Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

Women in Computer Music:
Mara Helmuth, Curator

About the Music

This collection of works represents
a journey through different sonic
perspectives, from composers who
have impacted us, and compelled
us to think differently about music,
sound art, Komposition, Geschlecht, oder
Technologie. They disrupt stereotypes
about what music by women should
Sei. Each composition represented
here is an uncommon and meaningful
adventure by a sound-exploring com-
poser, ranging from Laurie Spiegel’s
1987 work to Elizabeth Hoffman’s
piece from December 2019, und das
approaches taken are diverse.

The pieces are arranged to pro-
vide three concert-length listening
sessions. The first session begins
with the scratchy, driving rhythms
of Judith Shatin’s “Tape Music” in
stereo or 5.1 Audio-, proceeds to explo-
rations of remote, underwater sounds
in Annea Lockwood’s “Dusk,” to
Elizabeth Hoffman’s subtle and tim-
brally churning “Clouds Pattern.”
The precise and playful acousmatic
Komposition, “Bastet” by Elsa Justel,
precedes Judy Klein’s mesmerizing
tribute to lost lives in “Railcar.” An
exuberant memorial follows this,
to a former teacher, in Elizabeth
Hinkle-Turner’s “EvenMoreduSt.”

Laurie Spiegel’s timbral rhythms
from her piece “Passage” begins the
second session, followed by Hildegard
Westerkamp’s sonic love poem “F ¨ur
Dich—For You,” based on a text by
Rainer Maria Rilke. Natasha Barrett’s
intricate audio work, “Pockets of
Space,” was originally created for
a virtual reality environment and
may be heard here in binaural (für
headphones) or stereo audio versions.
The new, spirited composition by
Margaret Schedel, “QfwfQ,” for the
duo Hear | Say, presents melodic and
rhythmic drive. The final work in this

doi:10.1162/COMJ a 00544

session is a compelling video by Load-
bang performing Paula Matthusen’s
“Old Fires Catch Old Buildings.”

The third session begins with Carla
Scaletti’s extraordinary “H→gg," In-
volving sonification of potential
Higgs boson particle data from the
Large Hadron Collider atom-smasher
at CERN, in stereo, and in multichan-
nel, or video, of a dance collaboration
version of the piece. Nächste, Katharine
Norman’s “A Walk I Do” reveals el-
egantly unfolding flute-based sounds
and graphics. Frances White’s “The
Old Rose Reader,” written for and
performed by violinist-composer
Mari Kimura, is a meditation on the
beautiful French names of old rose
species and related stories. “Sound
Dunes” is my third compositional
collaboration with t ´arogat ´o performer
Esther Lamneck, whose incredible
improvisations, as well as the natural
contours of sand dunes, inspired this
Stück.

To make the number of pieces
manageable, I decided to include
works that are not installations,
because those could not be fully
experienced online, and pieces by
living composers who are usually not
focused on performing. I also wanted
a measure of geographical diversity.
There were more composers’ works I
would have liked to include, sowie
as other strategies for inclusion. ICH
hope you will find them in a future
anthology. I would like to thank
Judy Klein for the perceptive advice
she gave me at many steps in the
curatorial process.

To set playback levels at an appro-
priate uniform volume, you could first
set the level for the loud beginning of
piece six, Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner’s
“EvenMoreduSt.”

Teil 1 (50 minutes)

Tape Music (2015)—Judith Shatin

“Tape Music” is a meditation on
tape as a collection of materials that

are emblematic of our throwaway
Kultur, and can still be used to mend
items that would otherwise be con-
signed to the trash heap. It is also
a nostalgic tribute to the genre of
tape music that persists despite the
ongoing changes in playback media.
The initial spur for “Tape Music”
came from an NPR broadcast about
a factory. As I heard the sounds of
boxes being taped up, I immediately
decided to compose “Tape Music.”
Assisted by sound engineer Mark
Graham, I made recordings of myself
ripping, cutting, squashing, and oth-
erwise messing with a wide variety
of types of tape, as well as taping,
and then slashing, boxes. Various
microphones were used and isolated
on different tracks to maximize the
sonic potential. The original version
of “Tape Music” is for 5.1 surround
Klang, but it also exists for stereo and
quadrophonic versions.

Track Duration: 7:09

Judith Shatin is a composer and
sound artist whose musical practice
engages our social, cultural, Und
physical environments. She draws
on expanded instrumental palettes
and a cornucopia of the sounding
Welt, from machines in a coal
mine to the shuttle of a wooden
loom, a lawnmower racing up a
lawn, or the sounds of zippers being
pulled. Timbral exploration and
dynamic narratives are fundamental
to her compositional designs, Und
collaboration with musicians, artists,
and community groups are central to
her musical life. Her sonic antennae
are always up, listening for the
sounds on the edges of acoustic
instruments as well as everyday
objects and phenomena. Shatin’s
music has been commissioned by
organizations including the Barlow
Endowment, Fromm Foundation,
Carnegie Hall, und viele andere.
It has been featured at festivals
including Aspen, BAM Next Wave,
and Havana in Spring. Orchestras that
have presented her work include the

110

Computermusikjournal

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 1. Judith Shatin.

Figur 2. Annea Lockwood.

in collaboration with Nate Wooley,
trumpet.

Lockwood’s music has been pre-
sented in many venues and festivals,
einschließlich der 2016 Tectonics/BBC
Festival, Glasgow; Issue Project
Room, Brooklyn; Miller Theatre
Composer Portrait series, New York;
and Caf ´e Oto, London. Her music has
been issued on CD, vinyl, and online
on labels including Lovely Music,
New World, and Ambitus.

Clouds Pattern (2019)—Elizabeth
Hoffman

To make myself understood and
to diminish the distance between
us, I called out: “I am an evening
cloud too.” They stopped still,
evidently taking a good look at
me. Then they stretched towards
me their fine, transparent, rosy
wings. That is how evening
clouds greet each other. Sie
had recognized me. (Rainer Maria
Rilke, Stories of God)

I am grateful to have had the
chance to work intensively for several
weeks while on a Klingler Electro-
acoustic Residency in 2018 at Bowling
Green State University, Entwicklung
the eight-channel materials that are
the source for the stereo version of
this piece.

Track Duration: 9:33

Elizabeth Hoffman studied electronic
music with B ¨ulent Arel while pursu-
ing an MA at Stony Brook University,
and then computer music with Di-
ane Thome, John Rahn, and Richard
Karpen during doctoral studies at the
University of Washington School of
Musik. Daria Semegen was also a
strong influence. Briefly on faculty
at the University of Minnesota, Dann
at New York University since 1999,

Denver and Houston Symphonies,
as well as the American Composers
Orchestra. Her music can be heard on
labels including Centaur, Innova, Und
Neuma. Shatin’s interest in electronic
media began while she was still in
high school, und in 1987 she founded
the Virginia Center for Computer
Music at the University of Virginia,
where she is William R. Kenan, Jr.
Professor Emerita.

Dusk (2012)—Annea Lockwood

This piece is dedicated to Elizabeth
Wood and features percussionist
William Winant. Hydrothermal vents
were given to the project by Dr.
Timothy Crone, the Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory, Columbia Univer-
Stadt. Transposed bat recordings were
from Avisoft Bioacoustics, Berlin:
(www.avisoft.com/sounds.htm).

With warm thanks to Dr. Timotheus
Crone for the use of his hydrothermal

vent recordings, made on the mid-
ocean Juan de Fuca Ridge, 200 miles
off the coast of Washington State, Und
discussed in his article “The Sounds
Generated by Hydrothermal Vents”
published in PLoS ONE.

If possible, please playback this

piece using a subwoofer, Weil
some frequencies important to the
piece are in the region of 45 Hz.

Track Duration: 6:59

Annea Lockwood is known for her
explorations of the rich world of
natural acoustic sounds and environ-
gen, in works ranging from sound
art and environmental installations,
through text-sound to concert mu-
sic. Recent works include “Water
and Memory,” for the Holon Scratch
Orchestra, Israel; the installation
Wild Energy, a collaboration with Bob
Bielecki—a site-specific installation
focused on geophysical, atmospheric
and mammalian infrasound and ultra-
sound sources; and “Becoming Air”

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

111

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 3. Elizabeth Hoffman.

Figur 4. Elsa Justel.

Bastet (2004)—Elsa Justel

Bastet, a naughty cat deity, has slipped
into the piano box. Confused by the
strange appearance of this place, sie
tries to find the exit while holding
onto the strings.

This project is based on the notions
of ambiguity, instability, and chance.
The material comes from sounds
produced by piano strings, guitar, Und
snare drum through unconventional
modes of excitement (by rubbing,
scratching and hitting, or using
various items, such as wooden and
metal sticks, nail file, Papier, usw.). ICH
was exploring the spectral instability
unique to string sounds with the
intention of producing nuances of
character and effects of ambiguity.
Some digital treatments allowed
me to change the personality of
Klang, so it was possible to obtain
sounds similar to percussion or
wind instruments. Auch, I have let
chance, as an ineffable assistant,
play a role to lead me to unexpected
discoveries. [English translation:
Franc¸ ois Couture]

“Bastet” was realized in 2004 bei
the studio of the Association pour
la recherch ´e et l’exp ´erimentation
musicale (APREM) in Nevers, Frankreich,
and premiered on 20 Marsch 2004
during the concert season of APREM
at the Th ´e ˆatre municipal de Nevers.
The piece was commissioned by the
French State (Music Office) und das
APREM.

[“Bastet” C(cid:3) 2004 Elsa Justel
(SACEM), Ymx m ´edia (SOCAN);
(cid:3)P 2007 Enregistrements i m ´edia
(SOPROQ). Previously released in
2007 by Empreintes DIGITALes on
the album M ˆats (IMED 0785). Used
with permission.]

Track Duration: 10:37

Born in 1944 in Mar del Plata,
Argentina, Elsa Justel obtained a

Professor Diploma in Music Educa-
tion and Choral conducting at the
Conservatory of Mar del Plata. Sie
studied composition at the University
of Rosario with Virt ´u Maragno and
electroacoustic music in Buenos Aires
with Jos ´e Maranzano and Francisco
Kr ¨opfl.

In 1998 she moved to France where
she graduated with a doctorate in Es-
thetics, Wissenschaften, and Technologies
of Arts at the Universit ´e de Paris
VIII under the direction of Horacio
Vaggione. She taught new composi-
tion techniques at the Conservatorio
Provincial de M ´usica Luis Gianneo
in Mar del Plata, Argentina; Klang
techniques and sound form at the
Universit ´e Paris-Est Marne-la-Vall ´ee;
and electroacoustic music at the Uni-
versitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
She has published various articles on
electroacoustic and video music, Und
has participated in many conferences
as a speaker.

Justel’s music received awards
from competitions including: Tribuna
nacional de compositores (TRINAC)
in Argentina; Viseu Rural 2.0—
Explorac¸ ˜oes Sonoras de um Arquivo
Rural, in Portugal; and the Prix
biennal Presque rien in France. Sie
has also realized audiovisual projects
and music for film and the stage. Her
video music Destellos won prizes at
the Video Evento d’Arte competition
(Italien) and the Bourges competition
(Frankreich).

Hoffman has made it a priority to
support women (and all students)
in computer music through recruit-
ment and teaching that values diverse
perspectives on aesthetics, uses of
Technologie, perception, theoretical
Diskurs, and collaborative learning.
She co-directs the Waverly Labs for
Computer Music Composition and
Forschung. She is also a pianist and
has strong interests in critical the-
ory, acoustic composition, timbral
spatialization, and music’s relation
to subjectivity. She is focused on
the potentials of the multichannel
medium and on mixed musics, Wo
designed software is simultaneously
instrument, specific composition,
and variably realized structure allow-
ing new kinds of conversations with
performers. Seit 2019, a permanent
algorithmic sound installation of
hers, (RETU(R)NINGS), has played
daily at sunset in New York Uni-
versity’s Bobst Library Atrium. Her
electroacoustic music has been rec-
ognized by awards from Bourges, Prix
Ars Electronica, Pierre Schaeffer In-
ternational Competition, and many
other institutions. Hoffman’s electro-
acoustic music is published primarily
on Empreintes DIGITALes.

112

Computermusikjournal

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 5. Judy Klein.

Figur 6. Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner.

Railcar (2008)—Judy Klein

At one end of the railcar was a glass
bin, filled with paper clips. I added
the few I had brought with me, In
memory of the lives of so many.

This piece was commissioned by
the Institut International de Musique
Electroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB)
and was premiered in 2008 at the 38th
Festival Synth `ese in Bourges, Frankreich.

Track Duration: 9:08

Judy Klein received her degree in mu-
sic from the Conservatory of Music
in Basel, Schweiz, and a Master’s
Degree from the Gallatin School at
New York University. She studied
computer music with Charles Dodge
at the Brooklyn College Center for
Computer Music, and was a long-
term affiliate of the Center while it
was under his direction. Während der
1980S, she taught computer music
composition in the New York Univer-
sity SEHNAP Department of Music
and founded a computer music studio
Dort. Aus 1990 Zu 2006 she was a
consultant at Lincoln Center’s New
York Public Library for the Perform-
ing Arts, where she created an archive
for the preservation of analog and
digital electroacoustic music. She has
been a guest composer and lecturer
at various colleges and conservato-
Ries, including Dartmouth College,
Columbia University, and the Brook-
lyn College Center for Computer
Musik. In 2007 she was a resident
artist at the Bourges International
Institute of Electroacoustic Music.

She composes almost exclusively
using the C programming language
and the Csound computer music
Sprache. Her works are primarily
acousmatic and increasingly combine
her love of sound with her commit-
ment to animal rights. Probably best
known is her piece “The Wolves of
Bays Mountain.” Other pieces by her

can be heard on the ICMA, SEAMUS
and Cuneiform labels. Klein currently
resides in New York City, where she
works in her home studio. She con-
tinues to lecture at local colleges and
serves on juries for electroacoustic
music competitions and selection
committees for electroacoustic music
festivals and conferences. She is a
member of the Steering Committee
for the New York City Electroacoustic
Music Festival and is a contributing
editor for The Open Space Magazine
and for Perspectives of New Music.

EvenMoreduSt (2008)—Elizabeth
Hinkle-Turner

Dieses Stück, written in commemora-
tion of the 50th anniversary of the
Experimental Music Studios of the
University of Illinois, pays homage
to the legacy of the great musicians
and teachers who have worked at
that facility. One of these, Natürlich,
was Herbert Br ¨un. Although he was
by no means my only mentor and
teacher at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, in retrospect
I have come to realize that he was,
beyond a doubt, the most influential.
I guess I can credit Br ¨un with, as he
Leg es, “ruining my career” as a music
professor: His teaching infused me
with an idealism and an impatience
that is simply insupportable in today’s

academic culture, and which caused
me to throw up my hands in despair
and throw in the towel on teaching
several decades ago, and I have never
regretted it. I remember the day that
Br ¨un (together with Arun Chandra)
presented the Sawdust project to
me and some other new students,
and played the pieces that resulted
from his program. “EvenMoreduSt”
is my own poor commentary and
tribute to those works, plucking the
characteristics that excited me the
most upon listening to them. Wie
the originals, my work uses sawtooth
waves . . . but of a different type of
saw altogether (thanks to my late
husband, for those recording hours in
his woodworking shop!).

Track Duration: 6:00

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner received
her DMA in music composition
from the University of Illinois at
UrbanaChampaign. She has served as
acting director of the electronic and
computer music studios at Florida In-
ternational University in Miami and
the Experimental Music Studios at

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

113

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 7. Laurie Spiegel.

the University of Iowa, and has been
a faculty member at the University
of Illinois, the Oberlin Conservatory,
and the University of North Texas
(UNT). She served on the board of the
Society for Electroacoustic Music in
Die Vereinigten Staaten (SEAMUS) for ten
Jahre, returning in 2018 in the new
position of director of diversity for
the organization, and has been on the
board of the Canadian Electroacoustic
Community (CEC) and the Interna-
tional Alliance for Women in Music
(IAWM).

Currently, she makes her living
as the Director of Instructional IT
Services at UNT, while occasionally
teaching courses in UNT’s College
of Music and College of Visual Art
and Design. Hinkle-Turner is the au-
thor of Women Composers and Music
Technology in the United States (Kneipe-
lished by Ashgate, now Routledge, In
2006) and is working on the second
edition of this text and subsequent
books in the series. She is also the
creator of Full Circle, a work for CD-
ROM that received an award from
the Institut International de Musique
Electroacoustique de Bourges, und das
blog, afterthefire1964.blogspot.com,
a site devoted to assisting those who
are currently dealing with alcoholic
or addicted spouses and other loved
ones.

Teil 2 (69 minutes)

Passage (1987)—Laurie Spiegel

Having worked predominantly on the
“note” level of music (algorithmic
work with harmony, melody, coun-
terpoint, or line), I felt like revisiting
the timbral and textural sonic spaces
that had deeply involved me before I
began using computers.

“Passage” was as close as I could
get to an old-fashioned analog elec-
tronic piece, but made with modern,

digital tools. For a change of em-
phasis I wanted to build a dramatic
experience out of texture, Timbre, Und
resonance, with minimal use of har-
Geld, melody, counterpoint, or line,
with which I’ve been predominantly
concerned in my work in recent years.
I began with a MIDI sequencer file

containing a14-minute-long static
chord, and started to compose and edit
MIDI continuous controller changes
for the timbres and balances. After I
had what felt like the ghost outline
of the piece, I added other parts, mit
more movement and variation, Zu
capture and make audible to others
what the initial timbral shape had
suggested to the inner ear of my
Vorstellung.

The result, evolved through a
progressive process of clarification
inside my own mind over several
weeks, expresses a forceful energy
of propulsion, an ongoing momen-
tum travelling through a variety
of textures and moods with, as I
experienced it, a life of its own.

For this piece I used a Yamaha
TX816 FM synthesizer, Eventide
2016 and Korg DRV3000 digital
signal processors, and a Hill 16-
channel mixing board, and software
including Music Mouse (written
by me) running on an Amiga 1000
computer, and Mark of the Unicorn’s
Performer sequencer running on a
512k Macintosh computer. No other
instruments besides Music Mouse
wurden benutzt: no keyboards, faders, oder
other physical controllers.

Track Duration: 14:03

Although coming from a background
of folk, pre-Classical, classical, Und
analog electronic music, Laurie
Spiegel has been involved in the
creation of computer technology
for music in various ways, beginnend
with her residence at Bell Telephone
Labs where she worked with Groove,

the Alles synthesizer, Max Math-
ews’s RTSked, and her own Vampire
audiovisual composing software.
Subsequently she contributed to the
design and implementation of the
alphaSyntauri system for the Apple
II, the McLeyvier (a language-based
LSI 11/23 music processor), and other
computer technologies for composi-
tion, Leistung, and audio signal
Verarbeitung. She is best known for her
realization of Johannes Kepler’s Har-
monices Mundi, which was included
on the Voyager Spacecraft’s Sounds
of Earth golden record, and for Music
Mouse, her “intelligent instrument”
software for live improvisation run-
ning on Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari
computers.

F ¨ur Dich—For You
(2005)—Hildegard Westerkamp

The compositional process of “F ¨ur
Dich—For You” included an intense
encounter with Rainer Maria Rilke’s
poetry (English translation by Norbert
Ruebsaat), not unlike an encounter
with the experience of love itself and

114

Computermusikjournal

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 8. Hildegard Westerkamp.

all its unsettling, complex emotional
Staaten. The poem speaks of one
person’s love to another, but also—
and perhaps more importantly—about
love as an inner state towards life and
the world as a whole. On another level
the composition explores a sense of
place and belonging, of home and
Liebe. To underscore this context, Die
sound sources for the piece consist
of specific sounds from two places
that have created a sense of belonging
in me: North Germany, where I was
born and grew up, and Vancouver
and the west coast of Canada, Wo
I have lived for over thirty years as
an immigrant. These sounds form
the sonic and musical language of
the piece, together with the recorded
male and female voices of people
close to me, speaking the poem, beide
in German and in English.

The readers of the poem are Wen-

delin Bartley, Susan Benson, Anne
Bourne, Louie Ettling, Peter Grant,
Andra McCartney, Norbert Ruebsaat,
Sonja Ruebsaat, Susanna Ruebsaat, R.
Murray Schafer, Agnes Westerkamp
and myself. “F ¨ur Dich—For You” was
commissioned by the Zentrum f ¨ur
Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe.
The composition was started during
a residency at the ZKM, und war
continued and completed in the Sonic
Studio at Simon Fraser University
and in the composer’s own studio in
Vancouver.

[“F ¨ur Dich—For You” C(cid:3) 2005 Nor-
bert Ruebsaat, Hildegard Westerkamp
(SOCAN), Yul m ´edia (SOCAN);
(cid:3)P 2009 Enregistrements i m ´edia
(SOPROQ). Previously released in
2009 by Empreintes DIGITALes
on the album trans canada (IMED
09100). Used with permission.]

Track Duration: 14:03

Composer Hildegard Westerkamp
focuses on listening, Umwelt
Klang, and acoustic ecology. Bei der

2017. Also in 2017, Hildegard’s ways
of composing and listening were pre-
sented on CBC IDEAS: http://www
.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-opening-our
-ears-can-open-our-minds-hildegard
-westerkamp-1.3962163.

Pockets of Space (2018)—Natasha
Barrett

“Pockets of Space” is the music for
the 3-D video and virtual reality
work of the same name. The work
is a collaboration between Natasha
Barrett and United States–based
visual artists Marc Downie and
Paul Kaiser, known collectively as
OpenEndedGroup.

The work was originally composed

in seventh-order 3-D Ambisonics
for concert performance, and as
an interactive binaural version for
virtual reality headset. Stereo and
binaural versions are presented for
this present edition.

Throughout the work, audio and

visual scenes transform between
states verging on both reality and
abstraction, created by experimental
methods involving the spatial decom-
position and recomposition of source
Materialien.

Some of the musical materials
began as real Ambisonics sound
recordings that were then decom-
posed to reveal sound objects and
their spatial-frequency fingerprint.
From these experiments, new materi-
als were then abstracted and explored,
and sometimes fed into the visual art-
arbeiten. Other musical materials drew
instead from the visual art, Wo
Downie decomposed images into
pixel information and implemented
his own custom-made algorithmic
processes. These processes revealed
unique geometries and eccentric
Physik, which were in turn fed back
into sound synthesis to create new
spatial-audio imagery.

beginning of her career she worked
with R. Murray Schafer and the World
Soundscape Project. She is a founding
and board member of the World Fo-
rum for Acoustic Ecology and was a
long-time editor of its journal Sound-
scape. She has conducted soundscape
workshops, given concerts and lec-
tures, and has coordinated and led
soundwalks locally and internation-
ally. In 2003 Vancouver New Music
(VNM) invited her to coordinate
and lead public soundwalks as part
of its annual concert season. Das
in turn inspired the creation of the
Vancouver Soundwalk Collective,
whose members are continuing to
lead walks on a regular basis. Für
some years she has mentored a va-
riety of younger composers, Klang
designers, soundwalk leaders, Und
people pursuing careers in sound-
scape studies and acoustic ecology.
Excerpts of her compositions appear
in Gus van Sant’s films Elephant
and Last Days, and more recently
she collaborated on the soundtrack
of Nettie Wild’s film Koneline. Her
newest composition, “Klavierklang”
for pianist Rachel Iwaasa, had its
world premiere at ISCM’s World Mu-
sic Days in Vancouver, November

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

115

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 9. Natasha Barrett.

Figur 10. Margaret Schedel.

Bourges International Electroacoustic
Music Awards. Originally from the
Großbritannien, Barrett moved to
Norway in 1999. Active in perfor-
Mance, Ausbildung, and research, sie
is codirector of the Norwegian spatial-
music performance ensemble Electric
Audio Unit and founder of 3DA, Die
Norwegian society for 3-D sound art.
Besides her career as an independent
composer she currently holds a pro-
fessorship at the Norwegian Academy
for Music in Oslo.

QfwfQ (2019)—Margaret Schedel

The title of this piece takes its
name from the interdimensional
narrator of many of Italo Calvino’s
short stories, including the collection
Cosmicomics, which describe the
beginnings of the world using both
scientific hypotheses and comic
Sprache. Like the unknowable,
unpronounceable QfwfQ, who has
experienced all of time and space, Das
work explores multiplicities of being,
paradoxes and contrasts. The piece
is scored for two alto instruments,
or any treble instrument capable of
reaching down to the G below C4.
The players read from a two-line
score and can choose to switch parts
at bar lines that demarcate sections
of varying length. The two lines
have contrasting characters and are
each treated to different electronic
manipulations that create multiple
Stimmen. The bottom line is lyrical,
almost romantic in character, Und
its electronics create a Bulgarian
chorusing effect through time, pitch,
and timbre shifting. This chorusing
effect can accrue up to 96 voices and
is reset when performers switch parts.
The top line has an angular, disjunct,
modern character and also includes
occasional percussive sounds. Der
electronics part loops some of the

percussive sounds, and by the end of
the piece, these create a third drum
Linie. In Summe, this single piece played
by two instruments can ultimately
evolve into as many as 99 möglich
lines, which can be in agreement or
in conflict depending on the musical
Leistung. Only at the center of
the piece do the two instrumentalists
play the same melody, in a “weeping”
fado-like passage that briefly unifies
the voices before they diverge again.
The multiphonic, indeterminate,

and polystylistic character of this
piece is best described in Calvino’s
story “A Sign In Space,” which is a
kind of parable of the postmodern
condition. In it, QfwfQ makes a mark
to note the revolution of the Sun
around the Milky Way galaxy (Die
first sign ever made), only to find after
many millennia that many others had
also made similar signs and the origi-
nal sign was gone. QfwfQ ruminates
on the experience of looking at the
marks of millions of beings in space:
“In the universe now there was no
longer a container and a thing con-
tained, but only a general thickness of
signs, superimposed and coagulated
. . . constantly being dotted, minutely,
a network of lines and scratches and
reliefs and engravings.” (Note by
Katherine Kaiser.)

Special thanks to Matthew Bless-
ing for his help with the chorusing

This work was commission by

the Institut de Recherche et de
Akustik-/Musikkoordination
(IRCAM) and premiered at the Centre
Pompidou, Paris.

Track Duration: 14:53

Natasha Barrett composes acous-
matic and live electroacoustic con-
cert works, multimedia projects, Und
Installationen. The musical applica-
tion of spatial audio has guided her
work since the late 1990s, and she
is a leading voice in the new wave
of artists working with Ambisonics,
3-D sound, and its contemporary
music context. Her inspiration comes
from the world around us: the way
it sounds and behaves, Systeme, Profi-
Prozesse, and resulting phenomena.
These interests have led her into
the realms of cutting-edge audio
technologies, geoscience, sonifica-
tion, motion tracking, and some
exciting collaborations involving in-
strumental ensembles, visual artists,
architects, and scientists. Her work
has been commissioned, durchgeführt,
and broadcast throughout the world.
She has received international awards
including the Nordic Council Music
Prize and the Euphonie d’Or in the

116

Computermusikjournal

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 11. Paula Matthusen.

patch, and the reACT ensemble for
commissioning, inspiring, and work-
shopping the piece.

Track Duration: 8:05

With an interdisciplinary career
blending classical training in cello
and composition, audio data research,
and innovative computational arts
Ausbildung, Margaret Schedel tran-
scends the boundaries of disparate
fields to produce integrated work at
the nexus of computation and the
arts. She has a diverse creative output
represented with works such as the
interactive multimedia opera The
King Listens, virtual reality experi-
zen, sound art, video game scores,
and compositions for a wide variety
of classical instruments or custom
controllers with interactive audio
and video processing. An Associate
Professor in the Department of Mu-
sic at Stony Brook University, sie
currently serves as the Chair of the
Art Department and leads the Mak-
ing Sense of Data Workgroup at the
Institute of Advanced Computational
Wissenschaft.

Old Fires Catch Old Buildings
(2018)—Paula Matthusen

“Old Fires Catch Old Buildings”
draws its title from William S. Bur-
roughs’s writing about recording in
“The Invisible Generation.” Rather
than play with the text of Burroughs’s
original writing, the piece instead
engages with physical recordings
(namely cassette tapes) of each of
the ensemble members. The lan-
guage flexibility combined with the
idiosyncrasies and manipulability
of recording and playback devices
forges intriguing interdependencies
between the musicians and their
stored voices. As Burroughs notes, “it
is the height of rudeness not to record

when addressed directly by another
tape recorder.”

Track Duration: 10:40

Paula Matthusen is a composer
who writes both electroacoustic and
acoustic music and realizes sound
Installationen. She has written for
diverse instrumentations, wie zum Beispiel
found in her piece “Run-On Sentence
of the Pavement,” for piano, ping-
pong balls, and electronics. Her
work often considers discrepancies
in musical space: real, imagined, Und
remembered.

Her music has been performed
by ensembles including Alarm Will
Sound, International Contemporary
Ensemble (ICE), and the Bang On A
Can All-Stars, and soloists including
Andy Kozar, Kathleen Supov ´e, Und
Margaret Lancaster. Her awards
include the Walter Hinrichsen Award
from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, Und
Die 2014 Elliott Carter Rome Prize.

Matthusen is currently an Asso-
ciate Professor of Music at Wesleyan
Universität, where she teaches ex-
perimental music, Komposition, Und
music technology.

Teil 3 (53 minutes)

H→gg (2017)—Carla Scaletti

The title “H→gg” is shorthand for an
event where a Higgs boson particle
decays into two gamma particles.
When CERN announced on 4 Juli
2012 that they had evidence of the
existence of the Higgs boson, Sie
were careful not to say that they had
detected a Higgs boson, welche, if it
is produced, decays so quickly that
it would never reach the detector.
Instead they presented statistical
evidence for the production of an
excess of gamma particles at the
mass–energy level that predicted a
Higgs boson and, based on other
variables of the collision, were likely
to have been the result of the decay of
a Higgs boson.

The work “H→gg” is a 15-minute
distillation of the 50-minute score for
choreographer Gilles Jobin’s Quan-
tum, premiered at CERN in Septem-
ber 2013 at the Compact Muon
Solenoid (CMS) Experiment, 300 Füße
above the tunnel where the Higgs bo-
son was discovered. Sound materials
for the piece came from work I had
done previously with Lily Asquith
on mapping data from the ATLAS
Experiment at the Large Hadron Col-
lider (LHC) to sound. Asquith is one
of the CERN physicists who coau-
thored the article “Observation of a
New Particle in the Search for the
Standard Model Higgs Boson with
the ATLAS Detector at the LHC.”
The parameters of the sounds you
hear in the piece were modulated, oder
controlled, by variables of collision
events recorded at CERN, in a sense

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

117

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 12. Carla Scaletti.

Figur 13. Katharine Norman.

(https://www.mitpressjournals.org
/doi/pdf/10.1162/COMJ a 00341).

Each year, she co-organizes the

Kyma International Sound Sym-
posium (KISS) for composers and
researchers using the Kyma lan-
guage for their work. This year’s
theme is “The Sound of Science”
and will feature live performances,
scientist–composer collaborations,
data-sonification workshops, Und
data-to-sound mapping competitions.

A Walk I Do (2012)—Katharine
Norman

Composed for flutist Carla Rees,
with support from the Britten-Pears
Foundation, “A Walk I Do” was first
performed at The Forge in London,
in May 2016. Like my other recent
funktioniert, this piece is a composed
work that combines instrumental
performance with live audio and text
Verarbeitung. In this case I asked Rees
to send me an informal description
of a favorite walk, which I used as
found material. As in another similar
Stück, “Paul’s Walk,” written for
clarinetist Paul Roe, the text itself is
not as important as the fact that by
describing it, a person conveys their
relationship to place and the way we
relate to our environment through
personal memory and experiences.

“A Walk I Do” was made in open-
Frameworks (visuals) and Pure Data
(Audio-). The final software interface
is packaged as a standalone Mac OS
application. Although written for
specific performers initially, all my
recent works are designed to be adapt-
able to other instrumentation and
performable with software that re-
quires minimal technical knowledge.

Track Duration: 10:32

Katharine Norman is an internation-
ally recognized composer of work for

instruments and digital resources,
often inspired by people’s experience
of place and landscape. Over the
past ten years she has developed
a concurrent profile as a writer.
Computer programming forms an
essential part of her creative work
and she is a skilled programmer in a
number of areas.

Recent performance works ex-
ploring interactive image, Text, Und
sound include “Making Place,” com-
missioned by pianist Kate Halsall;
“A Walk I Do,” for Carla Rees; Und
“Paul’s Walk,” for Paul Roe. “Fuga
Interna (Begin),” for piano and digital
sound is based on her experience of
her mother’s battle with Alzheimer
Krankheit, and has been performed
widely. As a writer, her digital fic-
tion and nonfiction have featured in
various festivals, publications, Und
conferences. Window (for John Cage),
an interactive “sound essay,” won the
2012 New Media Writing Prize.

Katharine Norman received her
PhD in composition from Princeton
Universität, and for some time worked
in academia before deciding to find
other strategies for continuing as
a composer and writer. She spent
several years on a small island in
Kanada, supporting her work through
freelance editing and writing, und ist
currently back in the United Kingdom
working part-time in publishing.

making the LHC the world’s largest
data-driven musical instrument.

Track Duration: 16:26

Carla Scaletti is a composer, designer
of the Kyma sound-design language,
and cofounder of the Symbolic Sound
Corporation. She creates music in a
genre she calls mu-sci (“μ-psi”), Die
musical analog to sci-fi. Each of her
compositions poses a question in the
form of a “what-if” hypothesis, Und
proceeds to explore the entailments
of that hypothesis in the manner of
speculative fiction.

Winner of the 2017 SEAMUS
Award and the 2017 Sound award
from the Women’s International Film
and Television Showcase (WIFTS),
Scaletti serves on the editorial board
of the Computer Music Journal
and presented keynote addresses at
the International Conference on
Auditory Displays (ICAD 2017)
(https://youtu.be/T0qdKXwRsyM),
and the International Computer
Music Conference (ICMC 2015),
the latter published in CMJ:

118

Computermusikjournal

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 14. Frances White.

Figur 15. Mara Helmuth.

Figur 16. Esther Lamneck.

The Old Rose Reader
(2004)—Frances White

“The Old Rose Reader” was inspired
by my love of old garden roses.
“Old roses” are either species roses
that have been grown for many
hundreds of years or hybrids that
were developed mostly before 1900.
Many of them are famous for having
been grown in Empress Josephine’s
garden at Ch ˆateau de Malmaison in
Frankreich. I love them not only for their
exceptional beauty and fragrance, Aber
also for their wonderful, romantic
Namen. All of the names that appear
in the text of “The Old Rose Reader”
belong to actual roses, some of which
I grow in my own garden.

“The Old Rose Reader” was com-

missioned by, and is dedicated to,
Mari Kimura. The text was written
by my husband, James Pritchett, WHO
also created the video part. The text
was read by Kimura’s husband, Herv ´e
Br ¨onnimann. This work was funded
in part by the Composer Assistance
Program of the American Music Cen-
ter. A large part of “The Old Rose
Reader” was completed while in
residence at The Djerassi Resident
Artists program.

Track Duration: 16:39

Frances White is known for her
works combining live performers
and computer-generated electronic
sound spaces. Her music conveys
intimacy and immediacy, with a
deeply expressive approach that de-
rives from a sincere belief in the
transformative nature of sound.
White studies the shakuhachi and
finds that its spiritual and sonic
voice informs her work as a com-
poser. A 2004 Guggenheim fellow,
White has received awards, grants,
residencies and commissions from
organizations such as the Fromm
Foundation, Prix Ars Electronica, Und

the International Computer Music
Association.

Most recently, her music was
featured in the installation Tracing
on the Farther Side at the 2020
Venice Biennale, and by the Momenta
Quartet, who commissioned her to
write “The Book of Evening,” with
funding from a New Music USA
Project Grant and the Sparkplug
Foundation.

White’s music can be heard on
record labels including Wergo, Cen-
taur, and Ravello, and was featured as
part of the soundtrack of three of Gus
Van Sant’s award-winning films.

Sound Dunes (2019)—Mara
Helmuth and Esther Lamneck

“Sound Dunes,” for t ´arogat ´o and
stereo fixed media, is the third collab-
oration composed by both Mara Hel-
muth (Computermusik) and Esther
Lamneck (t ´arogat ´o). It was inspired by
an exploration of the t ´arogat ´o sound
world and its digital transformations.
The piece has resonances with the
natural environment such as a sand
dune, with its curving contours and
granular texture. This piece was pre-
miered at the Diffrazione Multimedia
Festival 2019 in Florence.

Track Duration: 8:17

Esther Lamneck, clarinetist and
t ´arogat ´o performer, has appeared

Figur 15

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
/
C
Ö
M

J
/

A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

4
3
4
1
1
0
2
0
0
5
7
6
0
/
C
Ö
M
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
4
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
8
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Figur 16

as a soloist with major orchestras,
with conductors such as Pierre
Boulez, with renowned chamber
music artists, at music festivals
worldwide, and with an international
roster of musicians from the new
music improvisation scene. A ver-
satile performer and an advocate of

Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

119

contemporary music, she is known
for her work with electronic media
including interactive arts, Bewegung,
tanzen, and improvisation.

She is recognized for her collab-

orative work with composers on
both the clarinet and the t ´arogat ´o in
creating electronic music environ-
ments for improvisation. Many of her
solo and duo CDs feature improvisa-
tion and electronic music, einschließlich
Cigar Smoke, Tornado Project, Und
T ´arogat ´o Constructions.

Lamneck is a Professor at New
York University (NYU)’s Department
of Music and Performing Arts Pro-
fessions. She is the artistic director
of the NYU New Music Ensemble, A
flexible improvising group that works
in electronic settings using both fixed
media and real time sound and video
Verarbeitung.

About the Curator

Mara Helmuth composes music,
often involving the computer, Und
creates multimedia and software for
composition and improvisation. Her
recordings include Sound Collabora-
tions and Implements of Actuation,
and works included on Esther Lam-
neck’s Tarogato Constructions and
the 50th Anniversary University of
Illinois Experimental Music Studios
Commemorative Collection. Her
scores are published in Open Space
Magazine issues 19–20 and in No-
tations 21, edited by Theresa Sauer.
Her music has been performed inter-
nationally at conferences, Feste,
and arts spaces. Her research includes
software for composition and im-
provisation and has involved virtual
Wirklichkeit, granular synthesis, wireless

sensor networks, user interfaces,
performance over Internet2, and con-
tributions to the RTcmix music pro-
gramming language. She has initiated
compositional collaborations with
Esther Lamneck, Rebecca Danard,
and Allen Otte, and has completed
several computer music installations.
She is a Professor of Composition at
the College-Conservatory of Music
(CCM), University of Cincinnati,
Director of the CCM Center for Com-
puter Music, and previously taught at
Texas A&M University. She holds a
DMA from Columbia University, Und
earlier degrees from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sie
served on the board of directors for the
International Computer Music Asso-
ciation, in several positions including
Vice President for Conferences and
President.