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Totally Huge New Music Festival 2013


 Da Contents H2

THNMF2013
October 14 2013
New music: celebration & angst
Matthew Lorenzon: Totally Huge New Music Festival overview


August 22 2013
The sound of reading
Matthew Lorenzon: David Toop with Decibel

August 18 2013
A pyrrhic revolt
Matthew Lorenzon: Latitude: Perspectives, WA Symphony Orchestra

THNMF2013
Complexity from simple tools
John Barton: ICMC, Percussion and Live Electronics

August 16 2013
Acoustic space: explicit object
Steve Paraskos: di Scipio, Curran


Pianos wired
John Barton: Works for piano and electronics

August 15 2013
Bridges and deviations
Matthew Lorenzon: di Scipio, Curran, Haco, Burt

August 14 2013
Madness, hell and transcendence
John Barton: Michael Kieran Harvey

Programming a grotesque order
Matthew Lorenzon: Michael Kieran Harvey

August 12 2013
A choreography of oscillation
Matthew Lorenzon: Speak Percussion, Robin Fox, Transducer

Explorers of an alien planet
John Barton: Speak Percussion, Robin Fox, Transducer

August 11 2013
Celestial sweet spots
Steve Paraskos, Haco, Ourobonic Plague, Barn Owl

Churches of sound
John Barton, Haco, Ourobonic Plague, Barn Owl

Eclectic ecstasies
Matthew Lorenzon, Haco, Ourobonic Plague, Barn Owl

 

Acoustic space: explicit object

Steve Paraskos: di Scipio, Curran


Decibel performing Alvin Curran's Way Out Back Decibel performing Alvin Curran's Way Out Back
photo Brad Serls
Drawing attention to the relationships that constitute musical phenomena is crucial for Agostino Di Scipio, who opened the International Computer Music Conference with a critical discussion on the cybernetic relationships between musicians and technologies as shaped by the acoustic space.

In Di Scipio’s model of composition, the computer affects itself through the performer and the performer affects him/her self through the computer, transforming the acoustic soundscape. Di Scipio addresses these relationships in Condotte Pubbliche (Public Conduct/Conduits), an electroacoustic sound installation where the ambient sounds of visitors are filtered through two brass tubes fitted with two microphones and two earphones atop two loudspeakers feeding back the manipulated sounds via a laptop. This use of the acoustic space as an explicit object of the composition is reminiscent of Alvin Lucier’s 1969 composition I am Sitting in a Room .

Performed by Decibel, Di Scipio’s Texture/Residue (2006) for violin, cello, flute, bass clarinet and computer, explored the detritus of the classical repertoire by having the performers read Brahms without bowing or blowing to expose usually inaudible, rhythmic key taps and string scrapes. These sounds are fed back into the resonant spaces via computer processing, showcasing the underlying factors that bear heavily on any performance.

Alvin Curran’s keynote address was an eloquent call to arms for proponents of new music. Listing styles and influences like a beat poet he derided hackneyed occidental mentalities and business-as-usual compositional devices while recognising the difficulties for contemporary composers competing with the ubiquity of recorded musics of the past, a situation he admits the electronic artists of his generation helped to create.

Curran’s Way Out Back, commissioned and premiered by the Decibel ensemble, echoes the stylistic impasses of Western art music discussed in the composer’s address. The beginning of the work (a synchronised three-note, rhythmically displaced melody) sounds like an ironic take on minimalism. The rhythms fall apart then pick up again, climbing to a shrieking cacophony of murderous screams alongside piercing electronics and strings.


The Key Note: Works by Agostino di Scipio, Alvin Curran, Haco and Warren Burt, The West Australian Museum, 11 August

For Haco and Warren Burt's performances see also Matthew Lorenzon's account.

RealTime issue #117 Oct-Nov 2013 pg. 43

© Steve Paraskos; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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