Frames
2001 (24′35″)
Electro Instrumental Music
This piece is all about the phenomenon of the ‘top’. Definition: “A solid body capable of rotating at high angular velocity about an instantaneous axis which always passes through a fixed point”. We recognize the specific of a gyroscope in the moments of its centrifugal power, its form, the influence of external forces, e.g. the friction. In addition we have an interaction of forces and movements, which are effective in the top itself.
The musical language (MAX) does not consist of arcs of tension or climaxes. Forces and frictions arise from condensations. There is no development in the sense of the European cultural tradition (waking state, Paul Valéry). It is generative music with concrete spinning sounds that exclude a conscious listening to a dramatic narrative (dream state) and strive for the phenomenon of suspension. The highest possible level of abstraction is intended.
Frames is a virtual sound space
Frames generates a 4/2-channel sound turbine
Frames investigates audible perception
Frames turns balance on its head/ear
Therefore:
The radiophonic composition Frames can be broadcasted in normal stereo as well as quadraphonic sound, using the simultaneous radio transmission over the internet. A possible Dolby Surround production (7-channel) is another alternative for transmitting multichannel sound into the living room.
“Frames” is composed only with sounds of spinning tops (e.g. whistling spinning tops made of ivory, or humming spinning tops e.g. from the company Boltz). The recording of the spinning top sounds was made possible by Lourens Bas, who made his spinning top collection in Hoorn (The Netherlands) available for this purpose. In addition, Marcel Wierkx wrote a special software which could move the spinning tops in the acoustic space.
In 2002, an exhibition was organized at the Galerie Rachel Haferkamp under the title “Frames, Neither of the Two”; the following text: Sound, momentum and form of the spinning top are the focus of the exhibition “Frames”. An interplay of forces and movements brought together by the sound artist and composer Michael Fahres and the painter Klaus G. Gaida in the Galerie Rachel Haferkamp.
Three linked compositions could be heard on the two levels of the gallery, two in 4 channel technique (Frames). The connecting element was a sound sculpture, a 1.50m high humming top “Fram”, which has its composition firmly installed inside. 12 accordion free reed aerophones (accordion) are mounted in the spinning top. I have designed the sound spectrum especially for “Frames”. These sound worlds are visually condensed by Klaus G. Gaida through 13 large-format pictures (“Luftkampf”). After energetically tonal as well as visual impressions on the ground floor, the visitor could retreat to the first floor for a world of generative (meditative) sound experience.
