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2002-09-17 - 6:49 a.m.

I got an e-mail today from the MELA Foundation about a current project:

�La Monte Young Marian Zazeela---Sound and Light Environment

Young and Zazeela characterize the Sound and Light Environment as "a time installation measured by a setting of continuous frequencies in sound and light."In the light environment Marian Zazeela presents four works, two environmental: Imagic Light and Magenta Day, Magenta Night, in installations specifically designed for the site; and two sculptural: a neon work, Dream House Variation I, and a wall sculpture, Ruine Window 1992 from her series, Still Light. In the environment Imagic Light, Zazeela projects pairs of colored lights on mobile forms to create seemingly three-dimensional colored shadows in a luminous field.

In the concurrent sound environment, La Monte Young presents The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time When Centered above and below The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279 and 261 in Which The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped above and Including 288 Consists of The Powers of 2 Multiplied by The Primes within The Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32 Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms in The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped below and Including 224 within The Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28 with The Addition of 119, a periodic composite sound waveform environment created from sine wave components generated digitally in real time on a custom-designed Rayna interval synthesizer.

Both artists are presenting works utilizing concepts of structural symmetry. Zazeela's mobile forms are arrayed in symmetrical patterns with lights placed in precisely symmetrical positions creating symmetrical colored shadows; the wall-mounted light sculpture and the neon are both symmetrical forms. Young's sound environment is composed of frequencies tuned to the harmonic series between 288 and 224, utilizing numbers with factors of only 9, or those primes or octave transpositions of smaller primes that fall within this range. The interval 288/256 reduces to a 9/8 interval as does the interval 252/224. Thirty-two frequencies satisfy the above definition, of which seventeen fall within the range of the upper, and fourteen fall within the range of the lower of these two symmetrical 9/8 intervals. Young has arranged these thirty-one frequencies in a unique constellation, symmetrical above and below the thirty-second frequency, the center harmonic 254 (the prime 127 x 2).

Young has stated that: "This is my newest and most radical work; the Rayna synthesizer has made it possible to realize intervals which are derived from such high primes that, not only is it unlikely that anyone has ever worked with these intervals before, it is also highly unlikely that anyone has ever heard them or perhaps even imagined the feelings they create."

In Minimalism:Origins (Indiana University Press, 1993),Edward Strickland has written of their collaborative environments: "Intense light [is] aimed through [colored] filters at quasicalligraphic aluminum shapes hung by ultrafine filaments. The effect is a unique and extraordinary transvaluation of perception: the mobiles seem to hover unanchored, while the shadows they cast in various hues attain an apparent solidity against the light-dissolved walls equal to their literally palpable but apparently disembodied sources. Like Young's music, to which it serves as an almost uncanny complement, Zazeela's work is predicated upon the extended duration necessary to experience the nuances which are its essence."

Their one-year sound and light environment collaboration, The Romantic Symmetry (over a 60 cycle base) in Prime Time from 112 to 144 with 119 / Time Light Symmetry was described by Village Voice critic Kyle Gann as "some of the strangest and most forward-looking art New York has to offer." Of the current environment, Seven+Eight Years of Sound and Light, Sandy McCroskey has written in 1/1 that "Zazeela's light sculptures have invariably, teasingly refused to surrender their entire secret to photographic reproduction, so much do they depend on the retinal impact of activated photons in real time and so much do they exploit, in ways analogous to Young's techniques, the creation of visual combination tones and an accumulation of after-images."

I have edited the message down a bit. I get the ratio of nine to eight � that�s the tone step you get when you work on the principle of fifths � but I haven�t got the use of high primes worked out. My first stab is to do with undertones which are driven by factors of the frequency � what if the frequency doesn�t have any factors? Maybe the undertone is subtly out of tune with the main tone? The idea of LmY�s most radical work is pretty terrifying � or maybe a reason to go to the travel agents. If I get further with the maths I�ll let you know.

Left over from last week I have a note about a CD of Cornelius Cardew�s piano music. I was going to copy it in � but this idea has beena bit displaced by the LmY piece. It mentions that CC became familiar with Cage�s Music for Changes at Daemstadt and also with the work of Lmy and T Riley. The CD is music written in the 1960s in the light of these discoveries � where notation is used to stimulate the performer�s imagination and ingenuity. The piano is played by John Tilbury � who also does plays the Skempton pieces. Better find out more about him. These pieces lead towards the 193 page graphic score �The Great Treatise�.

I managed to get into work about lunch time � my office had moved over the weekend and it wasn�t clear to me that it would still be there at all � hence my reluctance to set off. There was a good e-mail from Gilbert waiting for me about the pieces from the CD that he had been working on � very encouraging eg that he likes the version of Faces that I built up from his manuscript. I mentioned to him that I had been working on graphic scores. Maybe we can extend our collaboration to cover this?

While I was trying to get the energy to go into London I worked on bits and pieces. Walking Jake I listened to a MD which has some versions of Paul Wheeler tunes plus some short experimental pieces � some quite atonal � from about two years ago. I loaded one into Wavelab and then into Cubase Go � started trying to add on a semi- improv guitar part. I reset the pick-ups on the Maya a bit. Currently I am finding settings on the Vamp that suit the Maya and then trying them on the Duosonic trying to hear the difference

I exchanged some e-mail with Peter Chatterton. He has started work on a related site � Music for Famine � we discussed how the two might be linked. I told him about an article I had put up on www.kease-kwaza about the link between intellectual property rights and poverty � a subject close to his heart. I managed to find about four or five quite good items for the news page after a bit of a dearth. Peter offered to give me a page where I could put up my drawings of SA on the site � do have the vanity to do this, I wonder? Generally I am not short of vanity, readers may have observed.

I listened to most of Schoenberg�s solo piano music � there is a single mid-price CD on DG which has it all. Its maybe too much to listen to it a single chunk but you can take it at a couple of sittings. One of the later pieces � the first truly serial piece is written on the pattern of a Bach Suite. I have his Piano Concerto on the same CD that has the Berg Violin Concerto � it is much harder work � but it relates to a time � when he emigrated to the USA � and faced much greater difficulties.

I pulled out a back copy of The Wire with an article about Christian Wolff � the fourth member of the New York school. He was still a teenager when he started getting composition lessons from Cage. He is more the age-group of Young and Cornelius Cardew. In the article he mentions that he was writing pieces only using three or four notes before Young. There is a picture of him working with Cardew. He has held an academic position for most of his career � but now that he is the only survivor maybe he will get more attention. I vaguely remember seeing that Fred Frith had worked with him. Anyway I decided to join the FF discussion group to see what it might throw up.

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