Conceptual art photographer Miwa Yanagi is producing Tomoyoshi Murayama (村山 知義) 1924 play Ningen Kikai (人間機械). Performances will be held at the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto April 13-15, in conjunction with the Murayama exhibition. Tickets may be reserved at Miwa Yanagi’s official web site.
Students from Kyoto University of Art and Design (京都造形芸術大学) are holding an exhibition of video art in a dis-used office just east of Hyakumanben, on the south side of Imadegawa street. If you are interested in video art, it is well worth going to have a look. The exhibition will be open again next week (金土日). Check the flier above for details. Here’s the access map.
The BBC News web site currently has a good article about the Theremin, an electronic instrument invented by Russian Léon Theremin in 1919. Though it was not the first synthesizer, I consider the Theremin to have been the first NIME: earlier electronic synthesizers like the Telharmonium (1897) mainly used keyboard-like controllers. The Theremin, by contrast, is played with non-contact gestures (waving your hands in the air). It is a full blown new electronic instrument, the product of a futurist/modernist outlook and cutting-edge technical mastery (for the day), which opened the potential for completely new forms of human artistic expression.
I am not going to introduce the Theremin here. Better to start by reading the BBC article or Wikipedia entry, both linked above. You can get an idea of how it can be played by watching any number of videos on YouTube. Here’s Léon Theremin’s neice, Lydia Kavina, playing Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”:
The BBC article quotes an interesting statement from Theremin biographer Albert Glinsky which I would like to include here:
RCA felt this was going to replace the parlour piano and anyone who could wave their hands in the air or whistle a tune could make music in their home with this device. The Theremin went on sale in September 1929 at the relatively high price of $220 – a radio set cost about $30. It was also much more difficult to play than the advertising claimed. And just one month later came the Wall Street Crash. You took it home and found that your best efforts led to squealing and moaning sounds. So the combination of the fact that only the most skilled people could teach themselves how to play it and the fact that there was a downturn in the economy meant that the instrument really wasn’t a commercial success
This seems to be a somewhat common story with the most unusual/innovative new music technology – it is difficult to get make significant cultural impact.
The Theremin, however, has had good staying power. It is still a niche instrument with few virtuosi, but you can, in fact, purchase a Theremin and find someone to help you to learn how to make music with it. High quality Theremins are made by Moog Music. As it turns out, electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog got started by selling Theremin kits while he was still an undergraduate physics student. Moog represents an important link between the earliest NIMEs and contemporary electronic music technology and culture. For this reason we invited Dr. Moog as a Keynote speaker for NIME-04, which was held in Hamamatsu, Japan’s mecca for music technology.
I had the good fortune to invite Dr. Moog to give a talk at the company where I used to work, ATR, in southern Kyoto prefecture. It was a great experience to spend time talking with Dr. Moog and to introduce him to a huge and enthusiastic audience who showed up from all over Japan to hear him speak. I will never forget what a kind-hearted person Bob Moog was.
I’m really looking forward to this concert. What a cool poster!!! It has two holes in the shape of marimba mallets.
On the program:
More info. about composer Steve Reich is available at his official web site. You can also have a look at the Wikipedia (English, 日本語). Similarly, you might like to read up about Iannis Xenakis at the Wikipedia (English, 日本語) as well as the official Xenakis site in French and English.
Here are the details about the concert from the web page of the Kyoto Art Center:
The Australian Dance Theatre recently premiered PROXIMITY, a dance production using live video and visual effects. More information about the production is available in an article at the Create Digital Motion blog.
A performance of the slowest and longest musical piece in the world is underway in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt, Germany, pictured above. The piece, ASLSP, was written for piano by John Cage in 1985, then re-written for organ in 1987. Cage recommended that the piece be played “as slow as possible”, hence the title ASLSP, but did not specify its exact duration. In the year 2000, a performance of the ASLSP was started using an automatic organ. The duration of the the performance is set to last 639 years. Why Halberstadt and why 639 years? From the website of the project:
Michael Praetorius, a composer of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, wrote that an organ with the first modern keyboard arrangement had been built in Halberstadt’s cathedral in 1361. This organ was the first one with a claviature of 12 notes and this claviature is used on our keyboard instruments today. So one can say that the cradle of modern music was in Halberstadt. Subtract 1361 from the millennial year 2000, and the result is 639.
The performance is streamed over the web and can be listened to at the link: ASLSP. The project description contains the following lovely thought:
In view of our fast moving age, this piece of music is a way of trying to slow down our hectic lives. The “discovery of slowness” and the planting of a “musical apple tree” can be understood as symbols of confidence in the future.
I learned about this project via Prof. Clark Lunberry, who guest lectured in the seminar last year.
n.b. The images above reside on and are linked from the website of the ASLSP project.
