las Ciencias Naturales nacen de la tierra fértil donde crecen los descubrimientos y se abraza lo desconocido. En su esencia, las ciencias concilian los misterios más sorprendentes con la realidad cotidiana. A través de la observación minuciosa, recopilamos, catalogamos y transferimos de la región geográfica a la socio-cultural, de la ecosfera a la biosfera, cruzando los límites del lenguaje y la disciplina para llegar a comprender las complejidades de nuestro entorno.
BioDerivas presenta las obras de tres artistas multidiciplinares: Richard Garet (Estados Unidos/Uruguay), Barbara Held (España/Estados Unidos) y Yapci Ramos (España), cuyo trabajo artístico guarda estrecha relación con la misión del museo. En este sentido, en su afán por observar el mundo que les rodea, se valen de la tecnología para captar y mostrar imágenes y sonidos que permiten re-contextaulizar nuestra percepción del mundo. A través de la escucha atenta, la mirada focalizada y del complejo proceso de la percepción humana, Garet, Held y Ramos han creado un micro-hábitat en el museo que premia la exploración activa y promueve la contemplación reflexiva para llegar al entendimiento del mundo que nos rodea a través de los sentidos de la vista y el oído.
Estas piezas presentan una continuidad entre el entorno que habitamos y el mecanismo a través del cual éste cobra sentido. En el caso de Yapci Ramos, la fuerza de la obra que mostramos aquí radica en su sutil simplicidad. En Bruma, las imágenes delicadas y sobrias del pino canario impresas en papel de algodón se yuxtaponen a las que, con movimiento lento, aparecen proyectadas en la pared de enfrente. El momento capturado por cada una de estas obras está estrechamente ligado al lugar que ocupan en su espacio natural, generando una tensión entre el recuerdo de localizaciones similares del que observa y los límites de la percepción.
Esta creación artística se llevó a cabo en colaboración con la compositora, intérprete y artista sonoro Barbara Held. Su trabajo con los sonidos, focalizado y constante, inunda la sala enfatizando la quietud de estas obras y resaltando, al mismo tiempo, su movimiento. En Observatory, Ramos y Held crean una inmersión evolutiva que destaca la naturaleza sublime de la Flora. La cámara orientada hacia arriba, el ritmo regular y fluido −ligeramente más rápido que los pasos del ser humano en su caminar− y las emisiones sonoras constantes que sonifican el sonido de los gases del Sol −fruto del trabajo minucioso y concienzudo de Held−, nos transportan a otra dimensión etérea donde poder llegar a contemplar el objeto original. Por otro lado, Bucio, trabajo sonoro de Held basado en auriculares, parte de un enfoque documental en el que se emplea una caracola para investigar el modo en que los Guanches −pueblo aborigen prehispánico de las Islas Canarias− se comunicaban a lo largo de la topografía de estas islas a través del sonido.
En contraposición, la obra de Richard Garet explora los conceptos de transformación y conversión de sonidos en imágenes en su forma primigenia. La obra que se plasma en el vídeo vertical sin sonido se creó utilizando algoritmos informáticos que tomaban el sonido como punto de partida. Una vez elaborado el vídeo, este sonido se omite, creando una imagen visual que, en su movimiento, refleja el elemento sonoro que ha dejado de existir. En estos dos trabajos audiovisuales Garet explora la relación entre una señal deseable y un ruido de fondo. En Esion – Nothing is something, por ejemplo, utiliza procesos informáticos para degradar la imagen y el sonido creando una forma de erosión de datos, mientras que IP, Iota Expansion Varation I surge desde un simple marco en blanco y negro que produce imágenes casi planetarias que sugieren el vacío del espacio.
El nexo común entre los primeros Gabinetes de Curiosidades del Renacimiento, los museos de Historia Natural del siglo XVII y los modernos centros de investigación de hoy en día, es la cuidada exhibición de objetos que imploran al público que disfrute de la experiencia de lo nuevo. El trabajo de Garet, Held y Ramos, tanto individualmente como en su conjunto, resaltan la importancia de la percepción al mismo tiempo que nos muestran aquello que nos resulta diferente y desconocido junto con lo que podría resultar más habitual y cotidiano, expandiendo, de este modo, el conocimiento que tenemos del sonido y la imagen dentro de nuestro entorno más inmediato.
Seth Cluett
Fragment of installation sound, 2 open audio-visual works by Richard Garet and generative sound installation by Barbara Held
The energy and optimism of Barcelona during the 1992 Olympic games is contained for me in one joyful, almost photographic memory, and this project is an exploration of the possibilities of working with photography and music, to celebrate the individual creative actions that write the real Legacy, in spite of the official planning of these big cultural events. I invited 5 very special artists whose personal and professional connections to each other branch out from the period of time of Barcelona’s emergence from the years of dictatorship as a culturally affirmative, outward looking society, willing to absorb the culture of the rest of Europe and the world, to create a legacy of excellence of artistic practice, emotion, memory and friendship. We made a series of 5 photographs of Barcelona locations with personal significance, and printed them on huge billboard paper. Yapci Ramos “performed” them on location at the construction site of the 2012 London Olympic Park, filming the changing light and reflected images that mixed with the still images. The visual composition that results is a 35 minute video. The soundtrack of our installation recreates the recording of a concert that Matt Davis gave in Barcelona 20 years ago as a score to be interpreted by 5 musicians, 5 solos. “Overtime” rebuilds the future reflected in the Barcelona past as in the title of one of our photographs, “I want to see you shining”.
Resonance FM live broadcast, November 13, 2011, solos by: Matt Davis, Barbara Held, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, and Tom Chant
Barbara Held – Yapci Ramos (Share the Applause) and Matt Davis
photography and video by Yapci Ramos performances by: Matt Davis, Barbara Held, Rhodri Davies, Angharad Davies and Tom Chant
The energy and optimism of Barcelona during the 1992 Olympic games is contained for me in one joyful, almost photographic memory. Our personal and professional connections to each other branch out from that time, a legacy of excellence of artistic practice, emotion, memory and friendship. A series of 5 photographs of Barcelona locations with personal significance interact and become part of the landscape of the construction site of the 2012 London Olympic Park. The soundtrack of our installation recreates the recording of a concert that Matt gave in Barcelona 20 years ago as a score to be interpreted by 5 musicians. “Overtime” rebuilds the future reflected in the Barcelona past as in the title of one of our photographs, “I want to see you shining”.
“Singing Stones”, (in German, Singende Steine) is a collaborative project about the cosmic dimension of sound, from the point of view of contemporary musicians and visual artists. It is inspired by the theories about musical symbolism put forward by the German ethnomusicologist, Marius Schneider (1903-1982) in his book, El origen musical de los animales-simbolos en la mitologia y la escultura antiguas [The musical origin of animal symbols in ancient mythology and sculpture] (1946), in which the chapter entitled “Singing Stones” is devoted to a musical interpretation of the late XII century capitals in the cloister of Girona Cathedral and the monastery of Sant Cugat, on the basis of Schneider’s research during the time he was head of the ethnology department at the Instituto Español de Musicologia in Barcelona in the 1940’s.
It is well known that in the High Middle Ages the world was still a harmonious whole between heaven and earth, macrocosm and microcosm were linked, and all appearances were nothing more than symbols of a unique truth. Thus it is not surprising that each animal represented in the capitals of the cloister is a symbol of a physical element, a color, a season of the year, a time of the day, a sound and a musical instrument. Schneider’s study traces the perseverance of a megalithic musical cosmography into the Middle Ages, and the correspondence between musical notes and their animal-symbols which had arrived from India via the Sarngadeva treatise in the XIII Century, giving musicological importance to the animal iconography of the cloisters of Girona and Sant Cugat, authentic musical scores of petrified hymns. In Sant Cugat, the hymn is dedicated to Sant Cucufat, and in Girona, to the Mater Dolorosa. These petrified representations of animals are nothing less than the memory of sound as the basic material of the primordial universe, rhythmic sound as the essence of phenomena, the animal cry-symbol, an imitation of the sound of the animals, being the mystical connection between man and nature.
This sound installation that borrows Schneider’s title “Singing Stones” joins music, objects, images and light using the natural rhythm of the hours of the day in relationship to the primordial rhythms of flowing time, the basic structure of the world. From the multi-disciplinary viewpoint of the contemporary arts, it revindicates sound as the prime material of the universe, the acoustic plane as the primordial fount of music and the word. The first created word is a pure sound world. The first names are rhythms that constitute the essence of the things created, as Schneider reminds us, a vision that coincides with that of Walter Benjamin on the onomatopoeic origin of language.
This work, without touching on the esoteric, takes music as the archetype of cosmic order, transmitter of the primordial time of creation before objective consciousness of space; in Brahmanic philosophy, the pure quintessential space of aether is transmitter of the sound from which the other senses and material elements (air, fire, water and earth) are derived. The mystic symbol OM is the creative sound of the universe, symbolically transmitted by the buzzing of bees. According to Schneider, sound is also the breath (prana), the fundamental principle of life; all that lives must sound: sound=breath=wind=creation of life=language=heat (fire)=the mystical syllable OM.
This installation unites the spirit and energy of its creators who participate in this primordial acoustic rhythm, associating each musical instrument with its time in the cycle of the light of day (trumpet-morning, percussion-midday, voice-evening, flute-night). It is a converging of the luminous nature of sound with the voice as creative force, individual and untransferable, of the breath as flux of the rhythm of visual image, it is a reference to the buzzing of bees as bearers of the original sound, the ritual of sacrifice associated with creation, the presence of the four material elements and the relationship between architecture and music, by means of a sculptorial use of harmonious geometric forms.
“Singing Stones” combines light, sound, image, objects, materials and technology in a contemporary vision of the creation. It is a return to the cosmic dimension in music, an investigation in many idioms that flows into a new rhythmic order of the the world, which, at the same time, is its origin.
PILAR PARCERISAS, Curator of the project “Singing Stones”, 2001
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Canten les pedres Un projecte musical sobre les teories simbòliques de Marius Schneider
Paral·lelament al Festival de Músiques Religioses del Món, la ciutat de Girona va programar per a l’estiu 2001 el projecte “Canten les pedres”, que es desglossa en dues activitats, un concert a l’Auditori de la Mercè el dia 3 de juliol i una instal·lació sonora a les Sales Municipals d’Exposició des del 30 de juny al 31 d’agost.
Aquest és un projecte musical de Barbara Held -la qual hi intervé com a compositora i flautista- qui ha convidat als músics Matthew Davis (trompeta), Àngel Pereira (percussió), Anne Wellmer (veu) a participar d’aquest projecte, així com a l’artista Pere Noguera per a l’elaboració de l’espai de so i la part plàstica del concert. Adolf Alcañiz s’ha fet càrrec de la realització d’imatges.
El projecte “Canten les pedres” aborda des de la música contemporània la dimensió sagrada del so, inspirant-se en les teories simbòliques del professor i musicòleg Marius Schneider (1903-1982), les quals relacionen el repertori iconogràfic animal dels capitells romànics del claustre de la catedral de Girona amb tot un sistema de correspondències místiques entre els animals, el so, els astres, els instruments musicals o els quatre elements, d’acord amb una teoria de la Índia del segle XIII que identifica certs animals amb determinats sons musicals. El resultat d’aquesta investigació es revela en unes partitures que constitueixen una mena de mandales musicals, referència per als quatre compositors que les interpretaran lliurement d’acord amb els codis de la música contemporània.
Marius Schneider, musicòleg i estudiós de la mitologia i la cosmologia antigues, va ser molt amic del crític i poeta Juan-Eduardo Cirlot, a qui va influir sens dubte en la confecció del seu famós Diccionario de símbolos. Schneider, que va venir a Barcelona l’any 1943 convidat per Higini Anglès a treballar en un projecte en col·laboració amb el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas sobre la creació d’un institut musical de folklore, va sentir-se atret pel romànic català i especialment pels claustres de la catedral de Girona i del monestir de Sant Cugat, autèntiques partitures musicals en el ritme , repetició i representació de la iconografia dels seus capitells. L’any 1944 fundà i dirigí fins l’any 1951 el Departament d’Etnologia del Instituto Español de Musicología de Barcelona. Finalment, arribà a formular les seves teories al llibre El origen musical de los animales-símbolos en la mitología y la escultura antiguas, escrit i publicat en castellà a Barcelona l’any 1946, reeditat per EdicionesSiruela (1998), en el qual dedica precisament el capítol titulat “Canten les pedres” a la interpretació musical de la iconografia d’aquests claustres.
Schneider defensa en aquest llibre que en el principi del món era el so, el ritme, que la substància sonora era la matèria prima del món i se serveix de la cosmografia musical megalítica conservada en l’Europa medieval o en els textos vèdics de l’Índia per desxifrar les claus musicals inscrites en els capitells dels claustres del Monestir de Sant Cugat i de la Catedral de Girona, tallats pel mateix mestre escultor.
Es parteix del claustre com a espai que simbolitza una mena de Jerusalem celest, un centre còsmic en relació amb els tres nivells de l’univers: el subterrani dels pous, la superfície de la terra en el sòl i el món celest. El claustre com a cruïlla de quatre avingudes en l’espai d’acord amb l’orientació de la llum del sol: nord, sud, est i oest. Es tracta d’un ordre triàdic (el claustre com a mandala triàdic, de 3 + 1), que coincideix amb la distribució del claustre en quatre parts: quatre músics, quatre instruments, quatre llocs, quatre temps, quatre llums, quatre estacions de l’any.
El projecte musical de Barbara Held s’articula entorn de quatre instruments – trompeta, percussió, veu i flauta- i quatre composicions, elaborades expressament, en les quals els músics creen a partir de les teories simbòliques de Marius Schneider des d’una visió contemporània del so que retorna a la mística primitiva, quan el pla acústic era el més alt i elevat de tota la creació, quan el ritme era l’origen del món. Aquests quatre instruments es relacionen i tenen una equivalència amb les hores del dia, la llum i els animals representats en el claustre de Girona, de manera que el lleó marca el matí, el despertar i el so de la trompeta; L’àliga és l’au de migdia, de la velocitat i dels trons i acull la percussió; el gall dindi, molt representat en el claustre de Girona, és l’au del capvespre i és la veu qui el representa, mentre que el peix, la serpent o el cocodril són els animals que expressen la nit, l’esperit de l’ aigua i la fecunditat, essent la flauta l’instrument que la representa. Cada músic ha elaorat una composició de quinze minuts, de manera que el concert té una durada d’una hora i la visita a la instal·lació sonora també.
Matthew Davis i Barbara Held s’han servit d’imatges per desenvolupar el seu treball musical. Matt ha emprat el pas de la llum a temps real sobre un dels capitells del claustre de Girona per crear la seva composició que es transmet al mateix temps que la seva música. Tant la seva composició com la trompeta al·ludeixen a la llum del matí. Barbara Held empra imatges en moviment de l’aigua i de la nit per marcar el ritme de la seva partitura en una sincronització via ordinador. El ritme de l’aigua marca el ritme de la composició i la interpretació; alhora, la imatge és una ombra del moviment del so. Hi ha, per tant, una interacció entre la respiració que produeix el so de la flauta i el moviment de l’aigua. Àngel Pereira, percussionista molt reconegut de l’Orquestra de Cambra del Lliure, entre moltes altres, se serveix d’instruments objectuals i pedres per crear aquest retorn als orígens del so i l’alemanya Anne Wellmer, coneguda pels seus treballs d’ instal·lació sonora, performance i treballs amb la veu va les fonts directes del cant medieval i a les partitures generades per la disposició dels capitells dels claustres de Girona i Sant Cugat per donar-ne la seva versió, tot vinculant aquest so originari de la música que neix imitant el dels animals, al so dels insectes i les abelles.
La participació plàstica de Pere Noguera, artista conegut per les seves instal·lacions i accions, constitueix la base de l’espai de so de les Sales Municipals, on ha utilitzat com a mòdul repetitiu per a un espai sonor i alhora escultòric i simbòlic, una columna de testos fumats de Quart en posició de boca-boca fins constituir una mena de columna sens fi. La ceràmica actua com a símbol dels quatre elements i la forma acampanada i sonora del test -gairebé un instrument de percussió- es distribueix alhora sobre el terra en diversos seients. Test que referma al mateix temps la seva forma de trapezi, com la del mateix claustre de Girona, la qual en la seva doble posició, dreta i invertida, Schneider relaciona amb els elements terra i aire. L’altre element simbòlic emprat per Noguera és una rajola, una simple rajola hexagonal, la qual conté, si la dividim per la meitat en dos trapezis i al mateix temps en dos rombes, en totes les formes que simbòlicament constitueixen, segons el musicòleg alemany, els quatre eements: terra, aigua, foc i aire. Amb aquestes rajoles l’escultor construeix una pila fins crear una estructura de rusc d’abella. Altres elements integrats en l’espai de so són les imatges de l’aigua que es projecten amb la música de Barbara Held i les del pas de la llum sobre el capitell en sentir el so de la trompeta de Matt Davis. La llum, també com a element primordial, rep un tractament especial, tota creant una mena de partitura de llum a la sala.
L’espai semicircular de les Sales Municipals constitueix un espai d’informació presidit per la pila simbòlica de rajoles, vitrines amb diversos objectes relatius al món del so, un espai de documentació dedicat a Marius Schneider, a les seves partitures mandàliques, als capitells del claustre de Girona triats i a la informació sobre els compositors i artistes de l’exposició. El concert conserva el mateix esperit que presideix la instal·lació sonora de les Sales Municipals, si bé els músics hi ofereixen una variació musical, que és el treball conjunt de tocar alhora en el pas de les composicions que marquen el trànsit de la nit al dia.
PILAR PARCERISAS, Comissària i coordinadora del projecte “Canten les pedres”, 2001
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Projects
MATT DAVIS, trumpet: “Orientation of a Disappearance”
Play: Orientation of a Disappearance
This is a piece related to the morning played on an instrument which corresponds to the first hours of the day: the trumpet. It is a semi-structured improvisation, recorded live in the site specific space of the cloister of Girona Cathedral.
Davis has attempted to recreate the first symbolic resonance and opens the composition with a long sustained note that aludes to the beginings of the day and the sense of the orientation of the light. After this long sound, like the light itself (which he recorded on video in the cloister whilst playing the piece and used as a score), the sounds occupy a more austere and dry space, on the borders of percussion.
The music tries to relate itself to the initial state: a state inside a mystical order between man and nature which, in this case, corresponds to the in-between, dream-like state of awakening.
The piece utilises as its base one of the themes of the project The Singing Stones, namely a series of symbolic elements which act as a map to initiate changes of energy and direction in the music by organising different areas on investigation and theme.
In “The fire of the Drum”, a composition for the solar hour of midday, Pereira brings to bear all his vast and diverse battery of percussion instruments in the service of this igneous creation with its deep, full sounds, redolent of acoustic primitivism, structured around the thunder-roll he produces with such virtuosity on the range of percussion instruments.
The drum is associated here as in the different mystical positions of the Vedic drums with the rituals of offering, sacrifice and purification, with the sacred fire, but also with the rhythms of Nature, such as the fire of the earth, the precipitation of the rain, the reverberations of the thunder and the breaking of the storm, the rippling whisper of wheat fields, the water of the streams, the drum as an hourglass, as an inverted pot and a bell of low, sad sounds. Pereira paints a sound landscape based on an improvised constellation of sounds that draw on the most essential objects and materials of so-called primitive cultures stone, wood, metal and seems to invoke the power of Agni, swelling into a repeated series of drum beats and reverberating gong strokes that project sonic pillars of smoke. Pereira ends one of his compositions with a bass thunder-roll on a smoked earthenware pot from the town of Quart that is part of the sculptor Pere Noguera’s contribution to the project.
ANNE WELLMER, voice: “Frozen voices”. In collaboration with the Japanese soprano Mikae Natsuyama Cho
A specialist in sonology and in the electronic treatment of the voice and sound for the stage, Anne Wellmer is the composer of the piece Frozen voices. In it she has worked with the voice of the Japanese soprano Mikae Natsuyama Cho, who sings the hymn dedicated to the Virgin of Sorrows, the melody that is encoded in the stone carvings of animal figures in the cloister of the Girona Cathedral. The electronic manipulation of the voice carries us off to another, preterite dimension of the song, which ends by merging into the buzzing of insects and bees, bearers of this original mystic sound. Here once again we are reminded that the syllable Om (=aum) is the fundamental sound of the universe, which Schneider associates with the buzzing of the bees.
The words of this medieval hymn of stone are in Latin, and the notes of the score are the result of the correspondence between sounds and the animals that symbolize them, according to the ancient Hindu system of assigning a rich body of meaning to every note of the musical scale: Cunctis intere o stat generosior Virgo Martyribus: prodigio novo. In tantis moriens, non moreris. Parens, Diris fixa doloribus. Amen.
Wellmer, with great subtlety and taste, makes use of the most sophisticated electronic media to take the voice and the word back to the origins of sound, to the primordial buzzing of bees and insects, the bearers of fire and warmth. The voices still echo through the passages of the cloister as the crackle of the flames gradually invades the space, in subtle memory of the Inquisition.
BARBARA HELD, flute: “Samgîtaratnâkara” [The Ocean of Music]
Barbara Held, flutist, explores the luminous and expansive nature of sound, accompanied by images of water in movement and of nocturnal light approaching the break of day (until the high Middle Ages the dawn was described as a singing light). This is a piece made in collaboration with video artist Adolf Alcañiz, in which video images move to the rhythm of the breath, light and sound uniting heaven and earth and connecting us to the rhythm of creation and the roar of the primordial waters.
In Samgîtaratnâkara, [The Ocean of Music] (named after a 13th century treatise about music that begins with a detailed cosmology, and includes information about the human body such as the stages of pregnancy from month to month, and about religion, philosophy and music) music returns to its primordial place as the archetype of cosmic order. It is a living relationship, a concert piece in which the image is led to the rhythm of the music, changing its form in each performance. The video images_light reflected on water, ocean waves, urban night light_ are open sequences connected by the music, which marks the internal rhythm of the the image and its composition, a flux between image, sound and light. Reflections of light on water act as an hypnotic introduction to an interior voyage, nocturnal, dangerous. Here, water is a mirror that reflects sound, the inaudible original sound that we represent when we play music. Held and Alcañiz were inspired by a passage of M. Schneider’s book in which he speaks of “the clearest manifestation of the rhythm, of the interior law of the individual” that resides in the voice. He interviewed the members of an African tribe and relates their belief that each living being has its own song, and that this melody is the reflection of the immortal part of the human soul, just as the shadow is the reflection of the mortal body. In the words of Quasi, agni tribesman: ” each living soul is made up of two parts, one mortal, and the other immortal. The spirit of a living man is a shadow that changes place and shape according to the position of the body in relation to the light of the sun. This spirit can also be an image that comes from water singing sadly when one is close to a river. ..” “one must be very careful because this spirit attracts your body toward it with its song.”
PERE NOGUERA: “Memory of sound”. Installation
A single space embraces the four pieces of music by means of a symbolic column of smoked earthenware pots from Quart placed mouth to mouth inside a circle of stones which occupies the centre of the space. Earthenware alludes here to the four elements, and a number of bell-shaped pots, with their acoustic potential, are also laid out on the floor to be used as seats. To complement the two visual projections corresponding to the pieces by Matt Davis and the duo Held/Alcañiz, in the space devoted to percussion-fire (Pereira) Noguera has placed two stones, set opposite one another, and a lamp, while in the space devoted to the voice with the sounds of insects and fire (Wellmer) there are seven beehives (borrowed from a local beekeeper), structures that confront the void and the full in terms of the before and after of the creation of the beehive, with its skeleton is in the form of a pentagram. The whole work is generated on the basis of a hexagonal tile, split up to create two triangular and two trapezoidal forms relating to the four elements (earth-water-air-fire) and their associated colours and sounds and give a cosmic vision of the memory of sound with the presence of contemporary earthenware objects. The form of the trapezium is apparent in the tiles, in the pots and in the form of the cloister of Girona Cathedral. Using 800 tiles with this basic form Noguera has laid out on the ground a three-dimensional spiral mystic symbol of the evolution of the universe in a structure which closely resembles a beehive. The objects in the display cases reflect the origins of the musical instruments and their relation to the four elements of nature.
