A Walk Through My Living Room with Cageian Environment and Cheeping Moose 1983
Friday, April 3, 2020 at 4:07PM In 1983, in my living room in North Carlton, which held most of my electronics, books, CDs, etc, I set up my synthesizer to play a multi-voiced patch. Inspired by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller's tapes for HPSCHD, I had each voice in a different tuning, timbre, pitch range, etc. I used Aardvarks IV, my electronic random information generating box, to control the Serge synthesizer, and put the output of the Serge into four small loudspeakers placed around the room. I also took a circuit-bent Bullwinkle Radio (a present from my late artist friend, Richard Williams), which I had modified to produce semi-predictable cheeping sounds, and placed it on a chair in the middle of the room. Then, once this installation was going full tilt, I walked through the room with my Super 8 camera, documenting the room and the music in it. My wandering through the room formed the shaping of the piece for the camera. It was kind of dim in the room, but I thought that the lighting would be effective, anyway. I don't think I ever publicly showed the film (I might be wrong there), and for 37 years, it just sat on my shelf, and, like the super 8 film of Snodger in the Square, it occasionally glared at me, demanding to be converted to video and made a bit brighter. Finally in March 2020, I found a place to convert the film and had the money to pay for the conversion. I then took the conversion of the pretty dim film and treating it in Vegas, was able to adjust the contrast and brightness so that things were indeed visible. The amazing thing for me, on seeing the film 37 years later, is the interesting autobiographical documentary nature of the film. Things like the two Ian Robertson posters on my wall, the St Theresa of Avila text (found by Ned Sublette, caligraphed by Ernie Althoff) on another wall, the various records, cassettes lying around, (which shows what I was listening to at the time), the many Bullwinkle tchotchkes that were all over the room, and the electronic instruments, both playing (Serge and Aardvarks IV) and not playing (like the Aim-65 computer) for this piece. Reviving this piece almost 4 decades later, I'm delighted. It combines so many of my interests at the time, and I think it sounds great, in its own lo-fi way, and is visually a lot of fun. Maybe you'll like it too. In any case, I now offer it (as Martha Graham would have said, quoting Emily Dickinson) as a "letter to the world," and hope that there are folks out there who will appreciate seeing this 1983 slice-o-art-n-life.
