Category: {technology}

Technology

Caldwell & Co

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A cosmic pendant lamp by New York lighting manufacturer, Caldwell & Co, created for the Rockefeller Center in 1932. The company’s Art Deco-styled designs for that building feature a number of other flying saucer pendants although none as striking as this one. The photo is one of many made available by the Smithsonian Institute on a site which catalogues the company’s history.

Edward F. Caldwell & Co., of New York City, was the premier designer and manufacturer of electric light fixtures and decorative metalwork from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Founded in 1895 by Edward F. Caldwell (1851–1914) and Victor F. von Lossberg (1853–1942), the firm’s legacy of highly crafted creations includes custom made metal gates, lanterns, chandeliers, ceiling and wall fixtures, floor and table lamps, and other decorative objects that can be found today in many metropolitan area churches, public buildings, offices, clubs, and residences.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hugh Ferriss and the Metropolis of Tomorrow

Automates Ki

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Following the post last week about the Gamelatron, Masha left a comment referring me to the similar, if less harmonious, Automates Ki systems of Canadian composer Maxime De La Rochefoucauld who describes his constructions as “musical robots activated by inaudible frequencies”. He also says:

Ki is a japanese concept : roughly, it is the invisible vital energy that makes things move. I use this word as an allegory for the energy that animates my automatons. The listener and spectator only hears and sees the consequences of this vibration. In this context, my Automates Ki are “spokespersons” for the vibration instead of invented musical instruments, since to build them I use previously created instruments gathered from various countries.

For several years I have worked on a system of my own invention that animates the automatons, producing a music centered on percussion. The Systeme Ki™ transforms inaudible low-frequency modulations into an acoustic phenomenon.

The Automates Ki comprises a speaker joined to a musical instrument. A pliable firing pin is set on the speaker. The firing pin, when animated by the vibration of the speaker, hits the acoustic instruments (drums, cymbals, strings instruments) in an oscillating manner.

There’s a website devoted to these works, and a MySpace page, but the best appraisal can be had by viewing some of the composer’s YouTube clips.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Gamelatron
• Metronomes
• Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
• Max Eastley’s musical sculptures
• The Reactable
• The Ondes Martenot

The Gamelatron

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The Gamelatron at Galapagos Art Space March 2009. Photo by Gisella Sorrentino.

A laptop-controlled gamelan orchestra by Zemi17 aka A. Taylor Kuffner. See it in operation here. (Is it Gamelatron or GamelaTron? Their spellings differ…)

The GamelaTron is the fruit of a collaboration between The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) and the composer Zemi17: A. Taylor Kuffner.

Modeled after traditional Balinese and Javanese gamelan orchestras, the GamelaTron is an amalgamation of traditional instruments with a suite of percussive sound makers. MIDI sequences control 117 robotic striking mechanisms that produce intricately woven and rhythmic sound. Performances follow an arc similar to classic Indonesian gatherings, where stories from great epics, such as the Ramayana, are told and settings given in words that are continued in music.

Sounds overly-mechanical to my ears but then that’s probably inevitable given the way the instruments are being controlled. The classic Nonesuch Explorer recordings of Javanese and Balinese gamelan orchestras follow less rigid rhythmic patterns. And being recorded outdoors the Indonesian music is augmented by background atmospheres from birds and insects.

For more variations on the gamelan theme, there’s 23 Skidoo’s Urban Gamelan album (recently reissued) and the many chiming electronic exercises by Paul Schütze.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Paul Schütze online
• Metronomes
• Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
• Max Eastley’s musical sculptures
• The Reactable
• The Ondes Martenot

On the Moon

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Two Apollo 11 pictures from NASA’s endlessly fascinating collection of high-res photos. Both these are of Buzz Aldrin taken with Neil Armstrong’s suit-mounted Hasselblad. The one above is the most famous of the lot, of course, reproduced endlessly (I even copied it once as part of a drawing), but you hardly ever see it in its original tilted state like this; picture editors prefer to balance the horizon. The one below I hadn’t seen before in such detail. The lunar lander here looks remarkably small and fragile.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
• Memories of the Space Age
• Apollo liftoff
• Earthrise
• East of Paracelsus