ICMC/25/d1/1400 Concert n02/09 Fumohihimo
Fumohihimo
Composer Person/Christopher Jette
- Person/Christopher Jette/Web https://cj.lovelyweather.com/
- Christopher Jette is a curator of lovely sounds, creating work as a composer and media artist. His creative work explores the artistic possibilities at the intersection of human performers/creators and technological tools. A highly collaborative artist, Jette has created works that involve dance, theater, websites, architecture, light arrays, sculpture, food, toys, typewriters, cell phones, reindeer herd data and good ol’ fashioned wood and steel instruments. Before ICMC25 Jette resided at 37°25’19.1994″N 122°7’58.08″W (Palo Alto, CA). His next port of call is 42°21’26.32389″N 071°06’29.86487″W (Cambridgeport, MA). He is currently obsessed with making music with a single string. Interesting things to discuss with him include living in Alaska and sailing from San Francisco to La Paz.
Description
- Derivation of the title is from my last email exchange with composer Person/Clarence Barlow where he asked me “Do you know how to write “Fumohihimo” in Japanese Katakana? フモヒヒモ.” Fittingly this is not a word but rather more onomatopoeia. Barlow noted “It seems to mean “Imohi string”, whatever that is”. Discussion with the native Japanese speaking composer Yukiko Yoden revealed that “Fumohihimo evokes the image of something soft and fluffy floating in the air.” She further explained that floating in this case alludes to “something thin and light that moves as if it were fluttering”. This seems to align rather well with momnoboards string within magnetic field of the ebow.
- The technical side: A single string is transduced by two pickups (the monoboard). The signal is processed by 16 delay lines and 16 convolution kernels. The algorithm controlling the delay times is controlled by the performer via a pad controller. There are 912 impulse responses (IR’s), from a 16×57 grid of the monoboard, each used one time. Special thanks to Mark Rau for capturing these IR’s. The spatial position is composed by arraying sets of 16 delay line – IR streams over the course of 480000 milliseconds (you can guess what sample rate is employed). The spatial position of each delay line – IR combination in the sound field corresponds to the location of the IR on the monoboard surface.
- The video display is a didactic display of spatial positioning and textural material reacting to audio features.