Requiem in A Modulation

From Andrew Garton's wiki

Requiem in A Modulation is an online, on-air, on site composition and new media art work for spoken word testimonials, a towering wall of working valve radios, long distance mountain song and solo voice. Conceived and proposed by Andrew Garton.

Radio built by Linus Andersson, born 1888 in Ovansjö - Storvik in Gästrikland, Sweden. (c) Britt-Marie Sohlström, BY-NC-ND 2.0 CC Licence

Contents

Introduction

Requiem in A Modulation is multi-modal on-air, online, on site composition and new media art work for remote voice calls (or the dying art of remote mountain singing), spoken word testimonials on the earliest impressions of radio in urban and rural communities, naturally occurring acoustic sound delays, solo voice, aleatoric[1] micro-tonal scales inspired by the sacred music of the Mevlevi Dervishes and as many working valve radios the project can acquire.

Inspired by in part by Mozart's final work, Requiem Mass in D Minor[1], Requiem in A Modulation is a mass mourning the closure of amplitude modulation marking the transition from analogue radio and television broadcasting to the wider bandwidth digital spectrum.

Requiem in A Modulation will have a life online, on air and on site. Online it will field testimonials that will be collated into an audio archive. The final work will be broadcast on air and individual movements will be performed and recorded at specific locations.

Requiem in A Modulation is also proposed as a joint collaboration between Austrian broadcaster ORF/Kunstradio, Australia's ABC and the online media arts archive, POOL.

This document describes each of these components of the Requiem including its structure, specific requirements and background materials. Note changes are made to this document as new information is sourced and the overall project refined.

Background

Requiem in A Modulation laments the demise of the analogue spectrum, it's death knell so to speak, focusing on the regions/countries of the world where analogue/AM is still very much in use.

In essence, the Requiem is a story about people, not technology... its speaks of a time when the right to communicate on the airwaves could be made on our own terms, where the means to receive and broadcast could be built with no more than a few dollars worth of components and a soldering iron, not through the mediation of privatised spectrum and technologies that are no longer within reach of the general public.

Many countries will see the shut-down of analogue / AM broadcasts, both radio in TV, from 2009 on wards. The US will halt analogue television in January 2009. Australia will do the same, both television and radio, in 2012. The Chinese will wait a little longer, but Japan and many EU countries have chosen 2012 as their cut off date. By 2020 it is unlikely any analogue broadcasting, as we know it today, will exist.

Components

Underscore

The MAK, Great Hall

THE UNDERSCORE is an on site performance work accentuating the acoustic qualities of The Great Hall, The MAK (Museum for Applied Arts, Contemporary Art), Vienna, with solo voice, voice actuated choral resonator, hard curve saturation and as many working valve radios that can be safely accommodated within the performance area.

THE UNDERSCORE is also an interactive work. Audience members will be invited at the outset of the piece to tune a temporary installation of valve radios within available "white space", that is, un-used frequencies within the analogue radio spectrum. Others will be invited to make what ever sounds they wish from any level of the Great Hall... they may whisper, they may shout, but not use any intelligible words.

To further the immersive effect of the sound work it is proposed that all available surface areas of the Great Hall be awash with video projections. Real-time and close up video of the lit up radio dials / face plates and / or the fully lit valves within the interior of each radio.

The UNDERSCORE is based on the four movements of the Requiem:

  1. Babel - random voices, whispering and shouting, unintelligible sounds morphing with pre-recorded vocals of remote voice communications indigenous to Austria;
  2. Bell - European church bells that were the loudest sounds to be heard until industrialisation;
  3. Frequency - Radio spectrum frequencies performed on as many valve radios as can be acquired;
  4. Tuning - solo voice bringing disparate elements of prior movements, including live sampling of the first, towards conclusion.

For more details on this component of the Requiem, see THE UNDERSCORE.

Voice

Voice is an integral feature of the Requiem and will be produced, collated and sought for, partially scored and performed in four individual parts. Mountain songs, as described below, solo voice and a spontaneous "choir" of audience members will be realised through the UNDERSCORE component of the work.

Mountain songs

The Requiem's voice works reference the intangible losses that digital spectrum will bring about, and what is soon to be entirely forgotten since the introduction of electronic communications. For example, it may take only a single generation more to not be taught the original long distance vocal techniques such as yodelling[1] techniques of the Styrian and Carinthian farmers of Austria and the versed yelling of Moravia[1], a central European region founded in the 8th Century located in the east of the Czech Republic.

Testimonials

A call for testimonials will be put to radio listeners and the public in general, who may submit audio in any format they can provide.

Additionally, interviews may be conducted encouraging interviewees to recall their earliest memories of radio broadcasting.

All testimonials will be available online on a shared media resource such as the Pool.

Sample testimonials

Online interview with Lenka Simerska (LS), Czech Republic, republished with permission.

What do you think will be the immediate affects of the closure of the analogue broadcast spectrum?
LS: ...its so sad, my grandfather is 81 and loves to have 5 radios on at the same time and switch between them.
What are you own earliest memories of radio?
LS: my radio memory is the voice of america and radio free europe recieved with heavy disturbance and on low volume so that neighbours won't hear it (dangerous) and than long talks that followed to discuss what was just announced (anti-communist revolt)
LS: my early memory too... a young girl sitting at granfather's radio that has a round button and a scale with written names of cities: praha, varsava, berlin, kodan, atheny etc. when i turned the button, the tones and languages would change and sometimes there would be morse tones
LS: i can show you a place where they made the waves disturbance. its a garden of antennas in a field. at least i can take a picture of that for you.
LS: btw, one of the forbidden radios used to read lists of new signatures of Charta 77[1] in evenings. its a very special memory of a monotonous voice saying name after name...

Schedule

This schedule was revised as of 02 Dec 08. A more detailed schedule would be based on possible outcomes of my ongoing stay in Austria and what may be achieved from Dec through to late January 2009.

Item Task Start Date Due Date Location
Pre-production Test / sample valve radios Graz
Beta test trial of PD patch
Record mountain calls ORF/Graz
BREAK 16 Dec 08 04 Jan 09
Performance Preparation – THE UNDERSCORE 05 Jan 09 16 Jan 09 Graz/Wien
Performance MAK NIGHT Mid-late 09 Mid-late 09 Wien
Pre-production Re-sampling, arrangements from MAK
(up to 10 days) Graz/Wien
Broadcast Performance/broadcast Requiem TBC TBC Wien
(Reliant on ongoing discussions with ABC

Rights management

All works created from Requiem in A Modulation, unless otherwise specified, would be released under an Attribution only Creative Commons licence in the jurisdictions this work would be produced in.

In Australia, such a licence states one is free to:

  • Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

  • You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

For more information on this licence see:

Acknowledgements

Andrew Garton's appearance in Austria would not have been possible without the financial, logistical and infrastructure support of ESC im Labor, Graz.

In addition, Garton's ongoing stay in Austria has been made possible by the personal support provided by Reni Hofmueller (ESC im Labor), Jogi Hofmueller (mur.at) Doris Carstensen (University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz), Elisabeth Zimmerman (KunstRadio) and Grant McHerron (apc.au, Australia).

For information about Andrew Garton, projects and background: http://agarton.org/

References

Audio processing

Voice processing will be entirely managed by an original patch designed for Pure Data (PD).

PD Patch

The following sets out a draft operational flow for the PD patch.

  1. Long, sustained note is sung
  2. A scale, based on a pre-selected Makam[1], is invoked
  3. Over time (can be calibrated live) the scale forms a chord, re-pitching the original input/voice. The chord type can be pre-defined.
  4. The chord is sustained for a set period (can be calibrated live)
  5. A second note is sung... the process repeats.

Additions to the above:

  • A new makam can be selected either on "the fly", or added to a "tuning grid" (x), much like a radio dial (note, possible visual metaphor)
  • Chord rules can be re-defined on real-time, or added to the tuning grid (x/y) (note, possible use of hardware controller, or radio dial visual metaphor)
  • Length of note/delay may be re-defined in real-time, or added to the tuning grid, x/y/z
Instructions

resoscale~-help.pd

Load one of the scales urmawi.scl.tab or saba_sup.scl.tab using the "bang" button next to the "scale" input field in each of the four resoscale~ objects, which will load the scale into the tuning objects. The base_pitch numberbox in the center will set the base pitch, the number actually is the step in the scale. The number of steps is shown in "scale_length", it's 7 for both makams.

Music theory

The music theory behind Requiem in A Modulation.

Spectrum research

Software

Notes

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