224 Centre Street New York N Y 10013
212 431 5127, 212 431 6430 experimentalintermedia.org and XIrecords.org
EI DECEMBER 2010 PERFORMANCE SERIES
The Thirty-Seventh Anniversary of EI performances at 224 Centre Street, the Forty-second Anniversary of the Founding of Experimental Intermedia, the Forty-second Anniversary of the 224 Centre Street loft, and, not least,
The Twenty-first Annual Festival with no fancy name, Part One (or A)
Phill Niblock, curator
December 19, 2010 / 9 pm Volker Straebel: Two Trash Can Recordings (He didn’t like collage). Sound Observation #6
Boris Hegenbart: musicforclouds
Volker Straebel: Centre and Grand. Sound Observation #5
All pieces are premiers.
Sound Observations is a series of electro-acoustic works – live performances and real time sound installations – that utilize narrow band-pass filters to observe the spectra of live or recorded soundscapes.
For Two Trash Can Recordings (He didn’t like collage), two recordings were made by holding a microphone into trash cans, thereby observing the resonant frequencies of their interiors as stimulated by the surrounding soundscapes. The two trash cans were located in New York City on 55th Street and 7th Avenue, and on the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building.
Throughout the piece, both recordings are played together, though they never mix. In the first movement (“horizontal”), excerpts from the two recordings are introduced successively, then simultaneously. The simultaneous recordings are strictly filtered such that the two frequency bands move toward each other without meeting. In the second movement (“vertical”), the two recordings retain their full vertical frequency range, but rapidly alternate until our sluggish perception blends what actually remains separate.
The duration is approx. 5’40”. Audio recordings by Gerhard Schultz and Volker Straebel, audio programming by Fabian Brinkmann. Produced at the Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University Berlin.
For Centre and Grand, I spent three hours recording on the fire escape of Phill Niblock’s loft at 224 Centre Street, New York. A head-mounted microphone was positioned successively such that the recorded stereo fields were parallel to Centre Street, Grand Street, and in a 45°angle to both.
In a concert performance, the audience is surrounded by four speakers. The recordings are superimposed and mapped to the speakers such that the concert space replicates the spatial layout of the recorded site: in front and from behind, one hears two recordings of Centre Street; from the left and right, two recordings of Grand Street; and diagonally across the room, the 45°angle recordings of both streets.
Each of these six stereo fields is individually scanned by slowly moving band-pass filters. Entry and exit times are chance determined. The duration is 30’10”. Produced at the Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University Berlin and Studio P4.
Volker Straebel