As part of a series of celebratory events at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum theater, Saturday, March 28th, ISSUE presents electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel’s piece A Harmonic Algorithm 2011 in collaboration with Seth Cluett. The third incarnation of a work first created through a computer algorithm coded by Spiegel, the piece is spatialized by Cluett, Artist-in-Residence at Nokia Bell Labs. The evening also features Milan-based composer Caterina Barbieri presenting new work for the first time at ISSUE.
Due to constraints associated with the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, we regretfully announce that Caterina Barbieri’s performance has been canceled due to travel restrictions. Artist, percussionist, composer, and past ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Eli Keslzer will perform new work.
Laurie Spiegel’s A Harmonic Algorithm 2011 is the third incarnation of a series of algorithms that Spiegel first coded on her Apple II computer around 1980. In her program notes for the piece, Spiegel notes, “At Bell Labs, it had occurred to me [...] that if a composer creates individual ‘pieces of music’ that at the end of his/her life there will only be a finite number of musical works by that composer. If instead of composing individual finite length works, a composer could encode in computer software their personal compositional methods, preferences, processes and ways of making musical decisions, and somehow their aesthetic sensibility too, then they could go on composing and generating new music long after the biological human had ceased to exist.”
She continues, “In figuring out this particular logic, I spent a lot of time studying the harmonic progressions in Bach's Chorals, on which I based this software. I had happened upon a wonderful used book, "The Contrapuntal Harmonic Technique of the 18th Century" (Allen Irvine McHose, 1947) that was extremely helpful to me while figuring out the logic I coded into these algorithms. (A compositional algorithm is basically just a set of rules, a description in an artificial computer language of a process of decision-making, a sort of a written ‘score’ that embodies a procedure for composing, except that instead of humans playing from that score, a machine does.)”
Working in dialogue with Spiegel on the multi-channel loudspeaker array at Bell Labs, Seth Cluett will create a new diffusion of the work that will take advantage of the unique acoustics of 22 Boerum Place.
At ISSUE, Caterina Barbieri performs her own distinct style of pattern-based synthesizer music. Barbieri explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism. Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, Barbieri recently released “Ecstatic Computation,” a new full-length LP on Editions Mego. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion -- where the perception of the present is constantly refreshed, in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation.
Composer Laurie Spiegel's music draws on her classical training, pre-classical lute, and folk guitar and banjo roots; however, she is also a computer programmer, software designer, visual and video artist, and a published theorist. She is known for her pioneering work with several early electronic and computer music systems, focusing largely on interactive software that uses algorithmic logic to supplement and extend human abilities, and on the aesthetics of musical structure and cognitive process. Spiegel's visual works—computer graphics, video, drawings, and photography—have been exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Japan. She has directed computer and electronic music studios and taught composition at Cooper Union and at New York University, where she founded its first computer music studio. Her realization of Johannes Kepler's Harmony of the Planets was sent into space as the opening cut of the Voyager Spacecraft's record Sounds of Earth (1977). Spiegel's recorded works have been available on 1750 Arch, Capriccio, Philo, Unseen Worlds, and other labels. Her computer software for music, such as Music Mouse—An Intelligent Instrument (1986), has been published for Amiga, Atari, and Macintosh computers. Spiegel has received fellowships and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, ASCAP, and the Experimental Television Lab at WNET, among others. She is a freelance composer for film, dance, and other media, as well as a writer, software developer, visual artist, and a consultant in computer music, audio software design, and in other areas of information technology. Spiegel's studies include an A.B. from Shimer College and an M.A. from Brooklyn College, and additional studies at Oxford and Juilliard.
Seth Cluett is a composer and visual artist who creates work that explores everyday actions at extreme magnification, examines minutae by amplifying impossible tasks, and tries to understand the working of memory in forms that rethink the role of the senses in an increasingly technologized society. Ranging from photography and drawing to installation, concert music, and critical writing, his “subtle…seductive, immersive” (Artforum) sound work has been characterized as “rigorously focused and full of detail” (e/i) and “dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature” (The Wire). The recipient of grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Fund and Meet the Composer, his work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, MoMA/PS1, Moving Image Art Fair, CONTEXT Art Miami, GRM, and STEIM. His concert work has been commissioned by ensembles ranging from the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the International Contemporary Ensemble to So Percussion, Catch Guitar Quartet, and Clogs and is documented on Line, Sedimental, Notice, and Winds Measure recordings. Cluett is the Assistant Director of the Computer Music Center and Sound Art Program at Columbia University and is Artist-in-Residence with Experiments in Art and Technology at Nokia Bell Labs where he maintains a studio and is active in research on virtual and augmented reality acoustics and multi-sensory communication. More information: http://www.sethcluett.com
Caterina Barbieri (b.1990, Bologna, Italy) is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism. She is interested in the polyphonic and polyrhythmic potential of synthesizers to draw complex geometries in space and time. Barbieri holds a diploma in classical guitar and a bachelor's degree in electroacoustic music from the conservatory of Bologna, Italy, alongside a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Humanities and Philosophy of Bologna with a thesis in Ethnomusicology about Hindustani music and minimalism.Since 2013 she has researched and produced music at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, where she has intensively composed for the Buchla 200 system. She has performed at MaerzMusik and Berlin Atonal, Mutek, Unsound, Sonar, Primavera Sound, Barbican Centre, Philharmonie de Paris, CTM, Ableton Loop, Moogfest and La Biennale di Venezia. Her 2017 2LP Patterns of Consciousness was named in several “best of” music round-ups. In 2019 Barbieri released the LP Ecstatic Computation on Editions Mego. She lives in Milan, Italy.
