OSLO 5—8 JUNE 2013 MachineDreams ‘Everywhere it is machines – real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy- source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts.’
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia In our software-operated society celebrations of the vanishing white noise we use surfaces on flat, shiny objects between FM stations where voices are to access information and heard fading in and out of range; an entertainment. And through these examination of the vocoder, a human- objects we communicate. voice scrambling machine born within the But when machines began to US military which went on to define the make their way into everyday life sound of electro; explorations of time following the Industrial Revolution, machines; mechanical pianos; machines the prospect of automation was met transforming images into sound and vice with fear as well as euphoria; with the versa; customised sonic tools as well as concern that some important human obsolete technology which seemed to dimension might be lost. The American offer the possibility of communication writer Henry David Thoreau wrote in with another world altogether. 1854, in the opening chapter of Walden: The ‘progress’ which machines “We are in great haste to construct are said to bring has always had its a magnetic telegraph from Maine to supporters and its critics. Through Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may our diverse programme, we hope to be, have nothing to communicate”. examine the machine through multiple Thoreau’s fear that electronic perspectives: both as a utopian communication would only reinforce construction built to improve lives, everyday inarticulacy and triviality was and as a dehumanizing force undermining well founded. Through television and something essential about society. social media, to a certain degree, this Plus, we will look at ways in which people is exactly what has happened. and machines are learning to live Machine Dreams is a festival together, creatively and inventively. exploring the machine in all its glory. And at Only Connect, all of this, of Not only as a paean to obsolete course, is approached via the medium of mechanisms and the soundscape that music and sound, which, perhaps more disappears with them, but as a than any other art form, has been celebration of the machine as a model for profoundly affected by the enormous thinking. Only Connect brings you transformations of the machine age.
Anne Hilde Neset Artistic Director, nyMusikk Smile When
You Say
Nasty Tompkins Dave By Words Thehistory ofthevocoder isthelong, strange journey ofa military machine that became a distinctive voice in modern music. modern in voice distinctive a became that machine military At times a flamethrower would do. then chopped and shredded. Never Perhaps a screwdriver. Or maybe a repeated, always unsaid. If you played Westinghouse oven, though that was the SIGGRUV, you’d just hear active used to stabilize the super-crystals. surf, tidal white noise. The 805th US Signal Corp preferred a specialized machine when it came to The system was called Project X, permanently disfiguring its top secret or SIGSALY, named after nonsense, vinyl. The device was entered into a the compression of a tongue-twizzler Signal Corp log in North Africa as concerning a child hustling conches on ‘The Record Destruction Machine’, the boardwalk. The vocoder was its somewhere between ‘request to marry central component. Occupying an entire local French girl’ and ‘bubonic plague floor, these robot walls ran hot and has broken out’. high maintenance, seven-foot cabinets of synthetic voice, thrumming. The Record Destruction Machine would The machine was the space. find itself in a wine cellar in Algiers, chewing up rare records produced by the The vocoder disbanded conversation Muzak Corporation and Bell Labs and into sub-frequencies and reconstructed distributed by the US Army Signal Corp it into a machine’s impression of human in extremely limited, covert vocoder speech – stiff as a puppet’s chin and markets throughout the world, beginning often denounced by its users. Intelligence with the Pentagon and ending in Tokyo as deformation. A misunderstanding and Berlin. Thermalized noise was the from a machine that was once called a micro-est of subgenres. spectral decomposer. Or the Indestructible Speech Machine, if you This may have seemed a little off- want to get all Eisenhower about it. message at a time when Erwin Rommel The vocoder helped filter, add and was out in the desert somewhere, subtract the SIGGRUV noise at both commanding a wall of noise and talking ends of the line, allowing brass jaws to over a primitive laser beam with his determine the world’s fate in voices they throat jacked into a tank radio. But this barely recognized, dehumanized into wasn’t elevator music in the machine’s digital pulses 20 milliseconds in length. teeth. These 16-inch singles held the Admiral Leahy said he heard robots. code key, the most sensitive dimension Eavesdroppers merely heard a buzz. As a of a top secret phone scrambler used by device whose name had been struck from Churchill and other windbags of war. its own user’s manual during the war, the vocoder often spoke under conditions of Called SIGGRUV, these ‘one-time’ anonymity. D-Day, Dresden, Hiroshima. records had to be playing while the The deliquesced pewter world. vocoder was in use, which in 1942 was often. So a two-turntable system – also The vocoder was invented by a man who engineered by Bell Labs – was deployed. kept bees and surfed. In 1928, Homer (There was a self-destruct mechanism in W Dudley just wanted to send our voices case the terminal was breached, a underwater, compressing telephonic turntable meltdown activated by the last bandwidth in the Trans Atlantic Cable. man out). Each record was played once, He was trying to save space while somehow imagining a vocoder basement space’). From its inception, the phone in every home. Though Homer Dudley’s gave the illusion of proximity, putting a vision was speech compression – voice – and more than a few crazy ideas and clarifying human communication – – in people’s heads. Its functionary, his machine would make machines out the vocoder, would further distance the of donkey brays, storm winds, church voice from the human body, creating more bells, oceanic roars, tap-dancing, birds space. In 1939, the LA Times called this and leaf piles. All tested at Bell Labs. artificial voice ‘the voice true’. During Each having a ball on reality’s dime. the Vietnam War, when covert ops were codenamed Urban Funk and the jungle This wasn’t some automaton romance was bombed with portable radios, of technology. The vocoder’s conception NASA fed special test sentences to the came to Dudley when imagining his mouth vocoder: Smile when you say nasty words. to be a radio station, while suffering from colitis in a hospital bed. (He literally By the late 1970s, the axis of shat himself). He would later write of eavesdroppers was still Italy, Germany the speech mechanism: oral resonances, and Japan: Moroder, Kraftwerk, and the mouth, laryngeal vibrations, the Yellow Magic Orchestra. In 1983, the teeth. We were machines transmitting vocoder was the voice real – the main speech on carrier waves. machine of hiphop and R&B – transforming the alienation of the Though the vocoder may not have African-American experience, the rehabilitated shellshocked mutes – distant longing for better times, as Dudley originally believed – it did approximating machine to body, to dance manage to enter the dreams of the out of constriction and compression. insane. In the late 1970s, a hospital in Trying to make space, if not a galactic Bavaria commissioned the British void. Said ‘Fly Guy and the Unemployed’, synthesizer company EMS to provide a 12-inch nobody heard: ‘DC is into vocoder recordings for patients as they space/DC doesn’t care about the human slept, in particular ‘heavy cases of race’. ‘Come with me to the land of mental illness’. Talking water drops and stuff’, encouraged a man from Ohio winds were prescribed for subconscious named Sneak E. Another unheard autosuggestion and pat assurance. unknown. A device that was intended to The machine was treatment. improve telecommunication for all was then restricted and redacted for military In its ever-evolving shrinking state, echelons, coveted by Stalin and office- the vocoder would feed the fantasies maxed by the Stasi, only to be refreaked and nightmares of other machines while for hiphop, functioning against the subsuming whatever noise was in its machine’s intentions, trying to find a path, giving voices to planes, trains, voice in a black hit of space. We ate automobahns, submarines, computers, those records alive. synthesizers, Daft Punk, cell phones, and ultimately, ourselves. Or at least a decent wireless rendering of ourselves. (To misappropriate knee surgeon jargon, the vocoder ‘replicated intra-articular Transformer Nils Henrik Asheim and Alf Terje Outdoor concert Hana have composed a piece for a Wednesday 5 June 18:00 ‘machine’ consisting of 50 guitarists, Free all aged between 13–19. Within the huge ensemble, ‘components’, or players, create individual functions, from hovering drones to pulsing rhythms, building to unexpected outcomes. Guitar Machine is a free concert performed in a temporary architectural structure called Transformer, which can itself be seen as a machine for Guitar altering and redefining public space. Machine
Kunstnernes Hus Conlon Nancarrow Wednesday 5 June 20:00 Toccata Kr 200/100 (members/concessions) Piece For Tape Study no. 3 Rex Lawson (player piano) Daniel Paulsen (percussion) Karin Hellqvist (violin) George Antheil and Fernand Léger Ballet Mécanique Rex Lawson (player piano)
US born Conlon Nancarrow (1912–77) composed most of his work for the player piano, or pianola, whose actions are Piano programmed using perforated paper or metallic rolls. This allowed him to create The Bad The parts impossible to play by humans alone. Tempered Tempered
George Antheil, the self-styled Celebrating the incredible, complex, ‘bad boy of music’, caused a riot expressive and infernal machinery of with the score for Ballet Mécanique the piano and its automated versions, (1924) for 16 player pianos; here it will with a sequence of compositions be performed on a single instrument designed to push the instrument to with a rare screening of Fernand Legér’s its technical limits. original film. Nils Henrik Asheim is a prolific composer and nature. He has also played with and performer. His output includes Sidsel Endresen, Eivind Aarset, theatrical, vocal and instrumental music Mungolian Jetset, as well as ex-Police as well as site-specific installations. drummer Stewart Copeland and The Asheim is known as an innovative Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. improvisor on church organ and has twice been awarded a Norwegian Grammy Transformer was developed as part (Spellemannsprisen). of Rom for Kunst og Arkitektur by Vigdis Storsveen and Rintala Eggertson Alf Terje Hana is a composer and Architects. In 2011 it won Norsk guitarist whose groups include Kulturråd’s ideas competition, Wasaband, Timebeat and Athana, where Kunstarena for de unge (Young people’s he blends guitar sounds with electronics, art arenas) to transform unused public fuelled by inspiration from great painters spaces of Oslo into performative zones.
Rex Lawson is the world’s leading Christian Blom performer on the player piano. Sommerfugl/Ensom vandrer/ He will speak about the player Liten fugl/Halling/ piano’s history as well as performing Vokterens sang Nancarrow and Antheil. (Interpreting Edvard Grieg) Ellen Ugelvik (piano)
Øyvind Torvund Selections from Edvard Grieg’s Forest Catalogue Lyric Pieces for piano are fed through (A Slide Show In Sound) a randomising computer process, Ellen Ugelvik (piano) and the outcome is transcribed back into Martin Taxt (tuba) musical notation. A feedback loop Espen Reinertsen (saxophone) that crosses from the human to the Eivind Lønning (trumpet) machine and back again.
This piece detects musical themes Christian Blom is an artist and composer from within a collection of field who works with kinetic sculpture and recordings of forests. The musicians mechanical devices. are imitating and responding to the sounds and textures found in each “frame” of the forest catalogue.
Øyvind Torvund writes chamber music and orchestral works often incorporating improvisation and folk traditions. Cinemateket Thursday 6 June 14:00 Free
Screening: The Bruce Lacey Directors: Jeremy Deller & Nick Abrahams Experience 2012, UK (73 mins)
Teknisk Museum Biosphere Thursday 6 June 19:00 Biosphere, aka Geir Jenssen, hails from Museum ticket: the north of Norway. Tonight he performs Kr 100 / 50 (members/concessions) a piece specially composed for one of only seven surviving examples of the Subharchord – an electronic sound Mechanical Museum of generator built in East Berlin in the early 60s – in the world. Dreams Christian Blom
The Al-Khowarizmi’s Mechanical Orchestra Al-Khowarizmi’s Mechanical Orchestra is an interactive system designed to perform music via a system of automated strings, bells and lights. Every time a spectator presses a button, a new variation becomes possible.
Tore Honoré Bøe Acoustic Laptops Tore Honoré Bøe makes music with wood: A showcase of customised sonic tools and a box which contains mechanical objects self-built inventions, obsolete equipment amplified with tiny microphones. With and reclaimed technologies. This event at these acoustic machines he discovers the Teknisk Museum breathes new life normally inaudible microsounds. into technologies considered defunct or out of date. Combining the anarchic comedy of and invented a series of robots the Goons and Monty Python with and automata. The Bruce Lacey cybernetic art and pagan ritual, Experience is a documentary made by Bruce Lacey has been a legendary figure British artist Jeremy Deller and in the British countercultural art scene filmmaker Nick Abrahams, in which they from the 1960s to the present day. go in search of Lacey’s crazy genius In a varied life, Lacey has collaborated and capture the spirit of this visionary with The Beatles, Spike Milligan and artist. The film will be introduced by Fairport Convention, created writer Rob Young ( The Wire). performance art before the term existed,
Bjørn Erik Haugen Ina Pillat The Typist: Purloined Letters Subharchord – A Child of New piece by the Norwegian the Golden Age conceptual artist written for the Independent film maker Ina Pillat ‘Typatune’, a chiming typewriter machine originates from East Germany, but is manufactured in the 1940s to teach currently living in Oslo. Her latest children how to type. A secretary will be documentary is Subharchord – A Child of typing The Purloined Letter, by Edgar the Golden Age, and traces the hidden Allan Poe on a Typatune. history of the instrument played this evening by Biosphere. Pillat will show clips from the documentary and talk Aki Onda about its history in Norway, a story that Walkman concert has parallels with the Cold War and Aki Onda is an electronic musician, Norwegian experimental music. composer, and visual artist. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. His cassette project is compiled from a sound diary of field recordings collected over a span of two decades on a cassette walkman, which he also physically manipulates with electronics during his performances. Kunstnernes Hus Aura Satz Friday 7 June 10:00–15:30 Hedy Lamarr & Kr 50 Daphne Oram London based artist Aura Satz explores the complex interface between humans Symposium and machines in her multimedia work. Satz will talk about two female pioneers in electronic music. As well as being a prominent Hollywood actor, Hedy Lamarr was a mathematician who co-invented ‘frequency hopping’ (a method for transmitting radio signals) with avant garde composer George Antheil. Daphne Oram was a British composer and musician who co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Later she invented Oramics, a remarkable machine for generating and processing electronic sounds.
An international gathering of speakers and lecturers presenting a multi-faceted panorama of contemporary music, sonic art, technology and machinery.
Blå Oren Ambarchi Friday 7 June 20:00 Knots Kr 150/100 (members/concessions) Oren Ambarchi (guitar) Joe Talia (drums) Crys Cole (objects)
James Rushford (leader, string quartet)
and string players CrackedCodes The Australian guitarist presents the live version of Knots, the centrepiece of his 2012 album Audience Of One Oren Ambarchi’s forceful hymn to the (Touch). Oren Ambarchi has worked with power and intensity of the rock machine, everyone from Fennesz, Charlemagne Dave Tompkins’ love letter to the vocoder Palestine, Thomas Brinkmann, and Maia Urstad’s elegy for FM noise. Phill Niblock, Jim O’Rourke, Keiji Haino, SunnO))) and more. Peter Zinovieff David Toop VC3 Machines of Time Peter Zinovieff is a British composer and David Toop is a British composer, music electronic music legend. At the end of writer and curator. His books include the 1960s, he created the EMS studio in Ocean of Sound, Haunted Weather and his basement, and produced synthesizers Sinister Resonance. In “Machines of like the famous VC3 (used by Pink Floyd, Time: Incense-Clock(s)-Time-FLATtime- Kraftwerk, David Bowie, etc). This is a improvisation (discursive thoughts on unique opportunity to hear about the marking the non-space of hearing)”, he EMS glory days and meet a legend in presents an anti-lecture of sound, image electronic music and composition. and performance including the use of automata in music and sound art through Jonny Trunk the ages. BBC Radiophonic Workshop Jonny Trunk is a British writer, DJ, Frode Weium musician and entrepreneur. His label Material Culture and Trunk Records specialises in reissuing Electronic Sound obscure film scores and TV themes, Frode Weium is a curator at Oslo’s Library Music, old advertising jingles, art, Teknisk Museum. He will present a talk sexploitation and sonic kitsch. He will be focusing on his new book (jointly edited introducing the historical survey of the with Tim Boon from London’s Science BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a special Museum) of essays exploring department set up in the late 1950s that technological innovations and their acted as a secret laboratory of avant effects on music, Material Culture and garde sound. Electronic Sound.
Dave Tompkins Blå Club How to Wreck a Nice Beach Friday 7 June 23:00 In his book How To Wreck a Nice Beach Included in ticket price (2011), American writer Dave Tompkins traces the amazing history of the vocoder. Dave Tompkins DJ Lapalux live set (Brainfeeder) Maia Urstad Guest DJs Crackle Stories Sound artist Maia Urstad’s performance is a wireless composition in which she makes a live mix of voices and interference noise from radios around the world. An elegy for a vanishing region of the sound spectrum. Teknisk Museum Saturday 8 June 12:00–15:00 Museum ticket: Kr 100/50 (members/concessions)
Bring the children on a sound hunt Machine to discover the magic of acoustics and sonic secrets with workshops, demonstrations, and hands-on experimentation. Make acoustic boxes with Tore Honoré Bøe, who will demonstrate the fundamental principles Kids of why and how sound is made.
Kunstnernes Hus Saturday 8 June 20:00 Stefan Goldmann Kr 200/100 (members/concessions) Trails Pinquins (percussion) Stefan Goldmann is a Berlin based electronic producer with close connections AutomatorsSmooth to contemporary music (his father was modernist composer Friedrich Goldmann). The releases on his Macro Recordings label cover all bases from Minimal Techno to avant garde composition. For Only Connect, Goldmann has created a new piece, Trails, for Norwegian percussion ensemble Pinquins. Human input imitates the precision of machinery and digital sound generators.
Human/machine interaction, a flame instrument and an audio-visual concert about the interdependent mechanics of ideas. Aura Satz + People Like Us Maja S.K. Ratkje + Consequences Anton Lukoszevieze (One Thing Leads To In and Out of Synch Another) First performed at the new Tanks at Through her innovative sampling, Tate Modern, London, In and Out of appropriating and cutting up of found Synch explores the soundtrack area of footage and archives, Vicki Bennett has analogue film, in a mesmerizing 16 mm been an influential figure in the field of film scripted and voiced in collaboration audio-visual collage for over 20 years. with filmmaker Lis Rhodes. Working with She creates audio recordings, films and Maja S.K. Ratkje and cellist Anton radio shows that communicate a humorous Lukoszevieze to create a live sonic and dark view on life. counterpart to the film’s spoken word, Aura Satz will create a dramatic + Guest DJs performance, visualising sound with spectacular waves of living flame. Only Connect Festival Of Sound: Machine Dreams explores futuristic, obsolete and fictional machines in a series of concerts, talks, screenings and installations
Tickets
Festival pass: Kr 500 Concessions/members: Kr 300
Tickets and festival pass available on the door or in advance from billettservice.no, Narvesen, 7-eleven & post offices
Venues
Kunstnernes Hus Wergelandsveien 17 Teknisk Museum Kjelsåsveien 143 (Bus: 54, 25, 22 / Tram: 11, 13) Blå Brenneriveien 9c Cinemateket Dronningens gate 16 Transformer Ullevålsveien 73
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