Presenters for 2004:   Stephanie Andrews   Christopher Bailey   Joanna Berzowska   Shushil Bhakar   and Eric Hortop   Cliff Burgess   Paulo Chagas   Dennis Dollens   Dan Falk   Sarah Filley   Ivette Fuentes-Guridi   Lila Kari   Narendra Pachkhede   Chris Salter   Chelsea Smock   Clara Ursitti   Derek van der Kooy   Yon Visell   Fabian Winkler   Panel Discussion Symposium, 2004 Sand and its Interface: a Solution to Problems of Flat Musical Surfaces By Christopher Bailey University of Cincinnati http://music.columbia.edu/~chris Since the mid-point of this century, many composers, such as Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, and John Cage, have created very dense, detailed musical works. Similar aesthetics can be traced in the visual arts, in works by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, or Frank Stella. It is now a widely held view that much of this music is a failure; yet the paintings and sculpture of the period are still revered and enjoyed by the general public today. I believe that the explanation for this disparity lies in the way that music is usually presented to, and therefore experienced by, most listeners: always from beginning to end, in a straight line of time. Because of this mode of presentation, and because our cognitive abilities encourage us to perceive musical form via chunking and through perception of large-scale kinetic arches, composers throughout music history have often structured their works in well-organized hierarchies and in clear kinetic arch-forms. Most of the dense, detailed music by the composers mentioned above is not so organized, and has thus proven "difficult" for listeners. However, an interactive interface, that allows one to experience musical compositions in a manner analogous to the way viewers experience paintings or works of architecture, can render such music exciting and communicative. Such an interface allows the listener to traverse the time-structure of a composition in a random-access manner, and to parse complex counterpoint in various ways, revealing layers of the sonic fabric from different perspectives: listening only to certain instruments, certain registers, certain loudnesses, certain positions in the stereo field, and so on. My composition, Sand is an unapologetically dense and detailed computer-music work that would pose problems for listeners if encountered in the usual, unmediated, beginning-to-end concert format. Using the interface to the composition that I programmed in MAX/MSP, listener-empowered exploration of the composition's varied textures and gestures allows for a positive aesthetic experience. Biography: Christopher Bailey studied music composition, theory and computer music at the Eastman School of Music and Columbia University, and currently teaches the same subjects at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His acoustic and electronic works are performed worldwide.   Page Top Copyright © 2004 Subtle Technologies Festival