Tudor Trails
Tudor Trust travails… a travail-log and brief update on recent activities - a 2 year tail.
Phil Edelstein
Port Washington
June 2014
See also latest here www.cieweb.net/cie/cie/current_activities.html
Here’s a bit of a survey of recent activity tracking back sequence of activities. John Driscoll and I seem to retell this story in various forms of late and I needed place to re-gather thoughts on points of possible interest... a log a diary... breadcrumbs.
Some fateful date in fall of 2012, Jean Rigg asked whether John Driscoll and myself would be interested in taking on stewardship of the Tudor Trust . To which we pretty much said simply sure and then wondered what it was we had.
The Art of David Tudor CD release New World Records launch party was May of 2012.
2013 was the 40th anniversary of New Music in New Hampshire. That gave rise to Rainforest IV, then not long after, Composers Inside Electronics (www.cieweb.net ). There’s also some tendrils to Greg Kramer and Harvestworks (www.harvestworks.org) we can find there as well.
While normally mostly oblivious to such milestones, this passage loomed large in my psyche and hung with me as needing a coming together.
It was a suggestion from Julie Martin to come to the Exploratorium for the “Interspatial: E.A.T., Cybernetic Serendipity, and the Future of Creative Collaboration” - largely a remembrance of E.A.T. and resonated the need to carry forward. Most interesting new insights to hear Else Garmire and the Nakai/Thoben talks.
That visit wound up the catalyst catalyst in the fall of 2013 that kicked off sequence of other actives. John and I then took the chance for a visit to the Getty Research Institute to see Nancy Perloff and to look through the Tudor Archive there. Turned out the we got a chance to scratch the 40th anniversary itch with visits in SF, Marin and LA with the west coast CIE contingent: DeMarinis, Viola, Jones all in their way doing quite well.
From the San Francisco and L.A. trip we came away with You Nakai, Wilm Thoben and treasure trove of the Tudor’s scores/architecture/notes.. Key for me was having a more complete essential set of the diagrams David produced along the way. We had a chance to view the Synapse and George Bolling videos and have on the list the need to get better access to digitized versions of those.
To back track to late 2012, Julie Martin had supplied a roughly scanned PDF of the long out of print Pavilion book (Kluver, Rose, Martin) describing among other things the Gordon Mumma - David Tudor E.A.T. sound console and related Tudor works (Microphone, Pepscillator, PepsiBird, Anima Pepsi). There’s an iconic diagram there of a channel (of 8) with wealth of other wonderments.
We suspected that a version of the actual circuit was in the Tudor collection at Wesleyan under the curatorial care of Ron Kuivila.
John then brought forward the schematic for a variant that he had obtained from Gordon Mumma ca. 1972 which was part of his path to Chocoruha.
After discussion on this with Matt Wellins who had dug us up for interview to post to Ubu sound archive, Matt got us connected to Michael Johnsen a composer and engineer living and working in Pittsburgh.
As an aside, it was Monobird i heard David perform also around 1972 that was the my undoing that too has it’s roots in Pepsibird and Pavilion. I remember hanging from the catwalk above David, the needle jabbed in my ear… junkie on his first hit. This was accompanied by John Cage “Birdcage” also produced that year.
We had a general idea that backtracking the 40 years history of Rainforest IV brings us to Pavilion and 9 Evenings and clearly needed to best get handle on that to be able to responsibly touch the Trust.
The Diagram from the Mills version had been available for some time (through Matt Rogalsky and others) …
Some photo’s : David and unknown person at the 1970 Osaka sound console, snapshots of the Pepsi modulator as research Dec 2013.
We then arranged with Ron Kuivila a look’see through the Tudor instrument collection at Wesleyan in Dec 2013 with Dan Fishkin, Matt Wellins, and Peter Blasser. Michael soon declared the possibility to build new version of the box using vintage parts.
I had implemented a couple of MAX patches including a version using the faust~ DSP library (link) for single sample feedback (especially for Pepsillator) . It’s equally interesting to see if MAX gen~ might be equally good platform for the Tudor feedback works.
Matt Rogalsky has some years back done Plogue Bidule patch for Microphone mix. We hear it as quite essential to know the acoustic range of the original as compared to the software and hybrid implementations. We have that available and will be following up with Matt to gain more experience for it’s use.
As part of discussion started with the Merce Cunningham Foundation, we have comon interest with them to see that there are live perfromance versions of David’s work as performable repetoire. The foundation is focused on the set of Tudor works for Merce Cuniingham dances (see www.mercecunningham.org/ dancecapsules) . There is also some good progress on putting together Weatherings in original analog form, software and hybrids. Looks like that will largely go into 2015. This came out of discussion with Patricia Lent and Lynn Wischern from the Merce Cunningham Trust.
Last summer we had also reached out to John King, David Behrman, Sophia and Andy Olgieska, Laura Kuhn, Mimi Johnson, Jacqueline Monnier, Molly Davis, Gordon Mumma , John DS Adams and others to garner input into a Tudor exhibition.
Ron Kuivila then had John and I participate in a Rainforest variant as part of SEAMUS in Feb. 2013.
We then had opportunity to go back up to Wesleyan in May 15-18 2014 to try out Michael’s breadboard of the Pepsi Modulator.
We hope to move this to a limited run of 8 channels some time in the Fall of 2014.
Coming out of the SEAMUS Rainforest, Stephan Moore has arranged for CIE Tudor Trust Rainforest IV July 20 at Caramoor (with You Nakai and Dan Fishkin). This is as part of Sonic Delights (running from June 7 to Nov - a must hear collection of works by Bielecki, Anderson, Lockwood, Moore and others). http://www.caramoor.org/events/garden-sonic-delights/ We hope to also firm up interest and atendees for an informal workshop on that Monday and Tues.
Bielecki/Anderson modulated fountain.
In June, John and I provided some additional discussion on presentation of E.A.T. 9 Evenings Bandoneon presentation at “Sunday on Broadway” screenings.highlight connection between Bandoneon and later works. The series is a showing of the 9 Evenings works on video.
From Michael Johnsen, we also have his collection of transducer patents (need to send of to Bobby) and material he has on Harald Bode and the technical papers from 1951-52 as translated by [what i take to be] Hugh LeCaine’s crew in the mid-1950’s. Other gems from Michael include links to: http://cec.sonus.ca/econtact/13_4/index.html (worth tracking down more on the Tempophon and Klangumwadler let alone the vocoder and frequency shifter materials, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe_and_Louis_Barron , messaien's fete des belles eaux (a “sonne et lumier” ): http://www.mediafire.com/?tgjzmi4ygyiand
CELLPHONIA ...
As another thread of work tracking back to Tudor inspirations, Steve Bull arranged some familiar resonances in new Cellphonia context for Wavefarm in Acra NY for June 14 live broadcast…. http://www.wgxc.org/archives/8307 (Steve Bull with John Driscoll, Hans Tammen, Brooks Williams, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Phil Edelstein). This is E.A.T.’ish with apologies to the legacy of Bell Labs - cell phone calls digitized and passed to the participants for swizzling. For this instance, thematically genetically modified crops including an array of real and captured transducer objects and bit of reticulated neural synthesis renderings from Scot.
The Waveform visit had some delightful serendipities. Real surprise wihen Galen pulled out the 9 Evenings and Brooklyn Museum E.A.T. program notes and catalog (1966, 1968). I have a copy of the 9 Evenings - a treasured gift from David, but the extensive Brooklyn museum publication just needs to be more broadly available... what a treasure. There’s references to the show to be had but the catalog is quite something else.
Hans Tammen had brought by Joker Nies who had recent cell phone pictures of the 1950’s WDR studio with much of the early equipment that looks to be dating to soon after the technical articles Michael Johnsen pointed us to on Ubu…. http://www.ubu.com/emr/articles.html . Need to put visit to Cologne on the next Rhein valley cruise. I keep thinking about the Ruhr Museum in Essen us place to get on the map as well.
Tom Ditto (the Tom previously known as DeWitt) managed to come by and then John and I got tour of the Burchkhardt laser lab.
You might be interested in release of new book … Television Becoming Unglued Edited BY Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jiminez including sections on Buffalo Media Studies (John Minkowky) and materials on Dewitt/Edelstein Pantomation, WNET-TV Lab on the Paik Abe, Hearn and Rutt-Etra and other video synthesis activities. (link). Newly released book (June 2014) sitting on the shelf at the Wavefarm Study Center.
Composers Inside Electronics is at Socrates Sculpture Park for a one day event June 21 with You Nakai and others organized by Norte Maar.
]RAINFOREST PORTUGAL
Matt Rogalsky wrapped up the Portugal Rainforest. We’re looking forward to adding those object to the CIE impulse library.
We’re also looking forward to getting documentation from Paul DeMarinis on the Rainforest in Montreal back in Feb.
TECHNOLOGY...
There’s various technology initiatives in progress. We’re due to rework the Arduino Dynamixel Arbotix Xbee technology based on what we learned from John’s recent sound laser HarvestWorks residency. There’s been some misery on the use of the Tom Resch tconvolutionUB~.mxo and MAX 6.1 on some Mac’s (thought works perfectly fine on others … arrgh). Need to debug that one. Also some evaulation in progress on Raspberry Pi and Arduino Yun that looks promising going back to my unix bones.
On tip from Ron Kuivila, I’ve made some progress on javascruipt UI based on Charlie Roberts interfaces.js (www.charlieroberts.com). Looking to be useful for iPad control for educational walkabouts for live installation. Preview of that found it’s way into the SEAMUS Rainforest.
We have from that now also the SuperCollider patch from Ron and Peter Blasser; MAX patch from Stephan Moore. From Wavefarm with Steve Bull thread, I have working example to his sound integrated to feed my “player” patch. From thread with Scot Gresham-Lancaster, some soundjack and jacktrip streaming steps (in the end devolved to hangout). I threatened skype, GISS/nicecast/icecast2 and baudot but no takers.
There’s also intriguing looking audio generation in Charlie’s jabber.js but haven’t had chance to get there yet. Adds to the iPad Mira, TouchOSC and GyroOSC extensions i’ve been using for routing and control. Looks like i should dive into extending the Impulsions chaos patch for a Rossler fractal. Just been poking by with the a-clifford for various purposes.
Other tidbits and sources ... www.wegenerinstitute.org antartic hyrophone (with thanks to Locus Sonus), www.liss.org seismographs.
OTHER THREADS....
John wrapped up residency at Harvestworks with robotic sound lasers. Workshop being planned for the summer with Paul Geluso and Bob Bielecki. He heads out to Mills for Tudor Residency in October for a week.
Fujiko Nakaya has fog installation at the Glasshouse in Connecticut running through the fall also in the do not miss this category.
We’re expecting further developments from John Holzapfel-Callan on a Tudor biography. Rumor has it that Gordon Mumma indicated that he has book the works. That should prove to be also quite interesting in taking forward his writing (especially since the 1974 chapter in the “The Development and Practice of Electronic Music” Appleton/Perera book… www.ubumexico.org.mx/test/emr/articles/mumma_liveelectronic.pd
We are in discussions including presentation at gallery in NY fall of 2014 and possibility of part of E.A.T. exhibition with major museum in Europe summer of 2015. We are now well positioned to look for opportunities to “out” the Tudor Pepsi pieces and seek interested performance venues for that, Rainforest versions and CIE works.
We have a collection of Tudor and CIE documentation on the www.cieweb.net website trees under this for sites for jdriscoll, pedelstein, dtudor, rainforest which is generally available on the internet. We also have an internal CIE gallery2 repository with over 3500 images/documents/files.
