FLOATING SOUND GALLERY
Vienna
Rodolfo Caesar
Circuit Fantôme Season 6 Episode 4curated by Anton Iakhontov (Patrick K.-H.) and Daniel Teruggi.
INTRODUCTION TO THE STONE (1989) stereo 8'50"
Commission by the Composer’s Desktop Project, Keele University, UK.
It presents a conflictive relation between repetition (of only a few pitches) of primitive pulsating rhythms, against the singularity of contrasting events: the noisy coloration of some individuals, the scraping attacks, the movement of virtual places in the panoramic dimension. I used a lot of filtering in CDP’s banks, and edited all samples with an Akai S1000. It is the first in a series of three pieces exploring sounding material extracted from flint, a curious mineral easy to find in Norfolk, UK. From it, many churches were built in the area, and flintlock served to many wars in Europe.
VOLTA REDONDA (1992/93) stereo 19’35"
Commission by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales - INA, Paris.
Contrasting materials like beads in a crystal bowl and trains were approached by emphasizing some of their common frequencies, in a sort of espectral study. It was my attempt with S.Y.T.E.R., which I considered interesting at the time, but let me down, forcing me to find solutions with the CDP’s filter banks and Akai samplers loopings, as I had already explored in Introduction to the Stone. The title is the name of a city in Brazil
built around the main steel mill in the country. A river’s bend names the city: 'volta redonda' means ‘round turn’, which, for me, is a happy pleonasm for ‘loop'.
CÍRCULOS CEIFADOS (1997) stereo 17’
Commission by the Fundação Vitae, São Paulo, Brasil.
Because I always thought that pieces and their titles kept an estranged relationship, for this one I invented that the real authors of the mysterious crop circles cut in many British fields were insects and frogs during the night. Of course this is ludicrous, but I wrote a book in order to prove this point. Or, better yet, it was the opposite: I composed a piece in order to prove my book. I used a lot of Csound and a sampler Kurzweil K2000, and many field recordings.
Supported by Stadt Wien Kultur and Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport .
