A free concert of experimental electronic music featuring several sound artists including Loud Objects, univac, Casperelectronics and Jeff Boynton was held on Oct. 10 at the Daniel Recital Hall.
The artists in the “Remake/Remodel the Future” concert moved between the boundaries of sound, noise and music and they gave a performance with their self-built music instruments. This may sound less than spectacular but the special thing is that the artists built their musical instruments by cracking open electronic toys or other sound making devices. The results are completely new and unique pieces of artwork that double as music instruments.
Tom Koch of Univac, a graduate student from Cal State Long Beach, organized the show in collaboration with Rychard Cooper of CSULB’s Electronic Music Department and the University Art Museum. Koch describes his performance as a happening with several circuit-bent gadgets.
“Each generate unique sounds no human was meant to hear,” Koch said. “Many have optical pitch control and human contact resistance control.”
Koch projected a Quartz Composer patch on a screen, which showed slow circuit image abstracts. Collaged with three camera feeds through the center of the screen, it created video feedback in the center rectangle that was seeded both by the superimposed images of the first two cameras on each side in addition to bits of the circuit images.
A different artist group from New York, Loud Objects, used electronic connections not to create a circuit of images but a circuit of strange noises similar to those you hear when you try to dial a fax number by phone. The artists work on an overhead projector so the audience can see the movements of cable. The performance was interfused by several sounds of airiness played on traditional classic instruments like a triangle, xylophone or a drum.
The idea of cracking kids’ toys to rebuild them into musical instruments already appeared in Koch’s childhood.
“When I was a kid I used to take apart watches, radios and motors just to see how they worked, then try to get them put back together and working again,” he said.
Later in film school, Koch made soundtracks for his own films. He faked doing multi-track using tape decks and metal shelves and objects with contact mics and effects.
“Much of my music is about creating automated feedback loops between different gadgets and sound devices and having one control the other which in turn triggers another—cascading recombinant feedback noise systems. The tape loop machines got me interested in taking apart trickle-down technology like tape decks, walkmans, and kids toys to see what kind of new sounds I could extract from them.” Koch said.
Koch has been working as a Mac tech for 15 years and a consultant with his own business, Omni Tech.
Students who saw the performance were impressed at the artists’ use of these innovative instruments.
“It´s something we should be doing a lot more often.” said Sean Dunnahoe, a masters student of Music in Musicology.
Joe Kaplan, a master student of music composition supplements, said, “It´s just [really] good!”
The “Remake/Remodel the Future” concert was presented in the background of Brian Eno´s audio-visual installation 77 Million Paintings, which also works with images and sounds, and currently is on display at the UAM until Dec. 13.
The next event related to Eno’s art is “Complexity and Beauty: The Art of Eno,” a lecture by Rychard Cooper, a sound technician and electronic music instructor at CSULB, at the UAM at 7 p.m.
