"STS (2019) is an 8-channel installation work comprised of recordings made over a 15-year period on differing Serge Modular systems recorded at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, the Columbia Computer Music Center, Elektron Musik Studion, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Harvard University Studio for Electro-Acoustic Composition, and Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio convolved with fragments of speech, recitation, and extra-textual verbal communication.
Partly an homage to formative speech-transformation works such as Herbert Eimert’s “Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama (1960-1962)”, the mapping of the frequency spectra of time-aligned formants to a catalog of full-range synthesizer signals yields a warm, attenuated field of sustained sound that ebbs through each space at a modest volume, inviting the listener to dwell on individual timbres, phrases, and conversations while assessing the overall sound-field.
Utilizing a sliding, modular structure to diffuse linked stereo pairs of convolutions into 4 discrete chambers, the individual parts become groups of voices heard distinctly, overheard from the next room, or made subliminally aware of via bleed-through from each adjoining space."
This stereo reduction is one of an endless number of possible outcomes & was composed & finalized at the GRM, February 2019. In addition to the 24/96 masters of the GRM session (broken into 6 evenly-spaced access points, mainly to be compatible with Bandcamp) is an unbroken, 4-hour 16/44 stereo room recording of the debut staging of the piece at Remote Viewing, Philadelphia, PA on April 28th, 2019.
Thanks to Ean White, Patti Schmidt, François Bonnet, John Chantler, Robin Fox, Byron Scullin, Seth Cluett, Geoff Mullen, Eric Laska, and Serge Tcherepnin.