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Dewar, R., Et Al., 2009 ___________________________________________________________ Wesleyan University Department of Music ___________________________________________________________ Handmade Sounds: The Sonic Arts Union and American Technoculture By Andrew Raffo Dewar Faculty Advisor: Prof. Mark Slobin Submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ___________________________________________________________ Middletown, Connecticut May 2009 ___________________________________________________________ ©2009 Andrew Raffo Dewar All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Handmade Sounds: !e Sonic Arts Union and American Technoculture Andrew Ra"o Dewar This dissertation explores the history and technological aesthetics of the Sonic Arts Union (SAU), a seminal electronic music group formed in the United States in 1966 by composers Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. Chapter 1, an overview of the cultural milieu from which the group's work emerged, interrogates their position in an American experimentalist tradition and questions the maintenance of some of the existing historiographical bounds on this subject. The SAU's use, abuse, construction and recontextualization of technical objects and their role in the formation of a new musical genre, live electronic music, is the subject of Chapter 2. This chapter establishes the roots of the SAU's handmade electronic instruments in a post-WWII American "tinkering" tradition whose more popular forms include activities such as ham radio culture and drag racing. The chapter also considers "folk" qualities and ideas of technological utopianism that may run through their work. Chapter 3 is a sustained engagement with Alvin Lucier's composition for amplified brainwaves, Music for Solo Performer (1965). The piece was a turning point in Lucier's own work, but can also be read as a watershed moment of aesthetic transition between the earlier work of the SAU composers for acoustic instruments and studio electronics and the live electronics that became a foundation of their musical practice. A thick descriptive reading of one composition from each SAU composer is the focus of Chapter 4. Works discussed include Robert Ashley's The Wolfman (1964), David Behrman's Wave Train (1966), Alvin Lucier's Vespers (1967) and Gordon Mumma's Hornpipe (1967). Each piece is viewed in terms of its engagement and incorporation of the performance site into the work, its operational properties as a cybernetic system, its utilization of technology, and its application of acoustic and structural feedback. In foregrounding the Sonic Arts Union's exploration of the physical properties of electronic circuitry, I illustrate how they applied a tinkering impulse emanating from their specific historical and cultural location for a subversive form of techno-aesthetic play, and highlight the significance of the social construction of technical objects to the study of electronic music history. Table Of Contents List of Figures………………………………………………………………………….…………iv Preface………………………………………………………………………………………………..v Acknowledgments…………….............................................................................................viii Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. Locating the Sonic Arts Union.................................................................20 Black Mountain College.......................................................................................22 New York School and Neo-Dada……............................................................24 West and Midwest Experiments in Sound and Light..........................25 Happenings…………………........................................................................................27 Chambers Street Series and Avant-Garde Festival...............................30 Fluxus……………………………………………….……….…………...........................32 Dance Scene as Catalyst.........................................................................................33 The ONCE Group……............................................................................................36 Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT)...............................................37 Ant Farm...........................................................................................................................39 Composer/Performer Groups............................................................................40 From the Individual to the Collective.............................................................42 The Forging of the Sonic Arts Union...............................................................48 Continental Shifts…………………….......................................................................54 Revisiting the “Afrological” and “Eurological”...........................................71 The Avant-Garde and the SAU…………………………..……………...…......80 ii Conclusions……………………………………………………………….……….……….86 Chapter 2. Aesthetics of an American “Tinkering” Technoculture....................90 Emergence of an Aesthetic – Live Electronic Music...................................92 Two Theories of Analysis…………………...............................................................100 Live Electronic Music as a “Folk” Practice?....................................................102 Bricolage, D.I.Y., American Know-How, and Tinkering…………....….111 A Technological Approach to Utopia................................................................131 Composition and the Work Concept……........................................................137 Concepts of Improvisation in Live Electronics............................................141 Cage’s Concept of Indeterminacy and Chance............................................141 Improvisation in Early Live Electronics Groups...........................................145 Conclusions……………………………………………………………….…………...…..149 Chapter 3. Inner Landscapes in Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer 1965…….151 Live vs. Tape…………………………………………………………………………....…..156 Control, Texture, Contrast…………………….………………………….……..…..160 First Performance…………………………………….…………………….………...…..164 Conclusions……………………………………………….……………….…………..……167 Chapter 4. Cybersonic Soundings: Feedback and Balance in the SAU…........169 Sounding Space……………………………………………………………………...……..171 Cage’s 4’33” and Conceptions of Space in Sound Studies………...……..176 iii Alvin Lucier, Vespers (1968)………………………………………….……...…...….…184 From Cybernetics to Cybersonics…………………………………….…...….….…189 Robert Ashley, The Wolfman (1964)………….………………………...……....…192 A Systems Aesthetic………………………………………………………………….……200 David Behrman, Wave Train (1966)…………….……………….……...…….……202 Gordon Mumma, Hornpipe (1967)……………………………………………….....205 A Conditional Art……………………………………….……………………………....….211 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………...……214 Closing Thoughts……………….............................................................................................................216 Appendix A: Interviews and Archival Sources……………...............................................220 Appendix B: Preliminary Performance Chronology of the SAU...............................222 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................................228 iv List of Figures Fig. 1.1. Sonic Arts Union publicity shot, circa late 1960s………………………..….xiii Fig. 1.2. Mumma, Braxton, Jenkins at Automation House, 1970…………….……78 Fig. 2.1. Gordon Mumma, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1962…………………………...….…93 Fig. 2.2. David Behrman & Alvin Lucier, Brown University, 1973 (?)……….….107 Fig. 2.3. Gordon Mumma, EAT studio, New York, 1969..…………………………..128 Fig. 4.1. Concert poster, Clinton, NY, November 10, 1970………………………..168 Fig. 4.2. Robert Ashley, The Wolfman. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1965……………..191 Fig. 4.3. Performance schematic for The Wolfman (1964). …………………………192 Fig. 4.4. David Behrman, Wave Train (1966) schematic………………………………200 Fig. 4.5. David Behrman, Wave Train (1966) interlocking wave-forms…………201 Fig. 4.6. Gordon Mumma, Hornpipe (1967). NYC, 1972………………….…………..203 Preface This project began as the result of a scholarly crisis. My original dissertation proposal was to examine the traditional and experimental music scenes of the Minangkabau in West Sumatra, Indonesia, where I began studying in 1998. In the summer of 2004, I took part in a three-month long creative project in Bali and Java, composing and performing experimental music with a collective of Indonesian and North American composer/performers. During this wonderful experience, I returned to West Sumatra to do some preliminary research in an effort to narrow down the possibilities for my dissertation topic. I found the rich, variegated music scene I remembered from my previous trips to the area, but I also decided that it was too broad -- and to be honest, too foreign -- a topic for me to handle in the relatively confined time constraints of a dissertation project. I simply did not feel confident enough about my knowledge of that music Preface vi _____________________________________________________________________ culture, even if I had undertaken another lengthy research stay, to do justice to the subject. I have every intention of continuing my research on the music of the Minang, both new and old, but it will be a long-term study, the subject and bounds of which I do not know at this time. As a result, I was in
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