Gould Music

Transit is a stand-alone application that plays a random combination of 160 tracks of percussion, electronics and text. Every listening experience is unique as the program creates a near infinite combination of possibilities.

Background

I was approached by Nadja Raszewski at the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020 to create music for re-mounting an art installation by her brother Oliver Raszewski entitled Transit. The particular catalog for this show contains 240 panels and was originally mounted in 1993. Having worked as the music director in Berlin, Germany with Nadja for the past 15 years with her dance company and school Tanz Tangente and knowing much of Oliver’s work it was an easy decision to say YES. While I have seen a lot of Oliver’s work over the years--I had not seen Transit. While we were all scrambling in March of 2020 to make sense of the pandemic, stay safe, sane and try to continue doing creative work--digging into Transit was a welcome distraction. 

Having received Oliver’s complete catalog of Transit in late April, 2020 --I got to work to understand his creative undertaking, process and inspiration. While the original notes were all in German and quite technical and philosophical--I did my best via translation tools and discussions with Oliver and Nadja to understand his intentions. The work in general is described in his catalog as the following (translated from German from his original catalog from Transit):

Transit - communication about annihilation - images as proxies   

It is a reflection about how one views society. The theme of a personal description of the environment, which is constantly renewed as an interactive network of relationships - the relationship to the environment as a partial moment of an event. The problem was that this offered such a widely ramified field of observation, which was totally fragmented and evaporated in its infinity and universality. The question arose: where to start? An umbrella term was needed to give structure to the issue. Transit was this term, which on the one hand described the problem of volatilization, but for Raszewski, as a native of West Berlin, also opened up a very concrete association. This association is linked to spaces and buildings that symbolized the transit routes of the time. Several aspects crystallized that were to be dealt with including: The aspect of time, the search for order, the finding of fixed points, the system in play, the hunt for identity and the loss of the utopia of modernity. Representations had to be found through which these general questions could be symbolically described. Icons that represent the cornerstones, but are interchangeable in themselves, i.e. that have an exemplary character.

The catalog includes four categories each containing 60 images (as described by Raszewski):

1) MICRONAUTS (virus)

They have no problem with their identity, they are different, and yet nobody cares about their personality. They are the mega bosses. They are the icons of society because they have the option to survive. If one looks closely, they can be found everywhere. They populate the rooms almost imperceptibly in different designs, from lethal to life-giving.

2) TRANSIT ROOMS

These are computer-edited, modified spatial and architectural images. They are places of passage and transition with the purpose to capture the peculiar connection between space and time, the temporalization of space and the spatialization of time.

3) TEXT and TEXT IMAGES

The catalog has two different text levels. The first is the so-called blind text. For the time being, this text only functions as a design module….into decorative patterns. Spelling mistakes, meaningless words, sentences without context. Sometimes new word creations flash out that comment. Like at night on the Euro News, when the pictures from all over the world flicker for hours on the screen with the subtitle "NO COMMENT" because they create such a peculiar reality. [The second] is The Transit novel text which is a continuous text. It starts somewhere and ends somewhere. Descriptively it flows there, picks up a thread and imperceptibly loses it again. He [the narrator of the novel text] makes a lot of interesting discoveries on his journey without weighting them. He is passionate and cynical but absolutely emotionless. 

Novel Text Example

“...you are not the first to arrive here. Your arrival was expected. We thank you for your visit. Your stay will be made as pleasant as possible. If you follow the rules of this place, everything will be to your complete satisfaction. Please along there. A call to cabin thirty-four.”

Blind Text Examples

4) NUMBERS

The numbers represent possible ordering and principles. The numbers indicate a process. An open system so an unlimited number can be added in both directions….But the design of the numbers offers a lot of associations. Silver dollars, casino chips, hotel room numbers or maybe keyholes because they give an apparent view of what is behind.

Numbers Examples

It is the first category that caught my attention. Mr. Raszewski has used viruses as his muse for years and for this particular catalog had taken 60 novel viruses and blown them up many thousands of times past their original size to create large-alien-like images. How timely and prescient, in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic in modern times I would be working on a piece whose premise is that these small microscopic viruses (Micronauts) could wipe out large, architectural spaces (Transit Rooms). As we all know, this is what the landscape of 2020 largely looked like and while the vaccine is now being administered--we are still living in an altered landscape.

SONIFYING TRANSIT

After looking carefully through the artwork and reading about Oliver’s process for designing and imagining Transit, I began to write down ideas on how to imagine the sonic landscape of the micronauts, transit rooms, text and numbers. The four categories lay out a bounty of interesting ideas. One difficult aspect for me was how the artwork for Transit is in essence a game laid out by Raszewski.  He goes into depth that there is a catalog system, an aspect of time and a game all involved in how one views the art. Arriving in a long, rectangular box--the inside contains two square boxes each with 60 cards printed on both sides. He states:

In the continuous form of the material acquisition there is a red thread of connections (like e.g. structures and connections of a video game with its different play levels). However, each part will also work separately, each page is interchangeable. The end is therefore also conceivable as a beginning. The catalog has an open principle, to which new parts can be added at any time. By creating single frames, which in as cinematic sequence again result in a new whole, The option remains open to intervene at any point of the sequence and to intervene another way. The logical consequence was to conceptualize the catalog as a formally open game of laying tiles. This memory variant made it possible to lay an almost infinite number of text-picture-sign-icon combinations. 

The playing field is formed by the three boxes in which the 120 double-sided printed sheets are packed. If you open the box and place it next to the lid, two square inner boxes appear in which the cards are packed. If you take the lids of the inner boxes and place them inside the cardboard lid, you will again get a square playing field with four squares. The way the cards are distributed in these four fields always results in a new picture, which opens up the possibility for ever new associations and contexts of meaning. It is also possible to lay out all the motifs, whereby the respective serial design of the four different sides will always result in a kind of textual pattern. In order to perceive, or to pass through an intermediate space, time is always needed. Movement and speed, from here to there is controlled by the factor of time. So it is not surprising that each card box has 60 pages. 60 seconds result in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour. Both boxes together make 120 pages. 12 months are one year. 120 pages with front and back make 240 pictures. 24 hours are one day and so on. 

A whole series of number combinatorics can be created, which will not be elaborated here. In this calculated system it becomes clear that it is not only about the free combination of pictures, texts and signs. It is also about the search for orders and systems of order. The experiences that the environment offers show that one has to search for and take responsibility for these orders oneself. This theme runs through the entire catalog. The search and finding of principles of order and their fixed points as well as disorder through closer examination reveals that everything flows and becomes equally important or unimportant.

Transit Artwork and Game Box Configuration

This description for me helped define some of the piece while also opening a host of other questions. What will the piece sound like? How does it begin or end? How does one sonify a virus and its transmission in space? How does one take artwork and text and incorporate this into sound? How does one experience sound while walking through space-- while viewing art or while watching dance? How do I utilize the four categories found in the artwork into a compositional or sounding process? I immediately got to work--obsessing on finding order and disorder along with sounds and rhythms that satisfied my own creative intuition as well as reflect the categories found within the artwork.

I sketched on paper how the categories could connect to one another sonically, instrument choices, rhythmic motifs, tracks and track length as well as how to mount the actual piece itself. Since we are in a pandemic and knowing that seating would be extremely limited in-person to literally everyone attending virtually, I needed to imagine a variety of spaces and how the sound would be spread throughout. In the middle of this process, Nadja had let me know that it now went from purely a gallery art show to a gallery show and a dance concert. This now added a new element to my thinking--how can this piece support both the artwork (static) and dance (mobile) and perhaps how can both things be happening in different spaces within the same building at the same time?

The Four Transit Categories into Realistic Sonic-Concepts

Creating a Framework

After much consideration and frankly obsession with the artwork and philosophical underpinning of the catalog, I began the task of trying to build the framework of the piece as a whole and what I would record. It led me back to Oliver’s idea of the innumerable possibilities of laying the artwork out randomly in a grid of 4 panels (the game) and that the categories were arranged numerically around time--60 panels per category-60 seconds in a minute, a total of 240 and 24 hours in a day, etc. Why couldn’t I do this with the sound? In other words, I would have the three categories play randomly (micronauts, transit rooms and transit novel text in the spirit of the game) while using the fourth category--the numbers to represent silence between tracks in the other three categories (both track length and silence in respect to his interest in time). Each track I would create would be one-minute in length for a total of 60 percussion tracks for the micronauts, 60 tracks of electronic synthesis and field recordings for the transit rooms and nearly 60 tracks for the transit novel text. This would form the musical structure/fabric for the piece. Just coming up with the schema took me a few weeks of experimentation and ideation. I recorded some ideas and then set an old iPod to play back my tracks randomly while another set of speakers played some recorded tracks also set on shuffle...it was really interesting how “occurrences” would happen--where my mind would hear the two tracks align at certain points to form coherence and result in beautiful moments (or moments of cacophonous tension). 

I needed a more robust solution to put all of the tracks I recorded into a standalone application of sorts-I felt confident that I could find a solution and moved forward with recording, creating synthesis and finding field recordings to create a musique concrète or collage for the transit rooms. I also knew having worked on other projects of mine in multi-channel playback such as Into the Quarry that planned “occurrences” were beautiful in multi channel playback in gallery spaces--now I would extend this in the spirit of John Cage--letting go of the compositional process/ego and let random generation do its part directly in choosing which tracks get played back in any given performance. I decided that the software would have to have the option to be played back in stereo or in multichannel. For the multichannel option each category would have its own set of stereo output--giving each of the three categories it’s own independent stereo field (via 2 speakers for a total of 6 speakers in this configuration). In either case, the random selection of tracks for the three categories mixed with random silence after each track would provide the possibility of solos, duets and trios to form an immersive experience. Being a life-long improviser this also gave me great pleasure that in essence the playback would be “riffing” randomly away on my tracks and silences.

Recording the Categories-Micronauts, Rooms and Text

Micronauts

I decided to tackle the micronauts first given I was nervously trying to navigate my way through avoiding one in particular-COVID19. Washing my hands, sanitizing, mask wearing, social distancing...it became part of the ritual of daily life and this seeped its way into my thinking on how to play and even how to set up percussion in regards to Transit. I thought about how viruses transmit, replicate, regenerate and how this could be represented in sound/rhythm through improvising around repetitive, regenerative, additive-type rhythmic motifs. I decided in the spirit of the piece--I would also consider four categories.  In this case, the four categories associated with percussion: skins, wood, metal, pitched/unpitched. I set-up one category at a time and improvised on themes that I came up with earlier. I decided early on that the viruses for the piece would provide the propulsion for the work and the transit rooms would provide ambient sounds, synthesis, harmony and field samples from somewhat recognizable locales such as highways, sporting events, restaurants, conversations, machinery, footsteps, nature, etc. I set up percussion instruments in some traditional multiple percussion-like configurations such as Maki Ishii’s Thirteen Drums (1985).  In other cases, I had the mindset of an architect--thinking of vertical and horizontal planes and giving myself challenges for navigating the space between these planes and instruments. None of the sixty tracks I recorded were edited in any way. I left them alone except to tweak frequencies, utilize interesting effects or add reverb when needed. I also did not directly relate any one picture of Oliver’s to a specific improvisation-for my thinking, this was too rudimentary for the enormity of the piece.

Micronauts Percussion Set-Up Examples

Transit Rooms

For the transit rooms I decided to create atmospheric ideas that merged field recording with synthesis.  In certain cases, I would identify a pitch or frequency that was prevalent in the sample and try and create a synthesized sound around that--in essence trying to merge the two into something new and possibly unrecognizable.  This would be similar to Oliver’s pictures of the Transit Rooms themselves...one is able to recognize certain elements such as beds, chairs, people, but these are placed in improbable locations or with impossible modifications such as pipes with liquid flowing out of them into rooms, etc. I wanted the listener to get a glimpse of normal life but that something was present that was not normal and that this abnormality in itself created a unique hybrid sound and impression. I used some field recordings that I had recorded along with many found at freesound.com.

Transit Novel Text

The novel text is a long, winding dialogue filled with non-sequitur ideas, incomplete or incomprehensible sentences mixed with tragic and funny themes. I enlisted the help of my longtime collaborator-Malcolm Tulip to record the script as one would a BBC announcer. This was in part because of what Oliver suggested in his own notes that it was somewhat emotionless.  I also needed Tulip’s clear, capable diction as the text tracks would at times be played along with the micronaut and transit room tracks. To record the novel text, I borrowed a 100 foot long microphone cable that wound its way from my basement studio through my kitchen and dining room upstairs and into the garage where I set up a recording booth for Malcolm.  We communicated through Facetime and kept ourselves smartly distanced not wanting to accidentally infect one another if we were asymptomatic. I then cut up the recording into 40 tracks. I wanted to keep the tracks to around one-minute in length and this cut down on my hope of reaching 60 tracks for the text portion. 

In total, there were 160 tracks that I recorded. I experimented with creating 60 tracks of silence from one second to sixty seconds to insert between tracks. I wanted the composite affect to be offsets between each category resulting in overlap as well as solos, duos and trios of sound happening. This led me to rethink how the playback would be achieved and I moved toward finding someone to help me create a patch in the computer program MAXMSP. 

Connecting the Four Categories into a Contiguous Piece

While my initial experimentation with three sets of speakers and iPods set to shuffle worked in theory--it was clunky and not robust enough for a gallery installation or dance concert.  I instead turned my attention to the program MAX from the company Cycling74. This programming language is extremely flexible for musicians, performance and visual artists to manipulate media in millions of ways. I called upon composer, performer and multimedia artist Jordan Munson to write the code needed to get Transit off the ground (he teaches a course on this program in the Music and Arts Technology Department at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). I had detailed my ideas to Jordan about how I wanted each category to be randomly played and that between each category the program would choose a random length of silence between 1-60 seconds. After a few iterations of my idea with Max, I settled that category A (micronauts), and B (rooms) would each have the possibility of 1-60 seconds of silence after each play of a track and category C (text) would have the program choose between 1-120 seconds of silence after completion of its track.  I did this to give the music more variety and openness to play and to give greater pauses and flexibility for those “occurrences” I mentioned earlier to happen more often. One other important tweak was that the program could only use one of the tracks in each category one time until they all played once.

Earlier versions provided some unique problems/failures because when truly random the program could play the same track back many times in a row--I decided that this was not musically suitable for this particular piece and chose instead to have it playback only once until all tracks in any one category were all played. Since this would be used for playback for a dance concert (or other live events) I also wanted a performance timer with a green light that indicates the program is running. In some of the initial runs of the program, there were times where all three categories had a length of silence simultaneously--I loved this!  I called it awkward silences. In the midst of the piece, sometimes cacophonous--all would just stop. In one particular occasion, I thought the program stopped working--but it was just a three-category overlap of silence.  Thus, the green light came into existence on the program.  We also had a button to turn on and off the ability to change the length of the durations of silence at the end of each track as well as a master fader for overall volume and a volume fader for each category to tweak the sound levels for any performance venue. Another significant decision was to set how the piece would begin. I made the decision that when the play button is pushed the first track of category C would always begin--it makes for a great introduction. After this it is anyone’s guess what will happen next.

To add another layer of usefulness-the program can play just one category at a time by turning down the other volume faders. This was intentional as the first presentation of this piece will have the audience moving through a building---they will hear one category at a time until they stop in the last room where the piece will be performed with dance. The last step to this process was packaging the program Max and the patch Transit into a standalone program that anyone with an Apple computer could download. 

Early Sketches of the Layout and GUI for Transit

Combinatorics

After the application was complete, I had a hunch that the sheer number of combinations of sound between the three categories mixed with the inserted silences would be staggering...not being near the math wizard to figure this out-I asked another one of my longtime collaborators, friend, physicist and wonderful musician Alberto Rojo to lend me a hand. He spent quite a bit of time analyzing and working out the math involved to calculate such a number--after running his simulations he realized that the number was the largest he had encountered. In fact, it is so large that the number of possibilities just taking two of the three categories into account is in fact many times larger than the age of the universe in seconds (2.7x1027) or the total amount of particles in the observable universe (>1085). The number for category A and B along with accounting for silences between 1-60 seconds after each track is an astronomical number!! It is: 3.38x10 to the 328th power!!! It would seem that everyone on earth could play Transit for their entire lifetimes and no two people would hear it the same way. To view the complete paper on the combinatorics from Dr. Rojo please find it here.  For me, this is not only mind boggling but so utterly satisfying to know that the randomness generated in the piece is playing its own part in assemblage and that this is directly inline with the message laid out by Raszewski in the original art installation...the collection of art is a game with millions of possibilities just as the virus itself moves and mutates through millions of people and spaces. The music mirrors this in sound and organization.

Video Capture of Piece

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of Transit--please let me know via email at: michael@gouldmusic.com.

THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST IN THIS PROJECT!