...A retreat into wonder and conspiratorial delight is offered by The Making Smashing Machine - a living vessel. Depending on which aspects you focus upon, Swedish sculpter Anna Hallin's concrete dome - crowned with furrows that sprout bilateral bunches of cable - looks like a womb or a brainwashing helmet from a science fiction movie. The foam-lined pod accommodates one person at a time; speakers are installed at varying heights around the interior. Weight-triggered MIDI switches under the rubber floor mat and light sensors in the structure translate the occupant's movements into parameters that help determine the progression of sounds from those programmed into the computer.

From the initial creaks and cracks of a glacial cave, watery plops and underwater vibrations, to sharp hisses, processed moans and industrial noise, there sometimes emerge low-bowed viola, gongs and woodwinds played by the American composer Cheryl E. Leonard (who appears in person throughout the run of the show).

The solo audience is involved in an intimate duet with Leonard while enjoying a rare kind of public solitude. This is technology as a tool for communion, for introspection and interaction with the natural and man-made worlds. Emerging from the inner sanctum into the noontime bustle of Japantown, a heightened sonic awareness turns car engines and footsteps into an extension of the musical landscape - aural attitude adjustment of the highest order.

(Metro Vol. 12 No.7, April 18 - 24 1996)

THE BIG SUR EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

by Tim Blue

Too often the terms Experimental, or New Music involve the employment of conceits that bad enough as they are, are worse still because of a reliance upon novelty and technology. It seems that at last it is acknowledged that the notion of an underground or an alternative music is bankrupt, but the need for a righteous elite persists with Experimental and New Music. I guess it is just part and parcel of that demon bedfellow of capitalism, Art.

I witnessed this weekend an example of this type of charlatanism at the 2nd annual Big Sur X Festival. One problem is how these musicians even listen. There is a whole vocabulary, brought to us by technology, of what constitutes a new sound: digital distortion, pitch shifting, stretching of samples; that these musicians have bought into. Some of what I heard could have passed for a sales pitch for the machines that process these sounds. It's as if as long as a sound is brooding, loud, or unrecognizable as something belonging to life then it can qualify as New Music. I am not opposed to electronic music, rather it is how it is presented, or what it is presented as that bothers me.

One piece that I witnessed there put shame to the pretensions of the avant elite. It was called Topos and was composed by Cheryl Leonard. Her piece was performed by four people playing only glass. There were two racks from which hung shards of glass according to size, providing a range of high to mid-range "percussive" sounds; a table of variously shaped glasses which were used for bowing; and a few stands that held large plates for the lower frequencies. The players moved about the stage with light steps amongst the sections of this homemade instrument, as Topos developed from icily delicate trinkles to huge glacial sheets of sound that moved through the redwood grove. A melody of sorts was woven into this with the bowing of glasses. The result of this beautiful piece was an audience that sat still and silent, recognizing new possibility in sound that was very human and in real time. (May 2000)