4.5 Collaborations with the Hub
The Hub collaborated with many different acoustic musicians by using pitch and amplitude trackers to collect information about their performances and distributing this to all the players in the group to use in different ways. In the Hub's first San Francisco performance in 1987 Tim Perkis' piece "Spray or Roll On?" featured saxophonist Larry Ochs and violinist Nathan Rubin improvising with the Hub. Here are the instructions to that piece:
"Pitches played by an instrumentalist are recorded by one player's system and then distributed at his discretion to a common data area in the Hub, for use by the other players. The computer players are instructed to use this information for pitch and duration decisions, and to not play more than 20% of the time."
This was also generally speaking the principle behind the Hub's collaboration
with composer Alvin Curran in his composition "Electric Rags III".
Curran performed improvisationally on the Yamaha Disklavier piano, and
the MIDI output from that instrument was broadcast through the MIDI-Hub
to all the players to use as they wished.
A similar system was used for Scot Gresham-Lancaster's "Vex",
an arrangement for the Hub of Erik Satie's proto-minimalist piano piece
"Vexations". Here, the score of the piece was sent to the Hub
in synchronization with a performance of the piece by both Curran and
the Rova Saxophone Quartet. The Hub freely rendered the notes as they
arrived as an electronic filigree, accompanying the acoustic ensemble.
"Vex" audio example from "Wreckin'Ball", Art 1008 (www.artifact.com)
Another collaboration with Alvin Curran was a studio recording of Curran's
"Everet Verbum" (1993) . This work is derived from the "Delta"
section of "Erat Verbum", a 6 part sound work commissioned by
the Studio Akustischer Kunst of the WDR. Here sections of John Cage's
illustrious Norton Lectures, or "I-IV" (1989), read by Cage
are fed to the Hub for perusal and instant re-translation into Morse Code.
The resultant dot and dash fantasy is mixed live by Curran "on his
way to the Hub Concert".
audio
excerpt of Everet Verbum
56K
modem version