Spent the last couple of months developing a strategy for the Twenty Foot Man. John and I have never had such a lengthy break as this one from performing with the Man. John has been especially keen on developing a few new tuned instruments for the Man to play. I was particularly interested in the bass marimba design used by Boka Marimba when I attended a benefit concert for Haiti last week. The resonator tubes usually create an instrument too tall for normal people to play but it occurs to me this scale will work well for the Man.

I am keen on having an environment to some painting with the Man where we can take our time, experiment and not necessarily have the pressure of performance dictating the duration of painting experience. John and I agree that some smaller, content specific works would be a good place to start. We have been planning on setting up the Man in John’s backyard to do the paintings and practice puppetry manipulation.

I dragged the heart home on Valentines Day for refurbishing and programming some new rhythmic material. I included a pic of this unique remote control bivalved snare membrainaphone.

I have continued technical research this week concerning constructing a small pipe organ (or instrument using similar technology). I got an interior tour of one of Joe O’Donnell’s instruments at the Unitarian First Church. Joe is both the organist and builder of this instrument. The instrument had been disassembled and placed in storage before being installed at First Church. Joe works for Bond Organs, a Portland company that builds, repairs, and restores pipe organs.
Joe has designed and built an electro-mechanical bell component that has fascinated me from my first listening. The device uses a simple random (mostly) sequence generator that sends a cycle of electric signals to electro magnet type actuators that strike a series of tuned hand bells. The speed at which the cycle runs is adjustable as is the strength at which it strikes the bells. The device provides a complex and fascinating wash of percussion, which Joe incorporates as a supplemental texture to his playing. Depending on how the cycle is set and activated the effect can be quite different.
My exchange with Joe was encouraging on many levels. One was his enthusiasm for my project in general. Another was the obvious technical abilities that Joe has as a designer and builder. Third was the ease in which his random generation of sounds can be so efficiently integrated into traditional repertoire.
I have also been enjoying the expansion of the Twenty Foot Man/Puppy Bunny rehearsal space. We have quadrupled our square footage which allows me to begin working with some of my larger instruments such as marimba and concert theremin in our weekly practice space. We have begun talking about using the space for an informal venue which would greatly facilitate performance.

I drove up to Maryhill Museum this week to talk to the director and educational coordinator. It is a powerful and desolate place made of steel reinforced poured concrete. The remoteness and austerity of the surroundings in juxtaposition to the fortress like architecture make the collections seem that much more defensive somehow. The Museum is the product of Sam Hill and a few of his friends. The building was originally going to be Sam’s home but his family was alienated from his life. Sam had great plans for a utopian community on the banks of the Columbia. Representing that curious mix of industrial baron and philanthropist Sam Hill is a more benign Rockefeller type.

I also did interviews with Connie Hockaday and Ralph Pugay. They were very different but informative and thought provoking conversations. I have been enjoying finding patterns of connection while reviewing the recordings I made of the interviews.

In our readings this week for the Boas AWW class there were two articles concerning planetariums. As a former professional planetarian, this was not the first time I have considered the culture, potential, and curiosity that is the planetarium. I am going to start investigating if I can borrow a portable STARLAB planetarium from a local source and develop some applications specifically for social practice. One aspect of planetariums that I found fascinating is what a person would learn just exploring the projection systems and domed surface. In examining the way a starscape gets constructed in a manner inverse to the real sky really helps understand a wide array of visual and astronomical principles.
I also am interested in creating a “Peoples History of Popular Constellations” program. There are some fascinating cultural/political shifts that can be vividly examined in the interpretation of the sky. For a long time the stars were one kinetic work undergoing constant interpretive revision.

Another avenue to explore is the commonality between the classic semi-supine position used for breathing and sensory awareness work and used in naked eye sky watching. Definitely coming back to this one.

Did some interesting video work this week with Puppy Bunny members and other Smegma expatriates. We had a rehearsal/ demolition performance/ video production session in which we worked on a remodel and expansion of our rehearsal space and recorded some theatrical promotional pieces and music.

Stumbled upon a paper by Rachel Zahn summarizing her participatory lectures performed at Oxford and the University off Paris. The paper (and exercises) explore Francisco Varela and his ideas from The Gesture of Becoming Aware and compares them with F.M. Alexander. Varela was a cognitive scientist who explored the notion of conciousness and developed a framework to directly pursue Huserl’s, “epoche”. This reading is dove tailing well with material from Critical Theory with Sean Regan.

I have also been doing some experiments with a set of wooden organ pipes from a dissected organ grinder. I am trying to devise a bicycle-powered air pump to activate the pipes. They sound great and have some flexibility in tuning. I would like to develop a few drone-cycles that could ride around together interacting kinetically and sonically. I am inspired by Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster on this one. I have lots of R&D ahead on this one.

Vacation was busy but it’s great to be getting back into the academic mode.