SCORE FOR A LIGHT CHORD: LIGHT INSTALLATION MAY 6-JULY 3, 2022 AT MORTIS STUDIO

“History is one long unbroken chain, when you touch one end the other quivers.”- Anton Chekhov
"..if we get a singular transcendental path of light, that could lead to such great dimensions of consciousness..” - Alice Coltrane

My recent work is an exploration of the relationship and contrast between two waves that travel through air at their own speeds and with their own properties: sound and light. I see them as cousins but not siblings. Light has mass, sound does not. Light is visible, sound is not. Light itself cannot be felt, sound vibrates us. But both occupy space and time, both occur naturally in the universe, both can be sensed by most animals (and plants). We’ve been playing with sound and light as far back as we can remember. Their emanations occupy our places of worship, our places of festivity, our bedrooms, our dreams (do you hear sound in your dreams?). Just as sound can be ‘bent’ by reflecting off the walls and floors or seem to have its frequency altered by traveling past us, this installation explores how a single path of light can be bent into a column of multiple unfolding refractions, forming a light chord.

Using less to achieve more, making ‘something out of nothing’, and working with specific locations to create little spaces of awe that challenge our perception, are all values I try to bring into my installations. With hanging sheets of clear plexiglass and single beam lights, I explore optical prism phenomena* as a way to transmute a musical chord into colored light. Instead of relying on effects or digital projections, only the natural properties of light beams refracting off an angled prismatic surface take shape as two columns of undulating light cathedrals in the gallery display window. The conventional process of the musical score is inverted: the sound of a musical chord becomes the score for a chord of light. In my own intuitive chromesthesia**, the primary colors are used to imply the tones in the octave- the darker tones in the bass register, the lighter tones in the treble. Viewers are able to scan a code on the gallery window to listen to the chord, but viewing it silently is fine too. The movement of air, people walking close by, and the hum of the building gently move the hanging plexiglass sheets, causing an outsized response in the light columns on the wall, making them sway and dance in unpredictable ways. I like to think of this as a live cinema in real time. This installation continues my site-specific work with sound, light, and color to create an immersive experience of altered perception: a little shrine of light.

Listen to the musical chord that provides the ‘score’ for the light chord here: Score for a Light Chord

Special thanks to Mortis Studio, Swish Projects, Spenser Little, and Mike Wallace.

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*https://www.edmundoptics.in/knowledge-center/application-notes/optics/introduction-to-optical-prisms/

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromesthesia

 STAINED GLASS ENTERS THE STREAM: SOUND INSTALLATION AND PERFORMANCE - JAN 7-16, 2022 AT SWISH PROJECTS GALLERY

“One thing I do know for certain-- in later life, I shall be a charming, utterly spherical zero.” - Robert Walser (from Jakob Von Gunten)

“…if people didn't feel swept away to Heaven, I was failing. And I really feel that is an absolutely essential element.” - La Monte Young

This performance and installation is based on my new piece ‘At 639 Hz Stained Glass Enters the Stream’ that was debuted at the Jacumba Hot Springs Bath House in November 2021. The piece is composed in a circle, meaning it has no beginning or end, akin to Indian raga and other Asian and African folk musics. It contains a melodic structure with a fundamental or ‘tonic’ frequency (what we call E flat in western classical music) used to build a chord as drone with musical motifs, which have “the ability to ‘colour the mind’ and affect the emotions, moods, and perceptions of the audience”. This aligns with my general view of the musician/composer/sound artist as one who is responsible for manipulating frequencies and vibrating air molecules in time and space to be heard (and felt) by listeners.

Because the music was inspired by the presence of my body at special spaces during a specified time, this music only comes to life by the presence of bodies to complete its circle through the listener, the one present. It contains circular movement, tangible, visible, kinetic and unpredictable. This is the analog tape that loops between two machines and has been imprinted with a specially tuned chord of sine waves with that fundamental E flat as the anchor, even though it’s only implied. I, as the player, fill in the fundamental in real time on the organ to complete that chord and bring it to fruition, much like an empty temple is only completed by the visit of worshippers. The tape is suspended by tension across the platform, hanging in the air, wobbling as it rotates through the play heads, unfolding with each circumvolution. The longer it plays, the more nuanced, the more subtle, the more inside of the chord the listener can hear. The idiosyncracy of the tape, the amplifier, the room and its dimensions, all affect how it reaches our ears. If the tape is the empty temple, I am the worshipper at the organ, delivering my prayer as honestly as I can in order to complete that chord by playing with it, getting inside of it, dancing around it. I alternate between playing complementary chords to build shifting drones that enter and exit like light through the glass, and improvised melodic motifs that often surprise me as much as anyone: I hear the music of my great grandparents, of my childhood piano teacher, of the Mediterranean Steppe, of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the postwar composers, the 20th century minimalists, the spiritual jazz of America, somehow it’s all in there. Each time, a bit different but only if you’re listening closely. From the outside it sounds largely the same.

The inspiration (inspirare~ to breathe in) for this piece came from my Oct 2021 travels through ancient holy sites, medieval and renaissance churches, catacombs and arcosolia, and mikvot (Jewish ritual baths hidden underground) in Sicily and other areas of southern Italy. Being present at these impactful architectural wonders, rich with history, ghosts, faiths, sacrifices, rituals, worship, hope, despair, and the weathering of time and the atmosphere created a sort of synesthesia- a deep tone ringing on and on, long after my visits were over. The tone was in the range of a very low E flat, and this drone haunted me when I returned home. Was I hallucinating? Going psychotic? Not at all, friends- I was just hearing what I saw, much as Alexander Scriabin saw what he heard. I’ve always been a visual person. Even though my two main forms of art are music and writing, I often only begin composing or writing in response to my mental cinema, either real or imagined. I don’t mean that I want to compose soundtracks to imaginary films- this is a superficial and not very interesting way to make music for me. Instead, it’s more like being in the presence of a beautiful woman and after she leaves still feeling her there, influencing much of what you feel long after she is gone, in other words, a muse. So I realized that these monuments were my muses- the stained glass must enter the stream in order to get to that other shore. Now that I had experienced the power of these sites, what was I going to do with it? Where does all of that feeling go? Pilgrimages to pagan temples and old churches will not deliver anyone the holy grail or solve anyone’s metaphysical problems, but neither will that beautiful woman; in fact, she often creates more problems than she solves, and so do churches and temples! A muse doesn’t give us any answers, only inspiration in the form of more questions, more mysteries, more circles that go around in space and time; a circumference that transcends the profane and the mundane even if only for a few moments. If that’s not a definition of art’s function or at least one of its ideals, I don’t know what is.

NOTES FOR INVOCATION AT THE BATHS: NOVEMBER 20, 2021 IN JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS

“If you’re going to make music, stake your life on it - it’s worth it. Making music is an intensely human act.” - Kan Mikami

“Music is the healing force of the universe.” -Albert Ayler & Mary Parks

There is nothing new-age about the healing power of sound. In fact, it’s one of the oldest-age activities of humans. Before science provided evidence of the immense power of sound waves on the human brain and body, we intuitively knew this power because it affects us so deeply, in a realm beyond language. Sound is both a sword and a salve, it can wound or heal. Like most powerful forces in the universe, it all depends on how and why we use it. We feel sound in vibrations, and those vibrations are delivered at a certain frequency and wavelength. High frequency sounds have shorter wavelengths and so arrive to our ears and bodies in a rapid fire succession on fast, crashing waves. Low frequency sounds have longer wavelengths and so arrive more gradually but insistently, in a series of slow, deep waves. Like light, sounds travels through air at its own constant speed and exists in a spectrum of frequencies. These frequencies make up the ‘tuning’ of a musical instrument, a human voice, a wolf’s howl, a passive wind chime, or a fiery jet engine. Eastern religious and cultural traditions have been using sound in rituals for thousands of years, including bells, vocal chant, gongs, bamboo, turtle shells, conches, and other natural and manmade objects. Indigenous peoples of Europe and the Americas also used sound as a healing force in song, percussion, flutes, animal skin drums, horns, ceramic, wooden, and metal objects. Western religious traditions have employed music in ritual, from Gregorian chant to the shofar (ram’s horn) from immense pipe organs to the amplified voice of the muezzin vibrating through urban centers.

Musician-philosophers in the twentieth century started paying more attention to the phenomenon of sound in secular, daily life. From the influence of the zen tradition, people like John Cage and Pauline Oliveros, among many others, began practicing and talking about the act of listening. Soon the sound creators began not only making sounds but slowing down and intently listening to the world around them. After all, for a sound to be heard and felt, it must have a listener receiving it. The generation of sound is a creative act, the force of yang, the first hexagram of the I Ching. But it’s the act of listening, the receptive act, the force of yin, the second hexagram of the I Ching, that completes sound’s circle. Of course, the music maker is also a listener as the sound unfolds in real time. It’s a tricky business listening to ourselves. The art of music making entails the profound responsibility of crafting sounds that travel into the ears and bodies of other people and intimately affect their consciousness in ways we may never understand. Like many things we do in life, this can be done haphazardly and selfishly with no regard for the outcome- simply being a ‘maker’ and taking no responsibility for what you are putting into the world. But making music can also be done with sound awareness and positive intent, where the concept, intentions, and human emotions that are integral in helping the sound arrive into creation also become a part of its identity.

Sound waves can break up kidney stones, perform surgery, reveal images of a growing fetus without radiation, be harnessed as stealth terror weapons (as was done recently to diplomats in Cuba), shatter glass, move us to tears, rage, love, lust, joy, concentration, peace, and sleep. Sound is no joke, and though it can be tons of fun and very lighthearted it’s power should never be underestimated or unappreciated. Percussionist Milford Graves dedicated the last years of his life to independent research on how the heartbeat can be improved by listening to rhythms intended to influence the cadence of the beat. Graves also delivered the sound directly via acupuncture by vibrating the sound into the needle, making the human body his own turntable. He made himself an expert on heart rhythms by listening- to many different beating hearts. Medical researchers Sean Wu and Uktan Demirci at Stanford have documented their ability to alter the shape of cardiac cells by using sound.

Dedicating oneself to the making of sound is a noble craft, like sculpting vases to hold flowers or ashes, like painting an image hung over a bed for decades, or like putting hands on a person in order to release tension and improve circulation. When we are young, the making of music is largely about ourselves, our egos, our emotions, our expression, our need for attention and admiration. But as we mature, this youthful urge to say ‘I’m here!’ is tempered by a consideration of the other, an awareness that what we put into the world is what we get out of it, and that all actions have an equal and opposite reaction. I’m not preaching for a self-righteous, goody-two-shoes church music mentality! Music has a majestic ability to contain darkness and eros and chaos in a way few other mediums can; these are a vital part of the human experience and often make for the most powerful music. We all know that the greatest healing can emerge from a catharsis of deep pain and suffering. If we pay more attention to the frequencies we generate with our sound, our music, our breath, our speech- we may notice something shift inside of ourselves, and that shift can’t help but be felt by the listener. Try listening to your own breath, really listen to it. Is it shallow or deep, fast or slow, loud or silent, coarse or subtle, fragmented or even, clumsy or graceful? We could wonder: if we don’t even know our own breath, how can we expect to know our voice, our speech, our music?

We are still barely scratching the surface of what there is to know about sound and it’s unfathomable powers. There are frequencies that lay far outside our spectrum of hearing, only audible by dogs or dolphins, or maybe even by no living being. They are akin to radioactive chemicals, of great possible force but to be handled with care. People have theories, but no one can really explain the mystery and depths of sound and music, how deeply they are instilled in our collective psyche and the many ways we are affected by the sounds that surround us everyday.

-Preston Swirnoff 11/20/21

CROSSING THE STEPPE - Liner Notes Essay from LP

“Cautious silence is the holy of holies of worldly wisdom.” -Baltasar Gracián

Throughout history the steppe has been a symbol of a great divide that must be crossed in order to realize a journey. Each geographical region on the globe has its own steppe with a hidden history that dots its trail. A stubborn lack of allegiance to any people, nation, or epoch places the steppes beyond the claim of any single religion or mythology, though surely appearing in all of them. The ‘Great Steppe’ that stretches from Sino-Russia to Austria-Hungary is an improbable corridor that stretches and blurs our archetypal concepts of East and West. It crosses from the vast lands of Manchuria-Mongolia westward through the Dzungarian Gate, rolling past the Siberian forest into the Great Ulay of Kazakh, passing the stern Ural mountains and the extinct Aral Sea (no longer a beautiful lake of a thousand islands, but swallowed into a harsh desert), trailing into the Pontic-Caspian region which tiptoes past the mysteries of the Caucasus and the cautious silence of the Black Sea before it finally unfurls its tail (or is this the mouth?) and lands in Pannonia, providing the soft whispering grass that has played pillow for an uncountable number of Austro-Hungarian-Slavic heads. The Great Steppe has many cousins in the prairies of North America, the deserts of Africa and India, the subtropics of Asia, and the slopes and flats of the Mediterranean. It has invisible ancestors like the mammoth steppe, which spanned most of the earth from Spain to China to Canada before suddenly disappearing 12,000 years ago and burying its secrets in the tectonic plates.

Steppes are not direct routes, but are interrupted at irregular intervals by mountain ranges, bodies of water, and rough untrodden terrain. So, although the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, navigating the steppe is a circuitous route full of zigzagging, climbing, descending, backtracking, and moving sideways. Not much is known about the anonymous brave nomads who trekked in handmade boots and rode on horseback through thick and thin to make it across. We can only imagine the peril and hardship that awaited them, the war and famine and fickle moods of nature, along with the solitude and unspeakable beauty that must have crested across the horizon. Their stories remain outside of written history and do not figure in the great tales of victors and vanquished. These nomads were silent, letting each’s journey run its course and then fade into amnesia. As for the rest of us, we eventually surrendered to the land and decided it was only possible to cross by air. There are no trains, no buses, no superhighways that were ever able to be paved. Perhaps more of us will reach outer space by rocketing out of the atmosphere or submerge to the seafloor in a pressurized cabin than will ever walk across the great steppes.

Just as the steppe forms the great obstacle course of geography, connecting regions that are at a far remove, the pilgrimage is the inevitable test of fortitude and faith that waits in front of us, if only we can collect the resources and will necessary to embark. No amount of talk or conceit can get one across the steppe. The pilgrimage requires action. Nature measures each of us according to our worth by its own capricious lottery. This is a universal fact of life: we all face steppes to cross. The birds do it every winter, soaring above the Saiga antelopes and Corsac foxes who wander the trails below. Even the plants do it in their own sneaky way, creeping their roots and rhizomes beneath our feet but letting the wind do most of the work for them. For our own pilgrimages, many of us prefer to remain blind and live with feet sunk in the mud. Others of us attempt and fail, owing our defeat to a lack of preparedness and resilience, or just plain bad luck. And a few of us make the journey with the unlikely combination of courage, skill, and good fortune, able to arrive on the other side.

-Preston Swirnoff (2020)

In memory of Charles and Kathleen Bennett, amants éternels.