Interpretation of the music of the SPHERES
Initially, this project was going to have participants from all over the world
playing/jamming together via internet, 24 hours a day for 1,5 weeks. As it turned out,
it was harder to accomplish than anyone of us could think. People dropped of, the technique
failed us and the deadline passed without us arranging the problems. Instead, it all became more of a process/
work in progress and it raised questions about human relations and the interaction between people.
We had to begin in our world, the smaller one consisting of close friends.
The original thought with this project was that we were going to play together in the gallery space
we disposed over, each participant was connected to one of the 4 walls in the room with both a live webcam image
and sound in real-time. I, Simon Caringer, was the only musician on sight, the rest of the people were in their respective
country, playing from their homes. The other musicians were:
Alberto Rodriguez Pastor, Estel-la Broto Lema and
Abel del Castillo Ponce, Barcelona, Spain
Danny Carpenter, Stockholm, Sweden
Henric Hagström, Insjön, Sweden
Friends to these people were also playing sporadically with us.
The idea was that we were going to record around 5-10 minutes every day into a computer that was
in the other room in the gallery, but due to technical problems we could only record 5 days in total,
including the last day´s recording/documentation that is currently playing in the window to the right.
As I wrote in the info slip for the exhibition;
The computer in room 2 is simultaneously recording the sounds from each country to equally as many
channels, 5 minutes per day. After the recording has been done, a synchronization program/patch (written for
this project by Alberto Rodriguez) cuts up the sound files in small parts, analyzes them, combines the most
similar parts with each other and creates a new soundfile...
The result of this experiment can be found in the menu to the left, under "sound". The original soundfiles
(the sounds/tracks from each participant) are called "original 1, 2 etc" and the mixed down experiment tracks are called
"meltdown". We managed to record one evening (apart from the videodocumentation to the right) with a minidisc and
good stereomics in the gallery room, and that recording is called "minidisc".
Regarding the title of the project, I wrote a small note about Pythagoras and his theory about "the music/harmony
of the spheres" in the info slip, but that note seems irrelevant seen in retrospect. I wrote:
According to Pythagoras, the spheres (planets) in space generate vibrations,
and when these vibrations meet, or correlate, absolute harmony is created.
An attempt to "re-think" and use this theory in a smaller physical scale
is what we are trying to accomplish with this exhibition/experiment..
The reason why I mention this allthough I find it somewhat irrelevant now (the Pythagoras-thing), is because it could be easier, with the text, to visualize
how it actually was on sight, when all the participants were there playing with each other. We actually (and very subjectively) managed to create an
"absolute harmony"...
A small explanation about the 2 persons (Johan Ander and Eva-Stina Stenroos) standing beside me, touching each other on the video;
During this exhibition, I´ve also been building a synth together with Nils Edvardsson (I have done the design and he has been constructing
the guts/the electronic parts). When Nils was putting lab plugs in some holes of the synth, he discovered that if you touch 2 holes or
more with your fingers, you work as a cable, sending the signal from one finger to another.. So on the video, that´s exactly what Johan
and Eva-Stina do, they are holding one end of a cabel connected to the patchbay each, and when they touch each other, the signal goes
through their bodies and creates a totally different sound.
The images above and the "screendumps" to the left are screendumps/images taken by Henric and Alberto during the
exhibition with the webcams connected to their specific wall, it´s both from before and during the exhibition time, with me
working, putting up cameras, visitors watching and listening etc..
The video was shot by Gemma Freginé Martí and the sound for the video was recorded by Naim Josefi.
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