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Singing Arcs: Sounding the Early History of Electronic Music
No full textSinging Arcs is a performance-presentation made from sounds and texts of early electronically produced music, electronic sound reproduction and radio transmission. It recreates and reimagines the sounds produced by Elisha Grey’s Musical Telegraph (1875), William Duddell’s Singing Arc (1899), the Telharmonium of Thaddeus Cahill (1897) and the earliest binaural listening experience through the Theatrophone of Clément Ader (1881). Pioneering radio transmissions are re-enacted, employing wax cylinder phonographs, (as used by Reginald Fessenden (1906); Charles Apgar (1914) and Guglielmo Marconi) and analogous sound devices such as valve sets and moving-iron horn loudspeakers. Historic recordings from the British Library Sound Archive, the BBC and the Science Museum, among other sources, will be montaged, together with newly-made material by the two composer-presenters. The texts will almost exclusively be drawn from contemporary sources, patents and press reports, newly recorded onto cylinders and discs and reproduced on period machines. A slide presentation with contemporaneous imagery and texts will play simultaneously as part of the performance. Singing Arcs is derived from the research and source materials assembled for the large-scale composition Spiritus Telecommunitas by Federico Reuben, in collaboration with Aleks Kolkowski, commissioned as part of the Online Orchestra project and premiered in Truro Cathedral, July, 2015. (Duration: 30 minutes)
The early years of STEIM. Ambiguities of "Electro-Instrumental" music
No full textThe making of new musical instruments can be seen as a central strategy of musical innovation in the 20th century. One institution where ideas of novel electronic instruments have been especially fostered is STEIM in Amsterdam. Countless projects and artistic residencies have been commissioned at the 'Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music' for the past 40 years, with a main focus on the performing player and the dialogues of the body with electronic or digital setups. A significant difference to the research conducted at the major institutions for electronic music after 1970 is STEIM's leaning towards improvisation, both musical and structural. The studio has been run by Michel Waisvisz as artistic director for 25 years who can be seen as one of the often neglected origins of musical cultures such as glitch and circuit bending. However, he had the support of technicians at his hands, but the necessity to open and bend the black boxes provided by the instrument industry was a STEIM dogma which has even been tagged on the workshop wall in the 70s: „If you can't open it, you don't own it.“ Instruments like Waisvisz' cracklebox or his sensor-interface "The Hands" are unique configurations of technology to improvise with electronic sound, and they inspired a whole scene of international artists to work on their individual instruments at STEIM. Many excellent projects yielding from the residencies (e.g. Laetitia Sonami, Nicolas Collins, Jon Rose), as well as countless other instruments which do not float on the surface of an archiving process but are still tremendously significant for the writing of STEIM's story. The role of STEIM in the histories of electronic music has not yet been discussed in apt detail. Since 2009 the author of this abstract has dedicated his hours to building up the STEIM archive, especially the archive of the former director Michel Waisvisz in collaboration with Kristina Andersen. The big picture of a STEIM history which shall be presented at the AHEM conference reveals an aesthetic attitude where big ideas for the new often don't demand big budgets (sometimes yes) but definitely no high-tech.
To capture the standpoint from which STEIM has worked its influence on electronic music of the 20th century, we have to look back to the origins in the 60s. The founding story of STEIM shows strong links to the Dutch Jazz scene, to the serialism of the school of Kees van Baaren, and to political activism and the notion that renewal in music and society are unseparable.
In the autumn of 1967 a few of the Netherlands' most prominent and progressive composers Peter Schat, Jan van Vlijmen, Misha Mengelberg, Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Dick Raaymakers and Konrad Boehmer established a workgroup to create a research laboratory and development workplace for live electronic music. Two years later in 1969 the foundation STEIM was initiated as an 'instrument pool' following the completion of their opera 'Reconstructie'. How the work group managed to receive government fundings from the system they opposed is a wondrous story in its own from today's perspective. Dutch music theatre (often with a peculiar humour), improvised jazz and political discussions were the common ground for the diverse group of composers who set up STEIM. Whereas 'electro-instrumental' later on means to play a particular individual electronic instrument (as we mainly understand it today), the term at first pointed at the mere extension of 'traditional' live practice in jazz with electronic means. This contribution aims at telling a selection of stories sampled in the STEIM archive which share an understanding of the interface between body and electronic sound as a vital key to new music
Electroacoustic music in Finland in the 1960s and 1970s: a case study of Erkki Kurenniemi’s music and instrument design
No full textIn this presentation, I will introduce my PhD project which is focused on the history and analysis of Finnish electroacoustic music and electronic instrument design in the 1960s and 1970s. At the center of the focus is an instrument designer and composer Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941). Kurenniemi gained strong technical know-how, first, as an amateur radio operator already during the 1950s and later as a student and an assistant at the Department of Nuclear Physics in the University of Helsinki. During the academic year 1961–62, Kurenniemi was invited to build an electronic music studio for the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. Between 1964 and 1975, he built ten innovative instruments mainly employing digital logic in their sound synthesis, sequencer and memory applications. Amid his studio and instrument design, Kurenniemi pursued an artistic career and produced approximately 30 pieces of electroacoustic music including music and sound effects for films, theater, radio plays and exhibitions. In 1970, together with Jouko Kottila and Peter Frisk, Kurenniemi founded a company Digelius Electronics Finland with the main target in designing and marketing of his instruments. Failing to achieve a foothold in the market with any of its products, Digelius went to bankruptcy in 1976.
At the time when necessary technology was practically non-existent and the studios of the genre were rare and expensive to design, Kurenniemi’s work enabled a good part of Finnish electronic music production. Kurenniemi collaborated with several Finnish and Swedish composers and artists, and his visionary ideas and technical know-how had its influence on the works of his contemporaries – and vice versa. Thus, his work serves here as a lens through which I am observing also the broader cultural and historical circumstances of electronic music – even beyond the Finnish scene. Therefore, another central target of this study is to shed light on the intangible social networks of experimental artists and electronic music composers in the Nordic countries.
Beyond the temporal and geographical frames, the works by Kurenniemi and his Nordic collaborators also provide a more general point of view to the interaction between music and technology. The broad focus of my PhD project can be introduced with three main threads; music history (the point of view to the historical and cultural context in the Nordic countries in the 60s and the 70s), music technology (the point of view to the instrument design and usage) and electroacoustic music (the point of view to the aesthetics and musical analysis). The study belongs to the domain of music technology research and its scientific stance is interdisciplinary. On the one hand, for describing the social networks and technological development I employ the concepts from the framework of the social construction of technology as well as from the actor network and innovation theories. On the other, for analysing and describing the cultural and historical context of electronic and experimental music I employ music analysis and the concepts of the modern historiographical paradigm and aesthetic theory
Take-off flight performance in blue tits.
Get PDFThese data relate to an investigation into the effects of intra-specific variation in wing morphology on escape take-off perfromance in blue tits. As wing morphology varies seasonally and diurnally as a result of feather moult, feather wear and fluctuations in body mass, the aim was to determine whether this variation had an impact on a bird's take-off performance. The morphological and wing beat kinematic variables of individual birds are shown together with corresponding flight power requirements and flight performance
A search for ionized jets towards massive young stellar objects.
Get PDFRadio continuum observations using the Australia telescope compact array at 5.5, 9.0, 17.0 and 22.8 GHz have detected free-free emission associated with 45 of 49 massive young stellar objects and HII regions. Of these, 26 sources are classified as ionized jets (12 of which are candidates), 2 as ambiguous jets or disc winds, 1 as a disc-wind, 14 as HII regions and 2 were unable to be categorised. Classification as ionized jets is based upon morphology, radio flux and spectral index, in conjunction with previous observational results at other wavelengths. Radio-luminosity and momentum are found to scale with bolometric luminosity in the same way as low-mass jets, indicating a common mechanism for jet production across all masses. In 13 of the jets, we see associated non-thermal/optically-thin lobes resulting from shocks either internal to the jet and/or at working surfaces. Ten jets display non-thermal (synchrotron emission) spectra in their lobes, with an average spectral index of α = -0.55 consistent with Fermi acceleration in shocks. This shows that magnetic fields are present, in agreement with models of jet formation incorporating magnetic fields. Since the production of collimated radio jets is associated with accretion processes, the results presented in this paper support the picture of disc-mediated accretion for the formation of massive stars with an upper-limit on the jet phase lasting approximately 6.5×10⁴ yr. Typical mass loss rates in the jet are found to be 1.4 × 10⁻⁵ M☉ yr⁻¹ with associated momentum rates of the order 1-2 × 10⁻² M☉ km s⁻¹ yr⁻¹
Data associated with 'Raman spectroscopy of endoscopic colonic biopsies from patients with ulcerative colitis to identify mucosal inflammation and healing'
No full textThis repository contains the data referred to in the paper “Raman spectroscopy of endoscopic colonic biopsies from patients with ulcerative colitis to identify mucosal inflammation and healing”. It consists of experimental data for the Raman spectra obtained for mucosally healed (or quiescent) and inflamed colon tissue and statistical data to identify significant differences between the peak intensities in the Raman spectra for the two different sample groups
Dataset associated with 'Probing the Spiral Magnetic Phase in 6 nm Textured Erbium using Polarised Neutron Reflectometry'
No full textWe characterise the magnetic state of highly-textured, sputter deposited erbium for a lm of thickness 6 nm. Using polarised neutron reectometry it is found the lm has a high degree of magnetic disorder, and we present some evidence that the lms' local magnetic state is consistent with bulk-like spiral magnetism. This, combined with complementary characterisation techniques, show that thin lm erbium is a strong candidate material for incorporation into device structures
Dataset associated with 'Extraction-controlled terahertz frequency quantum cascade lasers with a diagonal LO-phonon extraction and injection stage'
Get PDFWe demonstrate an extraction-controlled terahertz frequency quantum cascade laser experimentally, and modelled it with an extended density matrix approach. In our design, a diagonal LO-phonon scattering process is used to achieve both carrier extraction and injection simultaneously. Its simplicity makes it an ideal platform to investigate the scattering injection process for high temperature operation of THz QCLs. Figure 1 shows the band structure and electronic wave functions, and table 1 details the structural parameters of four designs. Figure 2 and figure 3 are the characterisation results, including LIV curves and emission spectra at different temperature. Figures 4-8 are the numerical results, including the calculated IV curves, the carrier transport paths, the temperature evolution of carrier transport, and the effects of radiative diagonality on the current and the optical gain
Data Associated with 'Controlling Transmembrane Protein Concentration in Supported Lipid Bilayers'
Get PDFSupported lipid bilayers (SLBs) are attractive model systems for studying lipid behaviour, membrane proteins and for the recapitulation of minimal membrane associated processes and structures. Their formation via vesicle adsorption, rupture and fusion, restricts the concentration of membrane proteins that can be incorporated whilst still permitting high quality bilayer formation. Therefore, there is significant interest in routes to increase the protein concentration post bilayer formation. Here we demonstrate that the trans-membrane protein proteorhodopsin (pR) can be incorporated into such bilayers and retain its diffusive mobility, D ~0.39 µm2s-1. In-plane electric fields can be used to move these proteins, within the SLB, through electrophoresis. Using a combination of electric fields and patterning of the SLB we have been able to manipulate the proteorhodopsin in a controlled manner to yield a > 25-fold increase in local concentration, to ~1300 proteins µm-2. The build-up of protein was monitored by fluorescence microscopy and atomic force microscopy
The First Festival of Live Electronic Music at the University of California Davis (1967)
No full textIt is common knowledge that live electronic music is different from electronic music. However, it is quite difficult to find a generally accepted definition of live electronic music (or interactive electronic music), as the boundaries of this label are blurry. A major factor of disagreement is how much interaction with the electronic part is needed to consider a piece interactive electronic music. Paul Sanden’s definition explicitly shows this tension: “live electronic music is understood as any concert music, composed or performed primarily since the late 1950s presented in real time and involving some type of electronic sound. […] More recent scholars, however, understand the genre as performed music involving the electronic manipulation of acoustic sound and/or the electronic real-time production of sound. […E]lectronic manipulation must be actively generated for it to be live.” (88)
Gordon Mumma’s seminal chapter from almost forty years earlier, “Live-Electronic Music,” (1975) offers a completely different scenario. In Mumma, the label encompasses: instrument with fixed media, lone fixed media, amplified small sounds, performed electronic equipment, and live performance with digital computers. Some of these practices, for example the lone fixed media, would not necessarily considered live electronics nowadays.
Technology-wise, many things have changed since then and even more has changed from the early 1960s. Our idea of liveness followed these changes. In this paper I will use the First Festival of Live Electronic Music (FFLEM), organized in 1967 by Larry Austin and hosted by the University of California in conjunction with the Mills College Tape Centre, as a case study to explore the actual meaning of the term “live electronic music” in the earliest stages of its history. Among the pieces performed there were: Activities (1967) by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Whistlers (1966) by Alvin Lucier, Mesa (1966) and Third Horn (1967) by Mumma, Wolfman (1964) and Frogs (1966) by Robert Ashley. FFLEM also featured names of composers now disappeared from the musicological discourse such as the Californian Stanley Lunetta and Anthony Gnazzo.
FFLEM represents the perfect case study to explore the meaning of the category “live electronic music” in the 1960s: 1. It marks one of the very first occurrences of the term “live electronic music”; 2. Held in 1967, FFLEM falls between John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960), Karlheinz Stockausen’s Mikrophonie II (1965) and David Tudor’s Rainforest (1968)—all milestones in the discourse on the development of various experiences of live electronic music (e.g. Mumma, 297–8; Manning, 159–64); 3. FFLEM was embedded in other forms of discussion on experimentalism and the use of technology: the magazine Source, edited in the same years by the same people who organized the festival, underpins the aesthetical and curatorial choices of the Festival; 4. The composers present at the Festival (especially Behrman and Mumma) picked up on the DIY aesthetics previously championed by the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and marked a rupture with the studio activity on the European model