LEONARDO REVIEWS

AUDIO COMPACT
DISCS
XENAKIS: ELECTRONIC MUSIC
by Iannis Xenakis. Electronic Music
Foundation, Albany, NY, 1999. <http://
www.emf.org>. EMF CD 003.
Reviewed by Robert Coburn, Conservatory
Computer Studio for Music Composition,
Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211, U.S.A. E-mail:
<rcoburn@jarl.cs.uop.edu>
The Electronic Music Foundation
(EMF) was begun in 1994 by Joel
Chadabe and others as a resource for
the dissemination of electroacoustic,
computer and other forms of new music. From its beginnings as an on-line
source for hard-to-find recordings, it
has grown to be one of the most important sources for a variety of information
on new musical expression.
Recently the EMF has moved beyond
selling recordings to producing a series
of compact discs on its own label. One
of the first of these is a recording of the
electronic works of one of the most significant and unique voices in twentieth
century music, Iannis Xenakis.
For many years the electronic music
of Iannis Xenakis was available only on
an out-of-print Nonesuch recording.
This new compact disc reissues several
of the works from this earlier recording and introduces some more recent
pieces. With works dating from 1957 to
1992, it provides a notable retrospective of electronic music from Xenakiss
long compositional involvement with
technology.
In the well-written (although minutely printed) liner notes, Makis
Solomis categorizes the pieces by technical approach into four periods, of
which three are represented on this
disc. The first includes those works pro-

LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS

Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt
Coordinating Editor: Kasey Rios Asberry

2000 ISAST

duced at the Groupe de Recherches

Musicales (GRM): Diamorphoses, Concret
PH, Orient-Occident and Bohor. These are
by far the best known of Xenakiss electronic works and present a wonderful
view of his unique approach to musique
concrete. The compositional techniques
used in these works parallel Xenakiss
approach to acoustic works from the
same time and give each of these pieces
a flavor all its own. Orient-Occident, perhaps the most easily approached by a
listener, was written for the film by
Enrico Fulchignoni and is recognized
as a masterpiece of early electronic music. Of the four GRM works, Concret PH
has long been a favorite of mine.
Xenakis mixed fragments of the sound
of smoldering coalsthe single sound
source of the pieceto produce a
highly evocative world of constantly
varying and infinitesimally detailed
clouds of sound.
Of the later pieces, Hibiki-Hana-Ma
(1970) and S.709 (1992) represent, respectively, the music Xenakis composed
for his polytopes and compositions
done most recently with the GENDYN
system. The polytopes were constructions for which Xenakis realized a complete fusion of art forms. First composed as a work for 12 separate tracks,
the current recording of Hibiki-HanaMa presents a stereo version of this
highly spatial piece. (This might be a
fine candidate for the five-channel surround of the new DVD medium.)
The GENDYN program realizes
Xenakiss goal of creating a system for
composition that simultaneously produces the micro- and macro-structure of
the work from the composers specific
input. In this program there is no differentiation between synthesis and compositional structure. As stated in the notes,
The program consists of an algorithm
which explores stochastic timbre more
thoroughly than ever before, resulting
in a waveform which then evolves constantly through the introduction of polygonal variations with the help of
probability procedures.
Xenakis has done more than any
other musician to unite the creative act
of composition with the calculations of
mathematical structures and processes.

The works represented on this CD comprise a remarkable example of the success of this synthesis of music and mathematics. Highly unique and listenable,
Xenakis: Electronic Music will challenge
and satisfy the listener who wishes for
an experience beyond the norm.

THE PEOPLES CHOICE

MUSIC
by Komar & Melamid and Dave Soldier.
New York, NY: Dia Center for the Arts,
1997.
Reviewed by Clive Bell, 1 Clyde Circus, London N15 4LF, U.K.
Reading the results of Komar &
Melamids Music Survey made me realize I had made some bad career choices
at an early age. The two instruments
that I play, the flute and the accordion,
are both among the Most Disliked Instruments. In fact, the accordion, at a
whopping 13%, is right up there with
the bagpipe at the top of the unpopularity poll. Maybe I should have asked
around before taking these major decisions as a youngster. It is clear from
these figures that I should have taken
up guitar or piano (23% and 22% Most
Liked), or even cello (in third place at
8%). But surely you have to trust your
own intuition and principles. You cannot just base everything on what the
general public thinks. Or can you?
Soviet migrs Vitaly Komar and Alex
Melamid have enlisted composer Dave
Soldier for their latest market researchbased art project, a hilarious pairing on
Reviews Panel: Fred Andersson, Rudolf Arnheim,
Wilfred Arnold, Eva Belik Firebaugh, Andreas
Broeckmann, Sean Cubitt, Shawn Decker, Tim
Druckrey, Michele Emmer, Josh Firebaugh, George
Gessert, Thom Gillespie, Tony Green, Istvn
Hargittai, Paul Hertz, Rahma Khazam, Richard
Kade, Douglas Kahn, Nathalie Lafforgue, Patrick
Lambelet, Michael Leggett, Michael Mosher, Axel
Mulder, Kevin Murray, Frieder Nake, Jack Ox,
Robert Pepperell, Ren van Peer, Clifford Pickover,
Harry Rand, Sonya Rapoport, Kasey Rios Asberry,
Edward Shanken, Rhonda Roland Shearer, Yvonne
Spielmann, Barbara Lee Williams, Stephen Wilson,
Arthur Woods. Advisors: Roy Ascott, Annick
Bureaud, Marc Battier, Curtis E.A. Karnow, David
Topper, Nic Collins. Corresponding Editors: Roy
Behrens, Molly Hankwitz, Bulat M. Galeyev.

LEONARDO, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 6574, 2000

65

CD of The Most Wanted Song (5

min.) and The Most Unwanted Song
(21 min 59 sec). The first is a midtempo rock love song of blistering
blandness that will be unavoidably and
uncontrollably `liked by 72 12% of
listeners, as Soldier explains in the
sleeve notes. Vocalist Ada Dyer squirms
her way through Nina Mankins likeable lyrics (Lying in my silken sheets/
I think of ways that we might meet)
and is answered by a deep-voiced
Ronnie Gent, sounding a little like
Meat Loaf. After a couple of minutes,
Vernon Reid of Living Color steps in
firmly on electric guitar, as Gent muses,
Maybe she likes reading Wittgenstein/
Fancy dinners drinking good red wine.
This odd intrusion of the Austrian philosopher is presumably because 21% of
the survey said they want intellectual
stimulation when they listen to music.
The song gets even funnier as it climaxes, with guitar and saxophone (Andy
Snitzer) both contributing solos that
subtly parody the clichs of the genre.
Meanwhile the Most Unwanted Song
lurches from loud to soft and from fast
to slow tempos, while a soprano (the unwavering Dina Emerson) sings about
cowboys, politics and advertising.
Theres an infuriating childrens choir
and, of course, plenty of accordion and
bagpipes. Wittgenstein pops up here too,
as a sturdy 21% named intellectual
stimulation as their least important response when listening to music.
Amidst their statistical breakdowns
and three-dimensional pie charts, Komar
& Melamid ask: What kind of culture is
produced by a society that lives and governs itself by opinion polls? In a world
where the music business seems to rely
ever more heavily on marketing campaigns, a world in which Celine Dion
sells a disturbing number of records, the
tastes of the masses are certainly a crucial issue. In Soviet-era Russia, artists
struggled to produce peoples art that
would hopefully be encouraging for
working people, but was also based on a
confident prediction of what the people
really wanted. Marxist Leninism provided a special analysis, a means of knowing what the people wanted better than
they knew themselves.
Nowadays I feel that people working
in mass media such as television and
tabloid newspapers have this same
haughty confidence, this same superior
insight into what the man in the street
likes. And of course these beliefs are
self-fulfilling, for the culture promoted
by TV and tabloids is assumed by every-

66

Leonardo Reviews

one to be overwhelmingly popular. This

is the subject of Thomas Franks stirring essay Alternative To What?:
The culture-products that so unavoidably define our daily lives, it is believed, are a givena natural expression of the tastes of the people. This
has long been a favorite sophistry of
the industrys paid publicity flacks as
well: mass culture is fundamentally
democratic. The workings of the market ensure that the people get what
the people want; that sitcoms and
Schwarzenegger and each of the various sneering pop stars are the embodiment of the general will [1].

TV both tells us what we like and exercises a stranglehold on it. TV is so convinced that it knows best about the real
world that everyone who works within it
or appears regularly on it carries a distinct air of unreality about them.
But then the whole world of cultural
taste is like a jungle, a war zone full of
snipers. You may have a passion for early
white gospel, but others will tell you it is
pass, or trendy, or not right on, or a
bit 1980s, or elitist, until you think how
much simpler it would be if you liked
the same music as everyone else. Thank
goodness that Komar & Melamid have
provided some hard figures about the
publics musical taste, even if their survey only involved 500 people and was
bone-idly conducted by posting the
questions on an Internet site. At least, as
Dave Soldier says, This survey confirms
the hypothesis that todays popular music indeed provides an accurate estimate
of the wishes of the vox populi.
Reference
1. Thomas Frank, Alternative To What?, Baffler, 5,
reprinted in Commodify Your Dissent (New York:
Norton, 1997).

THE FENCE
by Jon Rose. ReR Megacorp, Thornton
Heath, Surrey, U.K., 1998.
Reviewed by Ren van Peer, Bachlaan 786,
5011 Tilburg, The Netherlands. E-mail:
<r.vanpeer@wxs.nl>.
A major achievement of the U.S.A. in
the twentieth century was the victory of
the Civil Rights Movement, when racial
segregation was banned from public
life. Finally the basic tenet of the Declaration of Independence, that all men
are created equal, had found its way
into legislation and its implementation.
A line that had been drawn to separate
people had been erased. Such lines exist everywhere in this world.

Violinist Jon Rose ran into one of

those lines when he was in Finland to
participate in the 1995 Viitasaari New
Music Festivala barbed-wire fence
marking the border between Russia
and Finland, a remnant of the Iron
Curtain. He recreated a model of it for
the festival and played it as a long string
instrument. This performance was the
starting point for a larger project about
fences all over the world, which resulted in a radio play commissioned by
the Berlin broadcasting service SFB,
and is now released on CD.
Rose constructed the musical material of the piece mainly from recordings
of the long string instrument he built in
Finland; one passage is a recording he
made of a border fence in the Australian outback that separates desert from
emptiness. In some places, violin and
voice have been added. The sounds
coaxed from the long strings are simply
magnificent. Bowed, beaten and
stroked, the strings emit alluring tones
full of shimmering, ringing harmonics.
Especially wonderful are the extract recorded in Australia, where the strings
are played by the wind, and a passage in
which a voice sensuously curves around
the pitch of the string, evoking wildly
pulsating difference tones.
These sounds provide the setting for
10 miniatures portraying fences in different places. The narrative, sometimes
based on clips from radio programs reporting on one of these metal dividing
lines, consists of studio-constructed
cameos of the places and voice-over
commentary by Rose in German. Starting in Finland, he moves to Belfast, the
demilitarized zone between the Koreas,
Cyprus and several other hotspots
where fences are used to deny people
access to a certain territory. He takes
the listener on a tour of conflicts stemming from the various differences
people may perceive between each
other: ethnic (as in Cyprus and BosniaHerzegovina), religious (as in Northern
Ireland), political (as in Korea), or particularly potent admixtures of motivational differences (as on the Golan
Heights between Israel and Syria).
Most of these conflicts have exacerbating secondary motivesespecially
strong when they are economic in nature. There is a bitter irony to this, and
this is where Roses satire unfolds in full
force. The Berlin Wall, which replaced
barbed wire fencing in 1961, was
breached by people from the eastern
part of the city who did not want their
movements to be constrained anymore

by their political leaders. After the Wall

was pulled down, the huge serpentine
scar of no-mans-land running across
the reunified city was developed as
soon as possible. Not only should the
city be prepared for its reinstatement as
Germanys capital, butlooking into
the brave new future on yonder side of
the millennium divideit apparently
wanted no reminder of recent history
to remain. The most coveted part of
this immense vacant lot, the Potsdamer
Platz, was sold away to corporations
who matched their bid with the dimensions of the high rises erected there. It
is here that the irony kicks in: the new
capitalist owners have erected fences
around their property to protect their
building investments. Again, the movements of the people are constrained,
now by powers on the other end of the
politico-economic spectrum.
These fences are here to stay. Jon
Rose likes to point out that since this
recording was made, enmity has flared
up in several places he portrayed on it.
There is more to it than that, howeveras dividing lines between people,
fences manifest a mentality that is ingrained in our very being. Their erasure from the law has not removed
them from individual hearts or minds,
or indeed from society.
The Fence is similar in its setup to
other albums by Roseit documents a
radio play of his in which his music underpins a narrative that is replete with
satire. What distinguishes it is the seriousness of the topic. Although Rose
still directs your attention towards the
absurdity of the human condition, he
goes beyond merely poking fun at human folly. The juxtaposition of the serious and the absurd shines in the iridescence of the long strings. While Rose
basks your ears in an alluring luster, he
taunts your ease of mind like a gadfly.
This piece is paired off with Bagni di
Dolabella, which is rather more run-ofthe-mill Rose. The ingredients are similarmusic (here real-time and sampled
violin) with a satirical narrative built on
top, consisting of a monologue and
evocative sound effects. Based on an
original document found by the Rome
City Sewage Department, this radio
play for Italian State Radio (RAI) transports you to Ancient Rome, where a
masseuse guides you on a tour around
the thermal baths, divulging the corruption of a top brass politician. Apparently nothing much has changed since
those times. Although Roses playing is
superb as always, The Fence reaches fur-

ther and deeper as a composition and a

narrative. In pieces such as Bagni di
Dolabella, Rose is merely an observer
from the sidelines, amused by the futility of human endeavor. The Fence seems
to stem from genuine personal involvement, which makes the bite of its satire
hit home. It is as if Rose has discovered
something within himself that he is not
at ease with. He has looked straight
into it, and now offers it to the listener,
saying, And how about you?

ELECTRIC ENIGMA: THE VLF

RECORDINGS OF STEPHEN P.
MCGREEVY
by Stephen P. McGreevy. London, UK:
Irdial-Discs, 1998.

R&D (1996)
R&D2 (1998)
ANTIPHONY (1998)
AL-JABR (1999)
by Disinformation. London, UK: Ash
International.

THE CONET PROJECT:

RECORDINGS OF SHORTWAVE
NUMBERS STATIONS
London, UK: Irdial-Discs, 1998.
Reviewed by Ren van Peer, Bachlaan 786,
5011 Tilburg, The Netherlands. E-mail:
<r.vanpeer@wxs.nl>.
When you wake up around sunrise during springtime, you may be greeted by
the dawn chorus. In the still of morning, all manner of song-birds add their
voices to a collective daily burst of energy. It is an intriguing notion that,
around the same time (that is, when
our planet turns from under the blanket of the night), electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere reaches a peak.
Though inaudible, this activity can be
picked up with antennas and then
translated into sound. Like the collective singing of the birds, this is called a
dawn chorus. It is part of a collection of
electromagnetic waves and discharges
from natural and man-made sources
that constitutes the basic material of a
number of recently released albums on
the Irdial and Ash International labels.
Electric Enigma is a double album on
which California-based artist Stephen P.
McGreevy has documented recordings
he made of Natural Radioelectro-

magnetic emissions in the very-lowfrequency band caused by massive discharges and their after-effects in lightning storms and by the solar wind buffeting the earths magnetic field, visible
as Aurora Borealis and Australis. It
would normally take long wires to pick
up these emissions, which would hamper the mobility of a listener or recordist. McGreevy developed a portable receiver with a whip antenna, allowing
him to travel to places with optimal recording conditionsthat is, anywhere
in temperate to polar zones, but away
from urban settlement and power
cables. He further improved the unit by
transforming it from a hand-held device to one that he could mount on his
camper, so that he did not need to
brave adverse weather conditions in order to make his recordings. The material on Electric Enigma was all recorded
with the newer design.
To the ears, a gritty soundscape of
crackles and pops unfolds that one will
immediately associate with lightning
static on the radio. These crackly veils
of ever-varying density may be shot
through with short whistles, mostly falling but sometimes rising in tone, with
high-pitched pops, croaks and a sustained, discreetly undulating band of
hiss. A strange dichotomy exists between the dry, short crackles in the
foreground and the more liquid
whistles and hiss further back. It is like
viewing pond-life through a grid.
Even if you do not know what causes
these sounds, they provide a captivating
experience. Something is going on
here, obviously. In fact, knowing what
you are listening to only adds to the
wonder: it is the awareness of the powers at work here, and the fact that we
do not yet fully understand how they
operate. These phenomena sound as if
whatever generated them is charged
with life, and some of them must have
been instrumental in making life appear on this planet.
In the two booklets included in the
album, McGreevy maps out what is
known about these emissions, gives details of the equipment used, provides a
determination guide and writes extensive notes about the extracts. Unfortunately, it is in the text that this production shows its flawsit would certainly
have benefited from more thorough
proofreading. One feature beyond
McGreevys control was the presence of
Omega, a global system of guiding beacons for aviation that became obsolete
after these recordings were made; this

Leonardo Reviews

67

system is audible as protracted beeps at

the upper end of the hearing range
that shift pitch every few seconds.
Two albums that are in a similar vein,
though broader in scope, are R&D and
R&D2 by Disinformation, the name under which London-based Joe Banks releases his radio-reception recordings on
CD and presents them to live audiences.
Released 2 years after R&D, R&D2 begins its track count from the end of its
predecessors, suggesting that Banks
views these albums as parts of an ongoing project. The first CD starts off with a
recording that could have come from
McGreevys collectionelectromagnetic
disturbances and discharges in the atmosphere and guiding-beacon beeping.
From there, however, Banks casts his
net both wider and closer to home than
McGreevy does. While the latter concentrates on natural phenomena in the atmosphere and tries to keep away from
mains interference, Banks has turned
towards it and explored its potential. Basically, his equipment consists of a radio
with a converter that enables him to receive frequency bands in the very low
and high ranges that are usually avoided
because they are prone to a variety of
disturbances. Some of the recordings on
R&D are of data broadcasts from unknown sources. This data can be either
pulsed or continuous, resulting in a
thick, growly, throbbing hum with a periodically shifting pace and pitch. One
track on which both types of data have
been received in combination sounds
like the throttled roar of an engine overlaid with bursts of breath. Further on,
Banks focuses on electromagnetic transmissions generated by the oscillator in
TV sets, which translates the incoming
signal into lines on the screen, and combines it on one track with the 50Hz
mains hum (and its harmonics). The latter is an especially complex, multilayered piece in which the polyphonic
howls of the oscillator are set off against
the constant, rich drone of the alternating current (AC), radiating from electric wiring. Banks has found that various
electrically powered tools radiate the
50Hz frequency but differ in the harmonics added to that frequencyeach
has its particular sonic signature.
R&D2 continues this theme in full
force with a live presentation of AC
wave radio reception processed through
filters and a pitch shifter. The dense,
pulsating throb gets topped by a recurrent grating that gradually expands and
accelerates until it is abruptly cut short.

68

Leonardo Reviews

It precipitates into the persistent, deep,

but very clean hum emanating from a
TIG welding appliancein a sense, a
low-register whistling. This is augmented by transmissions from a lathe,
whilst high-pitched, glassy trails pierce
through twice, like shooting stars
these were, in fact, trains passing overhead, as the recording occurred in a
workshop located in an arch under a
London railway viaduct. Downright disconcerting is a track called Stargate, a
high-frequency emission from the sun
on which one hears the Earth being battered by an unrelenting blaze of excessive heat and radiation.
There is a considerable difference between listening to these recordings
through headphones and through loudspeakers. While the former conjures up
an (admittedly) delusional spatial
sound image, the latter makes the room
come alive with unexpected apparitions
that condense on different places in the
space, only to dissolve in the surge a bit
later without a trace. Sometimes confrontational, sometimes elusive, these
recordings share an uncommon, undeniably fascinating intensity. Most of the
sounds are data streams that can be
picked up by radio in everyday domestic
surroundings. There is a regularity to
them that suggests intentionality. In reality, however, if these signals carry information at all, they cannot be readily
deciphered; though they appear in the
guise of information, one can derive no
unequivocal message from them. Consequently, ones mind can be deceived
into interpreting these signals and
pulses as musical.
This ambiguity lies in the phenomena themselves. Joe Banks does not attempt to bring out the musical content;
indeed, he plays it down by making the
pieces start and stop so abruptly. He
ends R&D2 with a reprise of the throbbing AC hum, making it shudder, stutter and howl by shifting pitches
through filters, and concluding by letting it drop away so that the radio only
produces a recognizable transmission.
The ambiguity is reflected in the artwork on the inserta grim, mask-like
face staring into a gritty expanse
through heavy rods. In fact this is a
video still of a reinforced concrete
structure succumbing to atmospheric
conditions; what is more, the structure
belongs to a derelict parabolic sound
mirror, formerly used by the military
for the reception of arcane data.
Apart from presenting these phe-

nomena live to audiences, Joe Banks

has taken this work a step further by letting musicians use his recordings. The
results were compiled on the double album Antiphony (glossed as any musical
or sound effect that echoes or answers
another) and Al-Jabr (the bringing together of elements). Although the approach on these three discs has been
the same, each has its own distinct character. Roughly speaking, the two disks
of Antiphony respectively present the
rugged and the spacey aspects of
Disinformations material.
The musicians make an adventurous
and often surprising use of its sonic potential, especially on the first disc. Particularly inspiring are the contributions
by Kapotte Muziekwho mold various
source sounds into a coherent new
piece, as if cutting the umbilical cord
that connected it to its originsand
People Like Us, who start from a dense
stuttering and extend it until out of the
widening creases a catchy pop tune materializes (Electric Light Orchestra?),
which disintegrates when the folds close
again. Pieces by Chris and Cosey and
Mark Van Hoen on the other hand juxtapose the original recordings with disappointingly unimaginative musical materiala bass rhythm on the former and
bass/keyboard/percussion on the latter.
The second Antiphony disk has a rather
more ambient atmosphere, moving at a
calm pace with frequent appearances of
drones, delay and reverb. This is in evidence most strongly in the first two
tracks, which seem to hark back to the
New-Agey, melancholy tunes concocted
by Brian Eno and his associates in the
early 1980s. Mark Poysdens Breathsweep, the final track, proves that one
can progress with thoughtfulness and
yet refrain from effects suggesting large
spaces and a dreamy state.
Al-Jabr as a whole seems more condensed and intense than Antiphony, but
does have playful moments, such as
when Jim ORourke bounces bunches
of pitched plips and bleeps between the
left and right channela curious experience, to say the least, when listening
over the headphones. In their respective contributions, Simon Fisher Turner
and Mechos make mincemeat of Joe
Bankss recordings, a pungent salsa of
chunks fresh out of the processor. The
pice de rsistance, however, is Londons
Overthrow, the long manic opening track
by saxophonist Evan Parker. On top of
the driving, pulsating and sometimes
scratching AC hum, he has wound two

wildly writhing and lashing melodic

lines that howl and dance with the intensity of the charged ground layer.
The musical significance of this work
derives from the ambiguity of the
sounds origins. Too often, when hearing music constructed from or with
samples, it is difficult to avoid trying to
identify the source material, regardless
of whether it was musical to begin with
or concrete sounds. Bankss recordings
are not exactly concrete sounds but neither are they clearly musical. They derive from activity that the ear does not
register without the aid of transforming
equipment. These sounds are not laden
with associations with past experiences,
and they rarely trigger memories. If
they do, it is after several listenings of
the two R&D albums, and they still do
not call any distinct object or event to
mind. An accurate explanation of how
they are produced falls far short of their
impact and fascinationthere is indeed
something magical in these sounds.
One can imagine that people find
such sounds spooky and intimidating,
but their connotations are not as sinister as those of the so-called Numbers
Stations, documented on a quadruple
CD by the CONET Project and originally released by Irdial Discs. Numbers
Stations transmit coded messages on
different frequencies in the shortwave
bands. As with the electromagnetic
emissions compiled by Joe Banks, they
appear in the guise of information with
no distinct, interpretable meaning. The
difference with most of Bankss material is that these stations operate by intention and their messages are intentionally obscure. They generally start a
transmission with an alert signal, often
a piece of music (for example, the famous restaurant-Gypsy-violinist showcase piece The Skylark, used by a station
transmitting in Romanian). After a
brief introduction and a call for attention, the bulk of the message follows as
strings of numbers or letters read in
groups. These can be in a variety of languages, such as English, German, Spanish, Czech and Romanian. Other stations transmit precisely tuned noise.
Essays in the accompanying booklet
argue convincingly that these messages
are linked with espionagepurportedly
they are instructions to agents abroad.
It seems to be well-nigh impossible to
decipher the code of each individual
message. Apparently, and disconcertingly, this activity has not abated since
the end of the Cold War. Another weird

twist lies in the types of voices used by

some stationsthose of a child, or of a
woman ostensibly in a state of sexual
arousal. One can only guess what interests are served through such activities,
and what sort of people decide what exactly these interests are, and whose interests they are. There is a shroud of
mystery around Numbers Stations, a disorientating feel that immediately calls
to mind the subject matter and mood of
Robert Ashleys opera eL/Aficionado. It
also evokes the dark and sinister overtones of Philip Glasss Einstein on the
Beach: after hearing Numbers Stations,
one cannot help wondering what the
composer may have been telling to the
world, and who exactly he addressed.
Numbers Stations does have the characteristics of an elaborate hoax feeding off
postmodern existential confusion and
the latter-day predilection for conspiracy
theories as well as an irrational turn-ofthe-millennium conviction that the human race is irrevocably, irredeemably
and irrefutably doomed. On the other
hand, much of the information can easily be checked by tuning the radio to the
frequencies listed in documents that can
be accessed via the Irdial-Discs web site.
There is evidently quite some activity going on through the air. In their grandeur, the skies above may pervade the
overworked human mind with a wholesome tranquillity. In reality, they are
themselves not much less overwrought
than the brain, through natural and artificial causesa wonderful reflection of
our state of mind. If being aware of reality is as crucial to our sanity as peace of
mind, perhaps we are indeed doomed.

LANGUAGE, MESSAGE,
DRUMMAGE: COMPOSITIONS
FOR TAPE AND FOR
INSTRUMENTS
EMF CD 00614

WAYFARING SOUNDS:
COMPOSITIONS FOR
INSTRUMENTS AND TAPE
EMF CD 00624

MUTATIS MUTANDIS:
COMPOSITIONS FOR SOLO
INSTRUMENTS AND
ENSEMBLES
EMF CD 00634

SAWDUST: COMPUTER MUSIC

PROJECT
EMF CD 00644
by Herbert Brn. Electronic Music
Foundation, Albany, NY, 1998.
<www.emf.org>
Reviewed by Robert Coburn, Conservatory
Computer Studio for Music Composition,
Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211, U.S.A. E-mail:
<rcoburn@jarl.cs.uop.edu>.
Herbert Brns reputation as a composer, theorist and teacher has spread
widely throughout the music world
since he came to teach at the University
of Illinois in 1962, but opportunities to
hear his music have been limited. Now,
for the first time, a major collection of
Brns compositions has been released
on the Electronic Music Foundation label, and the long wait has been well rewarded. Four CDs covering compositions from 1940 to 1997 offer listeners a
remarkable portrait of this unique and
talented creative artist. Works recorded
here include compositions for solo instruments (piano, snare drum, viola,
speaking voice, bassoon, flute) with or
without tape, compositions for chamber
ensembles (from duos to string quartets
to large mixed ensembles) with or without tape, and compositions for electronic tape alone.
Brns music is extremely hard to categorize. In fact, it appears that one of
his musical goals is to avoid associations
and predictability in the service of a
compositions larger meaning. This is
represented best in his own words from
the liner notes for String Quartet #3
(1963) on the CD mutatis mutandis:
If played and heard often enough, every musical gesture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners,
as a gesture of musical speech. As the
gesture becomes familiar, and thus
recognized by society, the composed
structure, in which the context generates the meaning of its components,
will be misunderstood, instead, as one
in which the components give meaning to their context. In order to retard
this development, this visitation of
communicative familiarity, for as long
as possible, I have attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate
the gesture-forming tendencies within
the composed structure and to reduce
each of them ad absurdum by way of a
non sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob
trivial perception and partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all
too commonly is mistaken for the understanding of music.

Leonardo Reviews

69

In his notes for Wayfaring Sounds

(1959) on the CD of the same name, he
speaks of the growing power of sounds
to shun predictability:
Everywhere, in theater, in poetry, in
language and music a powerful movement has started, scorning all categorization and mocking the conventional
associative patterns. Everywhere
sounds are on their way to take possession of articulation and communication, augmenting them and trying to
liberate them from outdated routines
of misunderstanding.

In some of his works he describes

the role that algorithmic processes,
rule-driven techniques and stochastic
choices play in their composition. With
this highly intellectual, creative approach to composition, the result is
music that is unique, strikingly fresh
and, at times, forcefully demanding.
In his electronic/computer music,
Brn shuns the temptation toward the
seductive qualities of new sound as
compositional determinants. He limits
his aural palette to sounds clearly electronic and to texts that function between sound and meaning. In doing
this, he avoids simple associations and
imbues the composition with meaning
beyond the immediate.
The CD Sawdust presents a series of
computer music compositions from
1976 to 1981. This project allowed him
to work with the smallest parts of waveforms, linking them together and,
through repetition and transformation,
creating whole compositions. The
seven works from this series present
both a remarkable document of this research and a set of unique and challenging compositions.
Rather than attempt a cursory description of many pieces, I will address
myself to two works that I found particularly rewarding. From the CD Wayfaring
Sounds, Sentences Now Open Wide
(SNOW) (1984) and on stilts among
ducks (1997) are wonderful examples
of Brns ability to merge intellectual
processes and creative expression in
works that are at times powerful, challenging and humorous.
Sentences Now Open Wide
(SNOW) is scored for two flutes,
French horn, two bassoons, cello, guitar, piano, three speaking voices and
tape. It was composed for the twentyfifth anniversary of the Experimental
Music Studios at the University of Illinois. The text, four verses written by
Brn, responds with discontent to the
commonplace of power: Let us do our
best for you, or else! The speakers re-

70

Leonardo Reviews

cite it counterpointing words against

words. The tape part was created with
analog techniques from the 1960s. It
plays music constructed in analogy to
social movements which will, if we fail
them, fail us. The instruments wonder how they got there while calling
with remembered and with invented
gestures for answers to the questions:
`What was? What is? What next? All
commentary, like the composition itself, is true Brn, at once thought provoking, relevant, artistically creative,
and touched with a slight dusting of
wit. The music speaks clearly, while
leaving the listener to ponder more
questions than answers.
on stilts among ducks, written for
viola and tape, is equally rewarding and
enigmatic. In this case the liner notes
reveal little that is specific about the
composition. Brn provides a short
verse about the relationship between I,
Viola and Duck. At once humorous and
thoughtful, the verse depicts well the
effect of this piece, a romp through
sounds truly electronic by a viola freed
of its inhibitions. This wonderful piece
alone is worth the price of this disc.
It is exciting to see the Electronic
Music Foundation producing recordings such as these: compositions unlikely to be released commercially because of their demanding and unusual
nature. It is to all our benefit that we
have an opportunity to experience this
music that dodges predictability in favor of provoking deeper connections.
In the end Brn himself says it best,
Whether our music is to be wished for,
only those can decide whose pleasure
in fulfillment and response is provoked
by wishes and questions.

BOOK
MSICA DE INVENO
by Augusto de Campos. Editora
Perspectiva, So Paulo, Brazil, 1998.
274 pp., illus. Paper, R$30.00.
Reviewed by Carlos Palombini, Universidade
Federal de Pernambuco CAC, Departamento
de Msica Av. Acadmico Hlio Ramos, s.n.
Cidade Universitria, Recife, Pernambuco
50740-530 Brazil. E-mail:
<palombini@usa.net>.
Msica de inveno (hereafter Invention
Music) is a collection of articles written
by Augusto de Campos that originally

appeared between 1957 and 1997 in

Suplemento literrio de Minas Gerais,
Enciclopdia Abril, the magazine SomTrs
and the newspapers Folha de So Paulo,
Jornal da tarde and Jornal do Brasil. The
book is divided into an introduction,
three chapters, one post-chapter, two
appendixes, and an index of illustrations. Chapter I, Word and Music,
contains articles on Occitan music,
Ezra Pounds Le testament, the musics of
Pound/George Antheil and Stein/
Thompson. It also includes both
Camposs recreation of O.E.
Hartlebens translation of Albert
Girauds Pierrot Lunaire and Camposs
translation of Schoenbergs preface to
the piece. Chapter II, Radicals of Music, contains articles on Erik Satie,
Scott Joplin, Walter Smetak, Anton von
Webern and Edgard Varse; it includes
translations of excerpts from Saties
writings. Chapter III, Musichaos, contains articles on and pastiches of John
Cage and Camposs interview with Brazilian composer J.J. de Moraes. Postmusic, the post-chapter, contains articles on Giacinto Scelsi, Conlon
Nancarrow, Antheil, Luigi Nono,
Galina Ustvolskaia, Henry Cowell and
post-music. Appendix I, Notes on
Notes, contains articles on timbre,
melody, microtonalism and Stravinsky.
Appendix II, Polemics, contains
Camposs 1957 defense of Pierre
Boulez and his translation of Boulezs
Homage Webern. On the back
cover, Brazilian composer Livio
Tragtenberg sets the tone: the book is
for those who enjoy music with love &
rigour. Campos has been the first to
tackle composers such as Webern,
Varse, Cage, Boulez and Nono, the
first to champion true underground
sonic earthquakes such as Antheil,
Cowell, Nancarrow, Scelsi and
Ustvolskaia. He is the poet of post-everything, now introducing readers to
the post-music of silences, sounds, and
noises. Invention Music is the most important book on the subject ever published in the land of deaf musicians,
a.k.a. Brazil.
As Campos explains in the introduction, the articles serve no systematic
purpose. What links them is the fact
that all deal with what he terms, after
Pound, inventor musicians. Having
fought for the Tropicalist composers of
the 1960s (Gilberto Gil, Tom Z and
Caetano Veloso) and seeing them enthroned in the media, Campos now
turns against the aural desensitization
to contemporary music. It is utterly

unacceptable that the marvelous adventure of . . . high music be thwarted

by aural laziness and the mercantile
eagerness of the media. We must all
rise from the sound cushions of palatable music and listen to the thoughtmusic of the great masters and inventors, the saints and martyrs of the new
language. Campos will tackle questions to which contemporary inventionmusic has given admirable answers.
Between the lines, he will recount a bit
of the history of artistic guerilla.
According to Camposs introduction
to Pounds ABC of Reading, there are
six categories of writers: (1) inventors,
those who may be held responsible for
the discovery of a new process; (2) masters, those who explore some such processes; (3) diluters, the less successful
followers of the former two; (4) good
writers without qualities, who produce
reasonable work in period style; (5)
belles lettres types, who cultivate particular fields; and (6) faddists, fashionable but forgettable. The best critics,
Pound says, are those who effectively
contribute to improve the art they criticize; then come those who focus attention on the best writing. The worst are
those who divert attention from the
best to second rate works or to themselves. One recognizes a bad critic
when he or she starts going on about
the author and not about the work.
The preliminary and simplest test is to
check the words that do not work.
As both Marjorie Perloff and John
Hollander have noted, the concrete poets of the Brazilian Noigandres group
(Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos and Dcio Pignatari) are not particularly remarkable for their aural explorations [1]. Invention Music is
prodigal with assonances, consonances,
alliterations, epithets, commonplaces,
adjectives and metaphors, though not
always in the best possible taste: the music of Provence is a prowess; the era
of Erik is the era of rag; music is the
most abstract of artistic genres;
Ustvolskaia is the musical Sphinx from
Russia; Steve Reichs music is the
provocation of molecular tautology;
Cage is the prophet and guerilla
fighter of interdisciplinary art; Cowells
pieces adumbrate the polyrhythmic
pranks of Conlon Nancarrows unbridled pianolas; Hanns Eisler is that
mediocre disciple of Schoenberg, whom
the bad conscience has sought in vain
to raise to the rank of first rate. Outbursts of reactive rhetoric are legion.
Apparently, de Camposs artistic guerilla

warfare started when Willy Corra de

Oliveira vetoed Universidade de So
Paulo Press support of one of his publishing projects.
How does Campos fare when Invention Music is set against Pounds agenda
as expounded by Campos himself? Neither a belles lettres type nor a faddist, he
stands in between. Specializing in
record reviews, Campos sets forth the
ins and outs of his modernist creed
while inexorably marching towards the
concluding instance of record company vituperation. This kind of upper
highbrow Hello! leaves no room whatsoever for whatever theoretical apparatus
the subject may require. Those who
share in Camposs tastes will find that
he fulfills the task of the second-rate
critic. He talks about other authors, yet
cannot help diverting attention to himself. As to the works, he has precious
little of interest to say: Long Life
Webern! Long Life Varse!mind
the similarities between these titles!
The reader is made witness to a competition to ascertain: (1) who discovered
the latest composer first; (2) who wrote
about his or her first work first; (3)
who bought his or her first record first.
Having made the wrong choices, Mario
de Andrade (nationalism) and Willy
Corra de Oliveira (bolshevism) have
lost their ways and lose the game. Seconded by Arthur Nestrovski, Campos
wins. Invention Music wears the appearance of a biblia pauperum of the concrete poets musical cult. On a page of
Scelsis Quattro pezzi per orchestra, Campos superimposes Scelsis signature
and symbol. On a photograph of
Webern in the Alps, Campos superimposes a page of Piano variations op. 22.
On a close-up of Schoenbergs eye,
Campos superimposes Schoenbergs
dodecaphonic scheme. On a close-up
of young Varse, Campos superimposes
a page of Ionisation; on a close-up of
elderly Varse, Campos superimposes a
page of Hyperprism. On a photograph
of an interstellar phenomenon, Campos superimposes middle-aged Nonos
balding head (Big Bang Nono!). On
the photograph of another such phenomenon, he superimposes elderly
Nonos balding head (Quasar
Nono!). On a photograph of Cage
and himself, Campos superimposes the
score of 4'33. Campos himself is everywhere to be seen: with Olga Rudge in
Castel Fontana in 1991; with members
of his household chez Cage in 1978;
cleaning lipstick from Cages face in
1985; molesting Cage with concrete po-

etry in 1985. Invention Music abides by

the rules of neither etiquette nor scholarship. So why should Campos? And
why should we?
In his Pequena histria da msica
(Short History of Music) (1942), Mrio
de Andrade states that also in trios,
quartets, and quintets, there has been
a most interesting harvest, employing
the most unusual and curious soloist
ensembles (Kurt Weill, Falla, Ezra
Pound, Anton Webern). This leads
Campos to conclude that Andrade was
a musicological travesty. Yet one reads
in Invention Music that from him
[Nestrovski] I have received two tapes
with musical novelties: Wishart,
Ferneyhough, Smalley, Philip Glass
etc. Everything very interesting. Now,
the founding father of Brazilian
ethnomusicology was a modernist in
the early twenties, when being a modernist was de rigueur for a bright youth
of progressive So Paulos intelligentsia. The modernist Campos is a latecomer; the postmodernist Campos is
unconvincing. He fits strictly into the
high-art-plus-best-of-pop-culture pattern that Georgina Born has identified at Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique Musique
(IRCAM) [2].
So far as it presents an essentially visual poet in the role of avant-garde
music beacon, Invention Music indeed
is, as Tragtenberg wishes, a unique
document on the Brazilian musical
and cultural life of the last decades.
Campos is to be held responsible for
the fact that facile punning has come
to be viewed as an honorable form of
mental activity, and hence for the fact
that pop singers have come to be
viewed as intellectuals. In this manner,
thinking has been debased. The ease
with which the amateur Campos collects and distributes novelties from
abroad is the same ease with which the
retired intellectual Cardoso collects
and distributes writs from the International Monetary Fund. The musicologist Campos will be rendered redundant by the World Wide Web. In the
meantime, Brazilian poets are posteverything, Brazilian composers are
the greatest of the Americas, Brazilian
transvestites are the most sought after
of Europe and Brazilian men are the
most potent in the world. Abroad, they
come from the land of coffee, carnival
and football. At home, their houses
are barbed-iron fenced and their teeth
are missing. They have been raped by
a feudal elite of modernist zeal. Yes,

Leonardo Reviews

71

ns temos Augusto de Campos! Anyone

interested?
References
1. Marjorie Perloff, The Music of Verbal Space:
John Cages `What You Say . . . , in Adalaide Morris, ed., Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical
Technologies (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997); John Hollander, Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form (1975).
2. Georgina Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM,
Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical
Avant-Garde (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California
Press, 1995).

CONCERT
ARNALDO COHEN
PLAYS CHOPIN
Convention Centre of the Federal University of Pernambuco at Recife, Brazil,
16 April 1999.
First part: Ballades I, II, III and IV; second part: Nocturne op. 6 n. 2 Fantaisie-impromptu tudes op. 10 n. 3 op. 25 n. 1 and
op. 25 n. 12 Scherzi I and II; encores:
Minute Waltz and tude pathtique
(Scriabin).
Reviewed by Carlos Palombini, Universidade
Federal de Pernambuco CAC, Departamento
de Msica Av. Acadmico Hlio Ramos, s.n.
Cidade Universitria, Recife, Pernambuco
50740-530 Brazil. E-mail:
<palombini@usa.net>.
In early April 1999, lecturers, workers
and students in the Music Department
of the Federal University of Pernambuco
at Recife were invited for a recital by the
London-based Brazilian pianist Arnaldo
Cohen and requested to RSVP. The invitation was issued by Banco Sudameris,
which is affiliated with Banque
Sudameris of Paris and controlled by
Grupo Banca Commerciale Italiana of
Milan. Sudameris is opening its campus
branch in the recently inaugurated facilities of the University Convention Centre,
where the recital would take place.
What would become (through a history of rebellions and treasons) the
Pernambuco state originated from one of
the first administrative successes of the
young Portuguese colony. Rich in brazilwood, the region was fought over by the
Dutch, the French, the Spanish and English pirates. The city of Recife grew under the view of Olindaa UNESCOdeclared historic siteas a merchants
pendant to the aristocratic old town,

72

Leonardo Reviews

gradually taking over the economic lead

and rising to the position of metropolis
of the Brazilian northeast. On these
shores, Brazil was discovered by Vincente
Pinzon and not by Pedro Cabral, and the
ferocious Caet Indians devoured the
aptly named Bishop Sardinha, anticipating urban anthropophagi. Nowadays, latter-day saints from North American missions stroll around, alluring with
sanitized blondness mamelucos, cafusos,
mulattos and mestizos.
Pernambuco boasts the oldest aristocracy in the country. Mrs. Mayrink Veiga,
formerly a top-10 best-dressed lady of
Rio society and a beauty, now earns her
livelihood here, telling the lower strata
the dos and donts of upper class etiquette in the pages of the local equivalent to the London Sun (devoured as her
fortune has been by extortive interest
rates charged on former employees social security monies, which she used to
borrow from the Brazilian state): in
those days, men used to wear tails . . .
now they complain about wearing a
jacket! This was my coming-out evening
and I wished neither to overdo nor understate it: light brown suede shoes,
white socks (suburban in London but
comme il faut in Recife), beige trousers,
best white shirt (with mother-of-pearl
buttons), bespoken terracotta linen
jacket and a silver-coated chain hanging
from my trousers pocket. For sleazy
looks, a bit of that exquisite Schwarzkopf
gel wax that I brought from Dublin and,
to round it off, the woody undertones of
Ever by Applewoods. Carlos, how beautiful you are! my neighbor uttered in
wonder as I left.
Those who earn over three hundred
pounds sterling a month are not supposed to take buses in this country.
However, I remain convinced that one
should not always go native in the tropical regions. A seat on the left afforded
the view of a beautiful pair of thighs on
the right and with no further ado I took
it. Lost in contemplation, I was awoken
by the noises of hit and broken glass,
female shrieks and myriad glass fragments landing onto my face. Ladies
crawled, robbery and rape stamped on
their faces. No more discomfited than
General Giuseppe Federico von
Palombini in the aftermath of the Napoleonic debacle, I gazed around, assessing the likelihood of another bullet
and pondering the wisdom of surrendering ones course to the ubiquity of
fleshly gifts. A stone thrown at the bus
by one of the countless children who
roam the streets of Recife had crossed a

window pane on the right, just behind

those thighs, at the corresponding
point to where I was seated on the left,
before it went out through a left window pane two seats behind me. I had
been saved by the imponderable laws of
relative movement.
One queues for everything in this
country. In So Paulo, at the
Consolao branch of the Brazilian Airline, one queues to get information as
to whether one should queue. In
Recife, at the campus branch of the Brazilian Bank, one queues for one hour to
pay a check. Those who earn over 100
pounds a month qualify as special clients, and special clients queue in special queues. Those who earn over 350
pounds a month qualify as doubly special clients but doubly special clients
queue in simply special queues. One
hour before the concert, the Convention Center offered a double choice of
queues. I took the shortest. It was the
slowest. Wearing all the appearances of
clients of a distinctively selective European bank, a stocky gentleman, his
plump wife and their marriageable
daughter arrived in full swing. The
gentleman shouted abuse at a pair of ladies who exchanged ideas with the
ticket collector at too slow a pace. His
wife attempted to grab my place. Having set the queue going with his yelling,
the gentleman set about propelling it
further with his belly. Thus, at the drop
of a hat, I was rubbing shoulders and
private parts with the upper echelons of
financial society. Inside the concert hall,
conversation ranged from basic Italian
(a scherzo?) to real estate. At 9:00
sharp, a pair of attendants approached
and removed two young ladies who had
been sitting in the front row for half an
hour. Reservation labels were stuck to
their seats. The Vice Chancellor was
ushered in and offered the seats. A
video screen unfolded, and Banco
Sudameris had us know that it was one
and the same with the struggles of the
Brazilian people. The local representative took the stage. He repeated it.
Cohen was a sight for sore eyes. He
brought to life the dramatic contrasts
and manifold transitions of Chopins
set of Ballades with uncompromising
technique and variegated hues. Halfway
though the Third Ballade, a fortissimo
passage sent me away from the hall and
deep into the music. I resurfaced. Refreshments were served. Soft drinks circulated freely. Italian white was the preserve of the fittest. Guests were invited
to return to their seats. Procrastinators

were gently pushed in. The Vice Chancellor climbed the stage. Banco
Sudameris was thanked and a public
and high-quality university was
cheered. With a Debussy-like performance of the Second Nocturne, Cohen
rose to the rarefied heights of Dinu
Lipattis historic Nocturne in D-Flat interpretation. Fantaisie-impromptu, the
Third tude Op. 10, the First and
Twelfth tudes Op. 25, and the First
and Second Scherzi followed. Having
made his way through terminal coughing, wristwatch beeps and mobilephone calls in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in
the spirit of cool bravery, Cohen was
awarded a standing ovation. He retorted with a finely crafted, superbly
phrased and unbelievably fresh Minute
Waltz. At half past twelve, Scriabins
tude Pathtique drew the evening to a
close.
Jose Miguel Wisnik summarizes the
program of the modernist cycle of musical nationalism in Brazil:
To synthesize and to stabilize a musical expression of popular base, as a
means to conquer a language that reconciles the country in the
horizontality of its territory and the
verticality of its classes (raising the rustic culture to the universalized scope
of bourgeois culture, and giving the
bourgeois musical production a social
base that it lacks [1].

The middle classes like Chopin. The

violence that, for centuries, the owner
perpetrated against the slave was democratized by decades of military dictatorship and has been sanctioned by the
democratic regime [2]. In Brazilian
politics today, it is not the rustic landowner from Bahia that rises to the universalized scope of bourgeois culture,
but the cosmopolitan intellectual from
So Paulo that sinks to the scope of nationalized bourgeois brutality. Like the
famous fur coat with which the Finance
Minister Cardoso de Mello sought to
impress the Prince and Princess of
Wales at a Rio gala evening, the fabric
of Brazilian society is moth-eaten beyond repair. Slaughtered or ostracized,
the Indians alone remain unsullied.
They enshrine the nationhood that
might have been. Ena mokoc-c-mak.
References
1. Jose Miguel Wisnik, quoted by Gerard Bhague
in Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazils Musical
Soul (1994).

Divine Doorways

MATERIALS RECEIVED

Andrea Goodman and Gerry Hemingway.

Ruby Throated Music, Boothbay, ME,
U.S.A., 1998.

Multimedia Products

The Fence

Borderland

Jon Rose. ReR/Recommended Records,

Surrey, U.K., 1998.

Produced by Plokker. Plokker, France. CDROM. 1999.

Hidden Reflections: Chamber Works

Conversations with Angels

Produced by Andy Best and Merja
Puustinen. VRML CD-ROM plus picture
book. MEET Factory, Helsinki, Finland.
1999. 25 Euros.

DOC(K)S
La Trilogie des Medias: Tome 2: Chantier
Son. Journal (in French) plus 2 audio
CDs, 1998. 300 FF.

Form Function in Architecture

R. Thomas Hille. Univ. of Michigan Press,
Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A., 1999. 2-volume CDROM.

ISEATERROR98

Lior Navok. NLP, Boston, MA, U.S.A., 1998.

Horde
Mnemonists. ReR/Recommended, Surrey,
U.K., 1999.

Hyperpiano
Denman Maroney. Mon$ey Music, Monsey,
NY, U.S.A., 1998.

Inside
Barry Truax. Cambridge Street Records,
Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.,1996.

Live from California

Dos Hermanos. Grateful Dead Records,
CA, U.S.A., 1998.

Department of Fine Arts, Manchester

Metropolitan University, Manchester, U.K.,
1998. CD-ROM for Macintosh.

Live in Tokyo

Masterworks for Learning: A College

Collection Catalogue

Out beyond Ideas

Allen Memorial Art Museum. Oberlin

College, Oberlin, OH, U.S.A. 1998. CDROM.

Mediamatic
Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1998. Journal plus CDROM.

Mediamatic
Volume 9, No. 2/3, 1998. Context Issue.
CD-ROM for Mac/Windows.

Musicworks

Cassiber. ReR/Recommended Records,

Surrey, U.K., 1998.

Mandir. Satsang Music, Missoula, MT,

U.S.A., 1998.

Portals of Distortion: Music for Saxophones, Computers, and Stones

Matthew Burtner. Innova, St. Paul, MN,
U.S.A., 1999. $14.97.

Pragma
Tim Hodgkinson. ReR/Recommended
Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998.

Radiophagy

No. 72. Fall 1998. CD plus magazine.

Lou Mallozzi. Penumbra Music, Grafton,

WI, U.S.A., 1997.

Shock in the Ear

Room Piece

Produced by Norie Neumark. Univ. of

Technology, Sydney, Australia, 1998. CDROM for Macintosh.

Michael J. Schumacher. SFB Records, New

York, NY, U.S.A., 1998.

Les Rumeurs de la Ville

Audio Compact Discs

Guigou Chenevier. ReR/Recommended

Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998.

19701973
Mother Mallards Portable Masterpiece Co.
Cuneiform Records, Silver Springs, MD,
U.S.A., 1999.

Whole or by the Slice

The Alpha Wave Variations

The Wind Rises

Paisley Babylon. Zombie Records, San

Antonio, TX, U.S.A., 1998.

Istvan Martha, Sandor Bernath/y/

[electroplenair sound diary]. ReR/
Recommended Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998

Hal Rammel and Lou Mallozzi. Penumbra

Music, Grafton, WI, U.S.A., 1998.

2. Joseph A. Page, The Brazilians (Perseus Press,

1995).

Leonardo Reviews

73

Books

Exotech Industries

Melodic Similarity: Concepts, Procedures,

and Applications (Computing in Musicology II)

Web site for performance artist and writer

Coco Fusco. See particularly documentation of performance at Johannesburg
Biennale and Festival of Latin American
Performance.
<http://www.favela.org/fusco/>

Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge

Field, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,
U.S.A., 1999. 235 pp., illus. Paper, $28.00.
ISBN: 0-262-58175-2.

Music, Cognition, and Computerized

Sound: An Introduction to Psychoacoustics
Perry R. Cook, ed. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, U.S.A., 1999. 734 pp., illus. Trade,
$60.00. ISBN: 0-262-03256-2.

The Experimental Studio on Internet of the

CICV Centre Pierre Schaeffer
Focus: platform for research and experimentation.
<http://www.cicv.fr>

Fractal Music
<http://www-ks.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/
people/schulz/fmusic>

Periodical
Computer Music Journal
Vol. 22, No. 4. Dancing the Music.
Interviews: Oliveros, Spiegel, Thome,
White. Magazine plus CD. $12.00. ISSN:
0148-9267.

World Wide Web Sites

Art and Physics
Edited by Leonard Shlain, author of the
books Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus
the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and
Image.
<http://www.artandphysics.com>

The ArtChivist
A site dedicated to the digital publishing
project Archiving as Art, presented by
Karen ORourke as a part of the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique
research program Archives of the
Creation.
<http://panoramix.univ-paris1.fr/
CERAPLA/ArtC/index.html>

CAiiA-STAR
Web site of the Interactive Arts program of
the University of Wales and Plymouth
University under the leadership of Roy
Ascott.
<http://caiia-star.newport.plymouth.ac.uk>

Clifford A. Pickover Website

Deals with computers and creativity
educational puzzles, computer art, fractals,
etc.
<http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/
home.htm>

The David Bermant Collection

Includes the work of kinetic and light
artists. Artists include Duchamp, George
Roads and Nam June Paik. The David
Bermant Foundation also awards grants to
students working in the technological arts.
<http://arts2.ucsb.edu/bermant>

74

Leonardo Reviews

Galileo: Diary of Science and Analyses of

Global Issues
In Italian and English, edited by Michele
Emmer.
<http://www.galileo.webzone.it>

The Media Centre of the Musee dArt

Contemporain de Montreal
Offers French/English information about
all areas of contemporary art and culture.
Information on the Media Centre itself;
directory of resources in contemporary art
and culture available on the Internet.
<http://Media.MACM.qc.ca>

Metamusique
<http://www.imaginet.fr/manca/joy>

Women on the WebElectronic Media

(WOWEM) WWW site
The WOWEM WWW site was introduced
in Fall 1996 as an information repository
for young women interested in digital
media. WOWEM serves as a starting point
for those interested in music and visual art
by showing various career options and
opportunities. WOWEM also provides
information of special interest to young
women, with discussions on technology as
well as links to and interviews with
established visual artists, graphic designers,
composers and multimedia artists working
with technology, and young womens web
sites and on-line services.
<http://music.dartmouth.edu/~wowem>.

LEONARDO DIGITAL
REVIEWS
Leonardo publishes reviews of books,
digital publications (CD-ROMs, on-line
works, World Wide Web sites), audio
CDs and tapes, events and exhibitions.
Accepted reviews are published either
in Leonardo Digital Reviews (a section
of our electronic journal Leonardo
Electronic Almanac), on our Leonardo
World Wide Web site (http://mitpress.
mit.edu/Leonardo/e-journals/
home.html) or in our print journals
Leonardo or Leonardo Music Journal.
We do not accept unsolicited reviews. Individuals interested in joining
the Leonardo reviews panel should email a brief professional biography
with an example of a review to
leo@mitpress.mit.edu.
Authors and artists interested in having their (physical) publications
(books, CDs, CD-ROMs, etc.) considered by the reviews panel should arrange to have one copy shipped to
Leonardo Digital Reviews, 425 Market
Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA
94105, U.S.A.
Organizers of events or exhibitions
and authors of on-line publications
and events should e-mail information
to leo@mitpress.mit.edu.
Readers with comments or reactions
to published reviews may send them
for publication consideration to
leo@mitpress.mit.edu.