Kulturtechno

Wieder ein Beispiel aus der Welt der Sonifikation: Alvin Lucier hat 1993 aus einer Fotografie der Schweizer Alpen ein Stück für Posaune und Klavier gemacht.

„Panorama“ (1993)
In the Spring of 1993, Roland Dahinden and Hildegard Kleeb gave me a panoramic photograph of the Swiss and Austrian Alps, as seen from their hometown of Zug, Switzerland. I was planning a skiing trip to Switzerland and had asked them to bring me back some travel brochures. At the same time I was thinking about composing a piece for them. As soon as I saw the photograph I got the idea to transcribe the mountain ranges into musical notation. The trombonist would “draw” the mountains by sliding continuously throughout the piece, breathing when necessary. The pianist would punctuate the mountain peaks with single tones and intervals. Since the transposed altitudes of the mountain peaks never match the fixed pitches of the piano’s tempered tunings, the discrepancies in pitch between the trombone and piano tones are heard as audible beats, bumps of sound which occur as sound waves coincide. In 1993, Sol LeWitt was asked to make a wall drawing for the Kunstmuseum in Zug. Roland Dahinden was commissioned to provide music for the installation. Around this time Sol asked me to trade a work with him for his collection of artists’ works. He gave me a wall drawing for my house; I gave him the original score of my „Navigations for Strings.“ I invited Roland and Hildegard, who were living in Middletown at the time, to accompany me to Sol’s home in Chester, to make the trade. While we were there, Roland asked Sol what he had in mind for Zug. Sol replied that he had not yet decided. During a lull in the conversation, I mentioned that I was writing a piece for Roland and Hildegard using a panoramic photograph of the Alps, taken from Zug. He immediately asked if he could borrow the photograph, saying he would base his wall drawing on it. The work was first performed on November 6, 1993 at Wesleyan University.

Hier kann man reinhören in das Stück, hier es mit etwas Aufwand runterladen. Das ist (wahrscheinlich) die Arbeit von Sol Lewitt, die gleichsam entstand, oder zumindest ähnelt sie vom Verfahren:

Danke für den Hinweis, Torsten!

Früher auf Kulturtechno: Aktienindizes als Gebirgszüge

A propos – soeben erschienen: The Sonification Handbook.