Room Pieces
by Michael J. Schumacher
XI records, New York, 2003
2 Audio CD-ROMs, 75'43" and 72'52", $13.00
XI 127
Distributor website: http://experimentalintermedia.org/index.shtml.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
The first CD presents just one long recording
of 'Room Piece', a project that has been
going on since 1994, in which Michael
Schumacher uses elaborate mathematical
algorithms to explore the auditory structure
of space. This is number XI from about
15 instances of 'Room Piece', and each
time the computers plays a different but
recognisable composition due to the interplay
of random choices within strict limits.
Even from this limited 2-d representation
of what actually is conceived as a 4-d
spatial experience, the listener gets
a clear image of what Schumacher is trying
to do. By gradually shifting and moving
not only the position of the sound but
also its internal structure, its texture,
its dynamics and its timbre, he literally
turns the ear towards the walls, the corners,
the ceiling and beyond, to the outside
of the room, where its lengthening perspective
almost fades into nothingness. Here at
last is a composer who has no horror vacui
and who doesn't simply stack haphazardly
chosen samples to create some crude kind
of emotional ambience or artificial enthusiasm
or who crams every nook and corner with
useless effects or tiresome beats. Quite
on the contrary, he carefully builds interior
and exterior architectures that have the
potential to coincide in the minds' ear
to create an awareness of space in all
its variations of light and dark, opaque
and translucent, smooth and rough, sinuously
organic and geometrically straight.
Technically, Room Piece is built
from small cellular units such as piano
arpeggio's, modular clusters, birdlike
cries and short stretches of white noise.
Each returns in numerous disguises with
changed pitch and amplitude, its appearances
governed by a small set of rules that
are programmed into the computer. The
temporal and dynamic structures are calculated
by means of a set of density functions
and a series of prime numbers to avoid
exact reoccurrences of chance superpositions.
Silences are treated as building blocks
in the same way as the sounding elements.
Thinking of the cells as (con)structural
elements of a physical room, the silences
in between their presentations are the
equivalent of the empty spaces of a room,
a corridor, a garage or a great hall.
Don't take the analogy any further, because
there is no literal translation of physical
space into auditory sound: after all,
this is no cheap remake of what Alvin
Lucier did already in the seventies. (Lucier
made an existing room 'hearable' by using
its acoustic properties.) With and through
these constructive principles, and the
carefully selected cells, Schumacher succeeds
in creating a fascinating, surprising
and enchanting composition, resulting
in a genuine intellectual and aesthetic
experience.
The second CD has four pieces. 'Piece
in 3 Parts' from 2002 uses two 30-second
samples of violinist Jane Henry improvising
and a 40-second sample of percussionist
Tim Barnes playing the gong. The material
is used and reused to create an overall
narrative impression of different spaces
rather than an exploration of one environment.
'Still' (two versions on this CD) can
be described as a depiction of a single
spot in time and space. It is an inward-looking,
serene and quiet micromosaic of quasi-atomic
sounds, interrelating without interacting,
motionlessly moving through their own
existence. (Don't get me wrong, there
certainly is no metaphysical or meditative
intention in this music. No New Age vagueness
or pseudo-spiritual blah blahjust
sounds concentrating on what they are
best at: sounding in time.) The fourth
track, 'Untitled' is a somewhat similar
piece but uses modulated sinewaves as
its material.
Michael Schumacher developed his art in
and for his New York galleries Studio
Five Beekman, now closed, and Diapason.
Essentially, it is in this kind of environment
the music should be heard and experienced.
I can easily imagine that I would walk
into the gallery, get wrapped in and transported
by the music and end up in an adjacent
room, sipping a glass of something refreshing
to synchronize with the hectic pace of
the outside world not realising that the
few moments inside the music were more
than an hour in city time. So who says
we are living our lives to fast?