Southern Exchange:  An Evening of 3D Digital Music by Argentine Composers Oscar Pablo Di Liscia, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano and Juan Pampin

In the the early 1990s the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored a exchange program between two important west-coast computer centers: the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at UCSD, and the Laboratorio de Investigación y Producción Musical (LIPM) of the city of Buenos Aires, directed at that time by electronic music pioneer Francisco Kröpfl.

During this exchange program, Argentine composers affiliated with LIPM had the opportunity to be in residency at these centers for several months, learning computer music and composing new works. The program completely transformed the landscape of electronic music in Argentina and many of the composers that took part of it became the next generation of experts in the field.

Two decades later, three of the composers that participated of this exchange gather at the UW to present their latest works, distant echoes of those first steps into the world of computer music.

 

PROGRAM DETAIL

Oscar Pablo Di Liscia: Diez Claroscuros (Ten chiaroscuros, 2011)

I (ca. 4’ 52’’)                                                         

Linterna sorda (Deaf lantern)                                  Alejandra Pizarnik

Sous la nuit  (Under the night)

En un principio fueron mis muertos

(In the beginning they were my dead)

 

II (ca. 4’ 53’’)

Insomnio (Insomnia)                                              Jorge L. Borges

 

III (ca. 4’ 12’’)

Cantinas de medianoche                                        Manuel J. Castilla

(Midnight taverns)

 

IV (ca. 3’ 11’’)                                             

Nocturno                                                               Julio Cortázar

Después de las fiestas

(After the parties)

 

V (ca. 4’ 27’’)                                                                 

Lo pasado pisado                                                  Paco Urondo        

(Leave the past behind)

Cinco de la mañana (Five AM)

 

VI (ca. 2’ 33’’)                                                                

Noche Tótem (Totem night)                                    Oliverio Girondo             

 

VII (ca. 3’ 25’’)                                                      

Poema II (Poem II)                                       Juan R. Wilcock

Marzo (March)

 

VIII (ca. 2’ 8’’)                                                       

Nightmares                                                            Leónidas Lamborghini

                                               

IX (ca. 6’ 41’’)                                                       

La noche pálida tiembla                                          Juan L. Ortiz

(The pale night trembles)                             

 

X (ca. 5’ 22’’)                                                        

En tu inmensa pupila                                              Olga Orozco

(In your immense pupil)                               

 

- Intermission -

 

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano: Earth Songs (2011)

 

Juan Pampin:  A Line (Part I, IDA) (2011)

 

Program Notes

Oscar Pablo Di Liscia: Diez Claroscuros (Ten chiaroscuros, 2011)

This work –originally for 3D surround sound and lights– was commissioned by the National Secretary of Culture of Argentina and conceived to be performed in the reading room of the old National Library. The goal of the piece was twofold: on the one hand, to present Argentine poetry in its own environment (the reading room of the old National Library), on the other hand, all the selected poems incorporate "the night" from its many different perspectives (sunset, insomnia, wakefulness, dream, nightmares, dawn, etc.)

The tittle "Ten chiaroscuros" refers both to the zones between light and its absence, which generate the form of the piece (the chiaroscuro technique of the Italian painters leaded by Caravaggio), and to the multiple instances arising between reference, form and sonority, which are the essence of poetry and that electro-acoustic music can recreate with an intensity and precision without precedent in sonic art.

The “backbone” of the piece has ten parts, each of them having one or several brief poems by the same author. Each poem is recited from a different fixed spatial location, the electronic sounds/structures set several kinds of relations between the text and the music or sound, ranging from reference, sonority, evocation or pure sound materiality.

Technical notes: this electronic composition was entirely created using the Csound program (by Barry Vercoe et al, MIT).  Electronic sounds are produced by means of several synthesis and processing techniques. The only exception of this are the voices which recite the poems (which were recorded in the studio) and several minor audio files used as source to be processed by Csound. From the perspective of the sound diffusion, "Ten chiaroscuros" does not have a unique listening front. It was conceived in a way that allows the audience to be seated at any location and orientation of the listening room or even to walk in the space surrounded by the loudspeakers. The spatialization of all the sounds in the composition was achieved by means of the well known and widely used Ambisonic technique.

 

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano: Earth Songs (2011)

In memory of Max Mathews, who lead the way in teaching computers how to sing.

          –FLL

This is the first version of a series of pieces for processed sounds and computer that relate to creation, creatures, their meditation on existence, and their awareness of the world. "Earth Songs", the first segment of a larger work, has a slow and relentless metric structure that remains mostly unchanged throughout the piece. It is rendered through analysis and resynthesis of a single voice and percussive sounds.

Most of the resynthesis data scanning functions that create the voices are driven by Gendy unit generators, which create very particular inflections and obscure the underlying spoken text. The piece is played in real-time, with the performer executing pre-composed segments of SC code that represent utterances, phrases and rhythmic structures, and is spatialized around the audience using Ambisonics.

 

Juan Pampin: A Line (Part I, IDA) (2011)

"And then it has happened again, and now it starts to happen everywhere. But -he astutely adds- only in the metro I can realize it because to travel in metro is like being inside a clock. The stations are the minutes, you know, it is that time of yours, of now; but I know that there is is a different one, and I've been thinking, thinking…"

          ––Julio Cortazar, The Pursuer

A Line was composed using field recordings from the city of Buenos Aires captured over the last three Autumns (Springs in Argentina). The title of the piece refers to subway line "A", the first subway line of Buenos Aires which was opened to the public in 1913 becoming also the first subway line in the southern hemisphere. It also refers to the line dividing the South and North of the city along which line "A" runs, truly a social scar.

The "A" line was the place of my early urban explorations. Guided by my grandfather, I could spend hours riding on the front car, next to the motorman, from where I could see all the signals and track changes, going from the beginning to the end of the line. Only getting off at one of the stations to go play at one of the many parks along the line would distract me from that hypnotic underground journey. Plaza de Mayo, Congreso, Once, Parquet Rivadavia, all inscribed exactly over the invisible line, where places of joy where I fed pigeons, played soccer and climbed trees, but nothing compared the rides, that sometimes continued on the Sarmiento train that extends line "A" to the West into the suburbs.

Composer Bios

Oscar Pablo Di Liscia (Santa Rosa, La Pampa, 1955) has a doctoral degree in Humanities and Arts from Universidad Nacional de Rosario. He is the former director of the Program in Electronic Music Composition at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (UNQ) where he currently teaches composition and works as computer music researcher. Di Liscia was the former Adjunct Dean of the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte (IUNA), he is currently member of the faculty council of the institute and serves as professor of Digital Audio in the Multimedia department. Di Liscia's compositions have been performed in Cuba, United States, France, Spain, Chile and the Netherlands and have been awarded prices by national and international societies such as the Groupe de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France). In 2008, he received the prize of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Argentina for his CD “Figuración de Gabino Betinotti”, done in collaboration with the Argentine semiologist and poet Oscar Steimberg. Di Liscia is the editor of the Music and Science book collection of the UNQ press, he has published many papers and books on the aesthetics and techniques of new music and technology, and has also developed software for digital signal processing, musical analysis and composition.

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano (Buenos Aires, 1956) received a Master in Electronic Engineering (Faculty of Engineering, University of Buenos Aires) and a Master in Music (Carlos Lopez Buchardo National Conservatory, Buenos Aires). He started working with electroacoustic music by building his own analog studio and synthesizers around 1976. After graduating he worked for nine years in industry as microprocessor hardware and software Design Engineer for embedded real-time systems (telephone exchanges) while simultaneously pursuing his interests in electroacoustic music composition. His 1986 piece "Quest" won a mention in the 1990 Bourges Competition. Starting in October 1990 he spent one year at CCRMA, Stanford University, as Invited Composer, as part of an exchange program between LIPM in Argentina, CCRMA at Stanford and CRCA at UCSD sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. He later did research in dynamic sound localization and taught an Introduction to Electronic Music course for one year at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus of Keio University, Japan. Since 1993 he has been working at CCRMA as Lecturer, Composer, Performer and Systems Administrator of CCRMA's computer resources, he has created and maintains since 2001 the Planet CCRMA collection of open source sound and music packages for Linux. In 2008 he completed a 5-month residence in Berlin thanks to the DAAD as the "Edgar Varese Guest Professor" at TU-Berlin. His music has been released on CD's and played in the Americas, Europe and East Asia.

Juan Pampin (Buenos Aires, 1967) is Associate Professor of Music Composition at University of Washington and founding faculty member of the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), for which he currently serves as Director. He received an Master in Composition from Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, France, and a Doctorate in Composition from Stanford University, where he studied with composer Jonathan Harvey. While at Stanford he worked at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) doing research in computer music under the supervision of Julius Smith. Juan Pampin’s works explore the territory delineated by the concepts of site, memory, and materiality through the use of algorithmic strategies to produce aural phenomena. His compositions, including pieces for instrumental, digital, and mixed media, have been performed around the world by world-class soloists and ensembles such as Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Arditti String Quartet, Sinfonia 21, Susana Kasakoff, Melia Watras, among many others.

 

 

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