ICMC/25/d2/1100 Concert n06/07 Sympoiesis
Sympoiesis - Duo Performance with Oliveros Expanded Instrument System
- 14:55 Haunting drone - the #Accordion texture is silkily accompanied by the more triangular waves of the 17-string Bass
- Very rich, atmospheric.
Person/Michael Century
- Michael Century, pianist, accordionist, and cultural theorist, is Professor of New Media and Music in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Long associated with The Banff Centre for the Arts, he directed the Centre’s Inter-arts program between 1979-1988 and was founding director Centre’s Media Arts Division 1988-92. During the 1990s, he worked as program director for cultural research at the Montréal Centre d’innovation en technologies de l’information, and as senior policy advisor for art and new technology to the federal Department of Canadian Heritage. Century authored the study Pathways to Innovation in Digital Culture for the Rockefeller Foundation, and was panelist and co-author for the U.S. National Academy of Science 2003 report on information technologies and creative practices, Beyond Productivity. His monograph on Canadian innovation in new media, Northern Sparks, was published by The MIT Press in 2022. His piano, accordion, and electronic music performances and compositions have been programmed in festivals and concert series throughout North America and Europe.
- Zach Layton is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, curator, and educator working collaboratively across genres and disciplines. He is a practitioner of a rare and unusual instrument, the 17-string bass, and has composed orchestral music for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, original soundtracks for filmmakers and live scores for choreographers. He has performed and exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, PS1, the Kitchen, Ostrava Days, Transmediale Berlin, and many other venues in New York and internationally. He has worked with a diverse range of artists and musicians over the years including Vito Acconci, Bradley Eros, Bobby Previte, Henry Fraser, Pauline Oliveros, Ben Vida, Tony Conrad, Michael Century, Bradford Reed, Victoria Keddie, Tristan Perich, Elliott Sharp, Joshua White, David Grubbs, Phyllis Chen, Luke Dubois, Peggy Ahwesh, Bradford Reed, Alex Waterman, Lea Bertucci and many more. A recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts music/sound award, and a MacDowell Fellowship, Zach is currently Associate Professor of music production and director of the MFA program in creative music technology at Ramapo College of New Jersey. He earned his PhD in Electronic Arts from RPI in 2017.
#Description
- Sympoiesis
- Person/Pauline Oliveros reported on recent advances in the “Expanded Instrument System,” or EIS, at the 1991 ICMC in Montreal. In their paper, co-authored with Panaiotis, the term EIS referred back to Oliveros’ studio improvisations produced with tape-delay during the 1960s, and looked forward to the emerging possibilities for distributed algorithmic control of time delays. Oliveros had returned in the 1980s to delay processing in works such as Roots of the Moment and Crone Music, and then, in 1990 at the Banff Centre, ventured into computer-control of sound and light in an ensemble sonic meditation called The Lightning Box. Within a decade, the EIS was revamped as a MAX/MSP patch, and Oliveros characterized the system as a multi-modal “time machine” in which present, past, and future occur “simultaneously with transformations.” Oliveros continued to work on EIS till her passing in 2016, branching into improvisational agents, inter-media systems, and instrument design across abilities. Oliveros’ vision for EIS enlarged with its technical capacities: “I fully expect EIS to become more and more intelligent and self-determining so that someday, it will be able to make music that no human could dream of making. When that future border is crossed – when EIS is no longer an extension of my being, but half of a reciprocal merger of humanity and computer — my music will be a new birth cry from and of post-humanity.” The final version of EIS has four modules, each with its own way of modulating time delayed sounds. One emulates the 1980s Lexicon PCM 42, noted for its smooth pitch modulations. A second has a much longer delay buffer – up to 100 seconds – with control functions that vary the rate and depth of LFO modulation. The third module has a pair of 20 delay lines allowing for individual algorithmic control of each delay – allowing for up to 40 voices with discrete modulators along various scales of indeterminacy and temporal density. A fourth module renders output through ambisonic panners with assignable geometric shapes, enabling what Oliveros liked to refer to as spatial progressions: “[Listeners will] experience the relationship of moving in space in relation to sounds moving in the same space while the space itself is changing.” This performance showcases the EIS as a co-creative improvising agent in a duet performance. The title, Sympoiesis, means “making with,” and following its usage by Donna Haraway, the term befits the kind of “art-science worlding” Oliveros was fabulating in the Expanded Instrument System. Century plays a free bass accordion, following Oliveros’ re-conception of the instrument as a stereophonic musical source producing long continuous sound with irregular envelopes and prominent combination tones. Layton’s 17-string bass guitar was custom-built and is played in the manner of a Pythagorean lyre, capable of unusual harmonic and resonant effects. The EIS used with permission of the Pauline Oliveros Trust and Ministry of Maåt.