MEETING
WITH LAURA BELOFF
at my studio in Oslo
14 April 2005
I met with Laura (my primary supervisor) at my studio to show her
the practical progress of the modification of the pump organ and to discuss
future strategies.
Over the past few months I have felt that practical issues of the
organ renovation and technification have taken over from the more conceptual
work and art practice. While I have set up certain prototype test conditions
using the midi-strip and various other input possibilities (microphones, camera,
etc) in MAX and Keyworx environments, I find it impossible to make any ground-breaking
progress regarding cross wiring-sensory connections until I have built the
physical inputs into the organ itself. I am not able to work on abstractions,
and need to have the physical feeling/experience of playing the organ to get
any further, save gaining more experience in using software.
Having shown Laura the work I have undertaken so far (dismantling the organ,
showing the data received from the keyboard sensor strip, the prototype airbrush/fan
set-up with smells donated by Professor Kjell Døving) I laid out my
plan for installing as many physical inputs in the organ as soon as possible.
Laura suggested that I should set up a meeting with Erich Berger to go over
the technical details.
She then suggested that, on a conceptual level, I should think about focusing
on the organ as a research instrument (synaesthetic testing) rather than trying
to produce an art object/performance instrument at the same time. This would
be more in keeping with my original project description.
For example, if a player plays a note on the organ which also triggers a hue
in the projected imagery, then it should be possible for the player to adjust
the hue according to her own colour/sound corelation sensetivity. If I apply
this idea to the organ it means that the adjustments made will have to be
through dynamic control. The 8 stop levers on the organ (previously thought
of as on/off swithes) could be used for this purpose. this is interesting
(and puzzling) because in mechanical terms, the stop levers control the acoustic
sound of the organ in different ways.
So, the decision to install as many dynamic controllers as possible was made.