Analogue Projections
Presented as part of ARTSaha 2005
August 23, 2005, 7 PM
At the LOFT Gallery
Omaha, NE
An ARTSaha! tradition, this all-electronic concert featured the world premiere of Gordon Smith’s 99 Notes for the Next Dark Age, alongside soundscapes from ANALOG members from around the world.
PROGRAM
Gordon Smith, 99 Notes for the Next Dark Age, or How to Disappear Incompletely*
Geoffrey Garrison, Rumblesdildsgin
Joe Drew, Terr I
Thomas Kozumplik, Urban Mantra*
Mark Saba, He Was a Poet
Johann Sebastian Bach, Two-Part Invention in F Major (In Memoriam Bob Moog)
Tee Templeton, She’s Slipping*
Istvan B’Racz, Papyrus Nugator
Gordon Smith, Snow
* world premiere
PERSONNEL
Joe Drew, projectionist
PROGRAM NOTES
99 Notes for the Next Dark Age is Power Point art. Smith’s work also serves as the libretto for an interactive meta-opera which will receive its premiere as a part of ARTSaha 2005.
Rumblesdildsgin is American expatriate and ANALOG artist Geoffrey Garrison’s retelling of the famous folk tale about a magical creature who splits himself in two upon the revelation of his name. Garrison employs the linguistic theories of the Grimm Brothers in his version to create an altogether unique spin on the classic story.
Terr I is based entirely on the first bar of Stellastarr*’s “In These Walls”.
“Urban Mantra is a polyphonic work in which two main ideas are developed. The steel drum and marimba melodies are fragments that developed in my mind and helped me to mentally escape while I was on tour riding in a van in Europe. The analog answering machine messages and sounds act as motives and accompaniment throughout the work. The messages are from lovers, friends, family, and real estate brokers between 1992 and 2000. The journey is the negotiation in trying to discover and cultivate oneself and the world happening around you. White noise is also employed.” — Thomas Kozumplik, August 2005.
He Was a Poet And When He Died — In making his poetry video, Mark sought to reinterpret his poem by presenting it in a new medium, letting the images speak in place of words. Istvan Peter B’Racz’s musical score helps to propel the narrative without dialogue. Mark took inspiration from film directors such as Jean Cocteau (Beauty and The Beast) as well as some early music videos to create a new genre which, he hopes, will one day unobtrusively fill wall-sized screens in our homes in lieu of commercial TV.
Mark gave composer Istvan Peter B’Racz larger sections of the film (while still in the editing stages). Istvan would then digitally sculpt a score, working out various sections-sometimes even needing a scene longer to fit the music. During a recording session, Istvan asked Joe Drew to remove the crooks from his trumpet, thereby sonically exposing the metal-valve-and-tube-innards and creating a “prepared-trumpet”. The resulting, unique sound is more airy, wet, unstable, primordial, and gives one the surreal essence of an ancient-mythical trumpet of the heavens. There is also a sequence that uses actual sounds of trees being sawed, cut, broken, falling, crashing, knocking-as well as a reoccurring obsession with distant smeared sounds of the Renaissance. The end result is a composition which, ironically, seems to “dream” the film. The video He Was A Poet And When He Died was a finalist at the USA Film Festival’s National Short Film & Video Competition this past year in Dallas. It was also screened at the Art Institute of Chicago (Gene Siskel Film Center) in September, 2005.
Two-Part Invention in F Major, BWV 779 was recorded by Wendy Carlos in 1968 as part of the seminal Switched on Bach album which popularized Bob Moog’s synthesizers. Bob died on Sunday, August 21, 2005, at the age of 71.
She’s Slipping — “The piece basically came from an idea I had on the subway about taking already completed pieces and turning them into something else or augmenting them in some way. I used Joe Drew’s Terr I to do that here. Once I had something working I wanted to toss in some voice. So I grabbed a recording of a singer songwriter friend who I lived with in an artist’s loft in the lower east side. It was a story she told us while we she was preparing to record. The singing part is from a song of hers about her grandmother.” – Tee Templeton, August 2005.
“Papyrus Nugator 1 grew around a poem written and read by Emoke Z. B’Racz called Hungarian Childhood. It is a powerful poem about her youth with her mother, and the shadow of a father missing during most of her youth due to political exile. I took her spoken voice and surrounded it with its own digital-ghost-shadow-sound: generated from her voice, mostly, with the exception of a few instruments. I looked at the text and thought to myself: what if this poem was dreaming its own music…hence the title.” – Istvan Peter B’Racz, August 2005.