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Nine composers will soon have an extra stamp in their passport thanks in part to Meet The Composer‘s newest grant-making program, Global Connections. As the name suggests, the program aims to foster intercultural collaboration between composers and music organizations worldwide, and in the coming year, the nine recipients will appear at events on 4 continents. A complete list of recipients and project descriptions follows.

Historically, music has served as an influential liaison between cultures that did not share a common language or religion. With technology making international communication more accessible and the economics of the time focusing heavily on globalization, the distance between people is diminishing rapidly. With such close contact, people from different backgrounds must often adapt to one another, without much of a gestation period. Meet The Composer, responding to a need in the world and recognizing composers’ thirst for experiences abroad, felt that the time was ripe to launch a program that supported a cross-cultural exchange of ideas.

“We live in an interdependent world. At this time in history, we especially need one another,” says composer Augusta Read Thomas, who will be traveling to Poland next spring. “Music is a great ambassador. Sharing literature, poetry, art, crafts, ceramics, music, dance, theater, etc., brings us closer to our fellow souls.”

California-based composer Richard Marriott concurs. Having recently returned from his third trip to Bali, and his first since the bombing in October 2002 that killed over 200 people, Marriott recognizes the extreme importance of intercultural collaboration. “It’s absolutely necessary for the artists to make a statement rather than the politicians making pronouncements.”

Through Global Connections, grants of between $500 and $5000 are awarded to composers who have been invited to appear at an event sponsored by a hosting organization. The composer and organization must come from two different countries, with one of the two being based in the United States. The program guidelines also stipulate that the collaboration must include a live performance of the composer’s work. In addition, composers are encouraged to interact on a deeper level with the musicians and audience through such activities as pre- and post-concert discussions, conducting, workshops, and master classes.

According to Eddy Ficklin, the program manager at Meet The Composer who heads Global Connections, the interest for the first round far exceeded expectations, with over a hundred composers applying. The first round of recipients were selected in-house by the Meet The Composer staff, but an independent panel is being considered for future rounds. Ficklin anticipates at least an equal number of applicants next year and most likely significantly more, as composers learn about the program and have more time to set up an event. As a result of the large volume of applicants, Ficklin points out that the winning projects had to “really go above and beyond the basic requirements.”

For Thomas, working with the Lutoslawski Philharmonic in Wroclaw allows her an opportunity to have her orchestral music—representing a large portion of her oeuvre—heard by an overseas audience. And while the performances of her two large-scale works, In My Sky at Twilightand Words of the Sea, will certainly be highlights for Thomas, she is also excited about “working with the musicians, meeting local composers, hearing the language spoken all around me, seeing the architecture, visiting museums, speaking at the local music conservatories, and eating polish food!”

Composer Alla Borzova will use her grant to return to her native Belarus to participate in the Belarussian Musical Autumn Festival. She is excited to become reacquainted with her homeland and Belarussian colleagues. “I look forward to the opportunity to learn about the current creative life in Belarus, Russia, and Europe from…the key individuals and groups shaping and defining the current European music scene.”

But she also sees the festival as an opportunity to share an insider view of American music. “For me it is like ‘giving a report’ about my creative life in my adopted country for the past decade,” she explains. “The Da Capo Chamber Players, my husband, composer Alexander Dmitriev, and I will do our best to let our colleagues and audiences know about recent trends in American music.”

In addition to Borzova’s music, the Da Capo Chamber Players will present works of contemporary American composers and hold a lecture-demonstration of modern American rehearsal techniques. Borzova hopes “it will be the beginning of the fruitful collaboration and that as interest increases, it will become possible to produce a festival of American music in the future in Belarus, as well as to bring Belarussian composers and performers to New York.”

Marriott, whose music from the past five years has made extensive use of Balinese, Chinese, and Japanese instruments, describes Global Connections as the perfect program for him. He will be visiting Hong Kong and Beijing in September to immerse himself in the world of Beijing opera, a style which will inform his collaborative project with the Hong Kong Dance Company, librettist Xu-Ying and choreographer Chen-Chieh Yu. “It takes a lot to keep the study and the research alive while at the same time being creatively involved with the possibilities that the new instruments and the new techniques that can provide a composer with new mat
erials to work with.”

Marriott is particularly interested in how musical forms of the two cultures involved can be blended and he has been experimenting with everything from pipa players using techniques sometimes associated with heavy metal guitar to maintaining the tonal qualities of Mandarin Chinese while playing with the musical intervals. “I have found actually that the my current Western, avant-garde leanings have matched up very well with what at least many artists in China are interested in right now,” he observes. But what he is most excited about is seeing a general audiences reaction to the manipulation of traditional material.

And while the musical exchange between all of the composers and organizations involved will certainly be exhilarating, Marriott sites the importance of the broader goals of building respectful relationships and bridging cultural divides “That’s the true meaning of the international collaborations.”

The next application deadline will be in May 2004, with the application becoming available from Meet The Composer in late winter.

2003 Global Connections Grant Recipients:

Composer: Yacub Addy (Troy, NY)
Hosting Organization: World of Hope International (Accra, Ghana)

Composer and performer Yacub Addy will travel to Samsan Odumase, a small village outside the capital city of Ghana, for a month long residency at World of Hope International’s education facility. During his month there Mr. Addy will conduct a series of workshops and performances involving the members of the community.

Composer: Louis Andriessen (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Hosting Organization: Illinois Wesleyan University School of Music Bloomington, IL)

Renowned composer Louis Andriessen will travel to Bloomington, Illinois, for the Illinois Wesleyan University’s annual Symposium of Contemporary Music.

Composer: Theo Bleckmann (New York, NY)
Hosting Organization: Biblioteca Alexandrina (Alexandria, Egypt)

Composer and performer Theo Bleckmann will travel to Alexandria, Egypt for the performance of his new work The Alexandria Carry-On. The performance will take place at the Biblioteca Alexandrina, a newly constructed international cultural center near the site of the ancient library of Alexandria.

Composer: Alla Borzova (Pelham, NY)
Hosting Organization: Belarussian State Philharmonic (Minsk, Belarus)

Composer and pianist Alla Borzova will travel to Belarus to take part in several performances of her works at the Belarussian Musical Autumn Festival by the Belarussian Philharmonic and the New York based Da Capo Chamber Players.

Composer: Gavin Bryars (Billesdon, UK),br> Hosting Organization: CalArts School of Music (Valencia, CA)

British composer Gavin Bryars will travel to Los Angeles for a one-week residency at the CalArts School of Music. The residency will culminate in an entire program of his works at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater performed by the New Century Players.

Composer: Thomeki Dube (Hillcrest, Zimbabwe)
Hosting Organization: Dance Theater Workshop (New York, NY)

Zimbabwean composer and performer Thomeki Dube will travel to New York for a residency at the 171 Cedar Arts Center preparatory to the premiere of Black Burlesque (revisited), a collaboration with choreographers Reggie Wilson (Fist & Hell Performance) and Noble Douglas (Noble Douglas Dance Company). After the New York premiere, there will be a five-week, seven-city tour of the new work.

Composer: Ge Gan-ru (Saddle River, NJ)
Hosting Organization: Contrasts International Contemporary Music Festival (Lviv, Ukraine)

Composer Ge Gan-ru will travel to the Ukraine’s Contrasts Festival to participate in activities surrounding the performances of his String Quartets No. 1-“Fu” and No. 4-“Angel Suite.”

Composer: Richard Marriott (El Cerrito, CA)
Hosting Organization: Hong Kong Dance Company (Hong Kong)

Composer Richard Marriott will join choreographer Chen-Chieh Yu and librettist Xu-Ying in a series of collaboration meetings and workshops in Hong Kong to develop their new collaborative work Prince Lan Ling.

Composer: Augusta Read Thomas (Chicago, IL) Hosting Organization: Lutoslawski Philharmonic (Wroclaw, Poland)

Chicago Symphony composer-in-residence Augusta Read Thomas will travel to Wroclaw, Poland, for the Eastern European premiere of two of her works, Words of the Sea and In My Sky at Twilight. While there, Ms. Thomas will give pre-concert talks, assist in the rehearsals, and give a master class at the Wroclaw Academy of Music.

Rose Heller, a lifelong supporter of art and contemporary music and co-founder of the Picred Heller Foundation (with her husband Ernest “Pick” Heller d. 1998), died peacefully at her home in New York City on Saturday, July 19, 2003. She was 105 years old.

Most people referred to Mrs. Heller as Red, but official records of her service to many arts organizations usually refer to her simply as Mrs. Ernest Heller. Throughout her lifetime, she and her husband demonstrated a true love and commitment to the work of living artists and composers. Mrs. Heller served on the boards of the American Music Center, The League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music, and the MacDowell Colony, as well as the awards committee for the Poses Creative Arts Awards at Brandeis University. She was also a supporter of the Aspen Festival and Tanglewood. In 2002, Mrs. Heller was named Trustee Emeritus at MacDowell to honor her boardship in the 1980s during which she led a personal campaign that raised over $1,000,000 for the colony.

In a letter to former MacDowell Executive Director, Mary Carswell, from 1990 Red wrote: “My deep involvement with the Colony goes way back to Aaron Copland—he was so ardent about it as were all those at the time—Virgil Thomson, Albee, Flanagan, etc., not board members—a base who understood the need for a thing like the Colony. A benefit was an occasion—we filled the house with people committed to a cause. It was a good base for the Colony. As it grew more costly it was more difficult but we managed to fill tables…. In any event the cause is just and your slugging it out is worth the effort.”

She was also involved with the American Music Center from the late-1960s through the 1980s. After over 13 years of service to the board, she was named an honorary board member in 1980, a title which she held for the rest of her life. “She was really helpful for a longtime,” remembers former AMC Board President and current board member Paul Sperry, who credits Mrs. Heller with getting him onto the board in the 1970s. “They supported the Center and cared greatly about it.”

Rose Fine, later to become Heller, was born in 1898. At a time when women were just being granted the right to vote, she was pursuing an degrees in social work from the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University and traveling all over the world. She met Pick in Paris in the mid-1920s and the couple moved to New York City a few years later. She was active as a social worker for many years and ran a summer camp in Damascus, PA from the late 1920s to 1950. Pick, a Princeton graduate and later a member of the alumni council for the Princeton music department, was in the pearl business. He was also a gifted linguist who spoke Chinese and collected Chinese porcelain. The couple also inherited an exquisite art collection that included works by Edward Hopper, Renoir, and Chagall.

The Hellers counted many composers among their friends and were very close to Edgard and Louise Varèse as well as Earle Brown and his wife Susan Sollins. Their apartment on East 57th Street became a social focal point for the art circles. ” They were amongst the most remarkable people we knew. They went to every concert of contemporary music there ever was,” recalls Sollins. “And after every concert you’d go to their apartment on 57th Street and everybody was there.” The Hellers also welcomed musicians into their homes for intimate performances and Sollins calls the soirees they threw in their apartment “the last of the great salons.”

Red Heller is survived by two nieces, Lynn Gilbert and Alison Fine, and two nephews, Barnes Keller and David Fine. There will be a memorial service for her at the Harvard Club (27 W. 44th Street in New York, NY) on September 12, 2003, at 11:30 AM.

NewMusicBox Extra:
Read a personal tribute to “Red” Heller by Susan Sollins-Brown.

Ed. Note: July 31, 2003 — A joint statement was issued today by New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin and NYC Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein in response to a New York Times report on Wednesday, July 23, 2003 stating that in order to meet new core requirements for literacy and math skills, classes devoted to music and other arts as well as classes in science and foreign languages would be greatly reduced.

We wonder what the implications of this will be not just in New York City but all over the country both in terms of the audience development as well as how it will affect the livelihood of many American composers and musicians who are involved in music education programs in schools.

We present the full text of the joint statement below and invite you to respond to it in our Forum on the bottom of this page.

JOINT STATEMENT BY CULTURAL AFFAIRS COMMISSIONER KATE D. LEVIN AND SCHOOLS CHANCELLOR JOEL I. KLEIN

On Wednesday, July 23, the New York Times reported that as middle schools accommodate the new core requirements in the schedule for literacy and math, certain other subjects, including the arts, are being reduced. As a result, some principals have reportedly reduced arts classes and teachers in their schools.

As Chancellor Klein stated in the Times article and on other occasions, the Department of Education is strongly committed to arts education for all students in New York City public schools. ProjectARTS funds have been included in the budgets for all 1,200 schools. Department staff, in partnership with members of the cultural community, are working to develop a coherent and comprehensive arts curriculum for the September 2004 school year.

Under the direction of Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Diana Lam, and with the leadership of our Regional Superintendents, middle school principals have received assistance in revising schedules to accommodate the new core curriculum. More specifically, when the Department first learned of problems at individual schools where principals have proposed reductions in arts classes and/or staff, memoranda were sent to middle school principals offering suggestions on how to accommodate the new core curriculum while still maintaining arts instruction. These suggestions include flexible scheduling for students and teachers, scheduling of additional periods with ProjectARTS funds and the integration of humanities instruction in the teaching of literacy and math as well as additional classes on Saturdays. Moreover, where scheduling problems have been identified, the relevant Regional Superintendents and Local Instructional Superintendents have worked directly with individual principals when this problem has been identified and will continue to do so, with the goal of including the arts wherever possible as schedules are modified.

The process of introducing a new citywide curriculum presents many challenges. It is our goal to improve student achievement in the core subjects of literacy and math citywide. We want to emphasize, however, that we believe that the arts are an important component of a first-rate education and that we will work to include and enhance arts education in all schools in the New York City public school system.

Rose “Red” Heller in 1985 Photo courtesy The MacDowell Colony

Rose Heller, a lifelong supporter of art and contemporary music and co-founder of the Picred Heller Foundation (with her husband Ernest “Pick” Heller d. 1998), died peacefully at her home in New York City on Saturday, July 19, 2003. She was 105 years old.

Most people referred to Mrs. Heller as Red, but official records of her service to many arts organizations usually refer to her simply as Mrs. Ernest Heller. Throughout her lifetime, she and her husband demonstrated a true love and commitment to the work of living artists and composers. Mrs. Heller served on the boards of the American Music Center, The League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music, and the MacDowell Colony, as well as the awards committee for the Poses Creative Arts Awards at Brandeis University. She was also a supporter of the Aspen Festival and Tanglewood. In 2002, Mrs. Heller was named Trustee Emeritus at MacDowell to honor her boardship in the 1980s during which she led a personal campaign that raised over $1,000,000 for the colony.

In a letter to former MacDowell Executive Director, Mary Carswell, from 1990 Red wrote: “My deep involvement with the Colony goes way back to Aaron Copland—he was so ardent about it as were all those at the time—Virgil Thomson, Albee, Flanagan, etc., not board members—a base who understood the need for a thing like the Colony. A benefit was an occasion—we filled the house with people committed to a cause. It was a good base for the Colony. As it grew more costly it was more difficult but we managed to fill tables…. In any event the cause is just and your slugging it out is worth the effort.”

She was also involved with the American Music Center from the late-1960s through the 1980s. After over 13 years of service to the board, she was named an honorary board member in 1980, a title which she held for the rest of her life. “She was really helpful for a longtime,” remembers former AMC Board President and current board member Paul Sperry, who credits Mrs. Heller with getting him onto the board in the 1970s. “They supported the Center and cared greatly about it.”

Rose Fine, later to become Heller, was born in 1898. At a time when women were just being granted the right to vote, she was pursuing an degrees in social work from the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University and traveling all over the world. She met Pick in Paris in the mid-1920s and the couple moved to New York City a few years later. She was active as a social worker for many years and ran a summer camp in Damascus, PA from the late 1920s to 1950. Pick, a Princeton graduate and later a member of the alumni council for the Princeton music department, was in the pearl business. He was also a gifted linguist who spoke Chinese and collected Chinese porcelain. The couple also inherited an exquisite art collection that included works by Edward Hopper, Renoir, and Chagall.

The Hellers counted many composers among their friends and were very close to Edgard and Louise Varèse as well as Earle Brown and his wife Susan Sollins. Their apartment on East 57th Street became a social focal point for the art circles. ” They were amongst the most remarkable people we knew. They went to every concert of contemporary music there ever was,” recalls Sollins. “And after every concert you’d go to their apartment on 57th Street and everybody was there.” The Hellers also welcomed musicians into their homes for intimate performances and Sollins calls the soirees they threw in their apartment “the last of the great salons.”

Red Heller is survived by two nieces, Lynn Gilbert and Alison Fine, and two nephews, Barnes Keller and David Fine. There will be a memorial service for her at the Harvard Club (27 W. 44th Street in New York, NY) on September 12, 2003, at 11:30 AM.

While the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera are certainly the big fish in New York City’s musical ocean, much of the most innovative programming has usually come from smaller organizations: chamber ensembles and niche presenters, who offer a variety of music that is unsurpassed in other American cities. And it is for just this reason that Meet The Composer administers the JPMorgan Chase Regrant Program for Small Ensembles.

The program aims to support professional music organizations and music presenters with annual budgets of $300,000 or less. General operating grants are given to organizations based in any of the 5 boroughs of New York City that have consistently demonstrated a dedication to contemporary music and living composers. For the Minimum Security Composers Collective, that has received 3 JPMorgan Chase regrants, the program has been an important source of funding. “MSCC is a tough-to-define organization, and we typically fall through the cracks of other programs that fund ensembles or presenters,” says composer and founding member Adam Silverman. “In selecting us, Meet the Composer showed confidence in what we do and exhibited an understanding that musicians band together in different ways.”

Recipients are selected based on the quality of artistic leadership, artistic product and selection, rehearsal and performance standards. Recipients are free to use the grants at their discretion to pay performers, rent venues, publicize events, and otherwise move their organizations forward. In the third year of regrants, Meet The Composer and JPMorgan Chase have recognized 15 music organizations.

• • Absolute Ensemble
  • Center for Contemporary Opera
  • CODE Foundation, Inc.
  • Composer’s Collaborative*
  • Encompass New Opera Theatre*
  • Ethel Foundation for the Arts*
  • The Jazz Gallery
  • Locrian Chamber Players
  • Music At The Anthology (MATA)
  • Minimum Security Composers Collective
  • Music From China
  • New Sounds Music, Inc./PRISM Quartet
  • Roulette Intermedium, Inc.
  • Sequitur
  • Speculum Musicae*

* Indicates first time recipient

With the passage of the FY04 Interior Appropriations Bill by the U.S. House of Representatives, the arts will get a little bit more funding from the federal government in the coming year. With a final tally of 225-200, the House voted Thursday in support of the bill, which includes a $10 million increase for the National Endowment for the Arts and a $5 million increase for the National Endowment for the Humanities. The bipartisan amendment was co-sponsored by Representatives Christopher Shays (R-CT), Jim Leach (R-IA), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), and Norm Dicks (D-WA). Today’s vote brings the House FY04 funding level for the NEA to a total of $127 million.

An amendment offered by Representative Thomas Tancredo (R-CO) that would have decreased NEA funding by $50 million was defeated by a vote of 112 to 313.

This is the second year in a row that the House has shown its support for the NEA by approving an increase in funds, adding a sum of $10 million on to the FY 2004 budget request made by President George W. Bush for $117.480 million, an amount that already had exceeded the FY2003 allotment of $115.731 million. Although the funding still lags significantly behind the $170 million NEA budget that was consistent throughout the early 1990s, any increase in such a fiscally unstable time bodes well for NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, who came on board in February 2003.

Gioia, who is a poet and was a composer in his younger years, is optimistic about the latest demonstration of Congressional support of the NEA. “We welcome this much-needed, positive development. This vote of confidence in the NEA comes just as state, local, and organizational arts budgets across the country are being slashed. These funds will greatly enhance our ability to deliver the finest arts and arts education programs to all regions of the country. All Americans should be encouraged that the House recognized this as a worthy investment that will pay significant cultural and even economic dividends to communities across the country.”

Gioia’s dedication to music was apparent at the American Symphony Orchestra League’s 58th National Conference last month during his keynote address in which he assured attendees that he was aware of the problems facing American orchestras. He also summed up his approach to music with a quote from Lou Harrison, “Cherish, conserve, consider, create”—a motto that he admits keeping above his desk.

The next step for securing federal funds for the NEA will come after the August recess when the Senate will take up its version of the NEA’s funding bill for a vote. Earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations committee approved $117 million for the NEA.

“I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.”

This quote from Twelfth Night was the first phrase I uttered into the telephone almost two year’s ago when I first experienced Jason Freeman‘s infectious Telephone Etude #1, more playfully referred to as Shakespeare Cuisinart. The official instructions asked users, who called a toll-free number to access the program, to speak their favorite lines from Shakespeare and soon the telephone spat back a short musical piece, chopping, splitting, and splicing their voices into a hyperactive sound collage. I kept calling, racking my brain for every line of Shakespeare I knew: Hamlet, Lady MacBeth, Puck, Julius Caesar. But then I realized that I wasn’t limited to Shakespeare. I began singing songs, telling jokes, and making noises. This is when the depth of the project came to light. I was in charge of my own compositions, making choices about what would sound good after being submitted to Freeman’s sound blender.

Freeman, a doctoral candidate in composition at Columbia University, also favored creations that strayed from the instructions. “I finally figured out what I really, really liked to do was sing a couple of verses of ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,’ and I never found anything that I enjoyed more than that. I must have done it dozens of times.”

On April 9, 2003, after having received 35,000 calls during its 2 year run, Telephone Etude #1 was dismantled, much to the chagrin of many newly made “composers.” Fortunately, those who caught the sound collage bug only had to wait a few months before Freeman launched his next effort, an online slicing and dicing program with the technofile appellation Network Auralization for Gnutella (N.A.G.).

Whereas Shakespeare Cuisinart required users to simply have access to a telephone, N.A.G. requires being a bit more tech savvy. Although Freeman sites the ideal N.A.G. user as “someone who has at least some familiarity with what file sharing is…and maybe some background in music,” even novice computer users can easily navigate Freeman’s user-friendly interface.

With N.A.G., users are provided with an instrument that essentially “plays” the Gnutella network. Gnutella is a post-Napster file-sharing protocol that operates as a decentralized network of computers allowing individuals to swap MP3 audio files and is the engine behind many popular peer-to-peer networks like Morpheus and BearShare. Although such networks have been a virtual free-for-all paradise for pop music fans, those whose taste leans a bit more towards classical and the avant-garde are often disappointed. But thanks to Freeman, who concurs that peer-to-peer leaves a lot to be desired for those with fringe tastes, N.A.G. sets out to make file-sharing a bit more interesting.

Once installing N.A.G. (which is available as a free download from turbulence.org, which commissioned the projection), users can set out to create their own sonic collages. After typing in a set of keywords, N.A.G. scans the Gnutella network and automatically begins to download files that contain the keywords in their information. Freeman’s design then continuously checks the downloads, prioritizing segments according to speed of download for real-time playback. The result is a shuffle of sound files cutting in and out as they download, overlapping snippets into an aleatoric sound collage. The results can be further manipulated by altering the algorithm, selecting how many songs may play simultaneously, how quickly N.A.G. moves amongst songs, and whether N.A.G. varies playback speed and volume in proportion to the download speeds of each song.

Freeman initially conceived of N.A.G. in January of 2002, but it wasn’t until December with a grant from New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. under the auspices of their net art project turbulence.org, that he proceeded full throttle with the project. What drew Freeman to the Gnutella network was not the final goal of having a hard drive full of songs, but the process of searching and downloading, and the imperfections inherent to this system. “The goal was never really to get the final MP3 file downloaded completely but to sort of watch the whole thing unfold… I wanted to turn it into a more engaging medium and since it’s MP3 files that are passing through the network, and they’re already audio, it actually made sense to turn the whole thing into an aural experience.”

Not only is N.A.G. an aural experience but it is also an active one, which, like much of his other work, succeeds at breaking down the barriers between composer, performer, and listener. The project aims to allow people who hadn’t had the same musical opportunities as Freeman to be able to have a creative experience with sound. “It’s also comes a little bit out of a frustration with the way that music is consumed, not only just in society in general but in music circles,” he continued. “Even in new music, when I go to concerts in New York…there’re a lot of people in the audience, I can tell, that are just totally tuned out.” With N.A.G. it is impossible to be passive, because without the input of the user, the work cannot begin.

Freeman openly acknowledges the influence of John Cage‘s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951), for 24 performers manipulating the controls of 12 radios, Imaginary Landscape No. 5 (1952), created from 42 phonograph records, and Alvin Lucier‘s Music for Solo Performer, which converts brainwaves into sound. All of these works converted real-time phenomena into musical works, a concept that has proliferated in the information age.

Today, media is transmitted instantaneously and progress in the computer age seems synonymous with speed. Such an environment has bred a younger generation of artists fascinated with the infinite possibilities of exploiting the media through technology. Matthew Biederman‘s Aleatory TV, which was part of the MATA Festival this year, gathered television signals from all over the world, bouncing from emission to emission based on certain aural cues. And Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, f
eatured last year at the Whitney Biennial, scoured live chat rooms from all over the Internet and pulled phrases that surrounded keyword searches.

Web Shredder>, masterminded by visual artist Mark Napier and available at potatoland.org, scrambles the codes of Web pages, creating abstract collages of the original material. British artist Stanza also turns the Web upside down with his 3D interface Subvergence, that “uses and abuses data from our computers.” Peter and Gregory Traub’s Sibling Revelry scans the web for keyword-related sound files to be played on a sampler on their site. Another web-specific sound art project is Chris Chafe‘s Ping, originally presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art‘s 010101: Art in Technological Times exhibition, is now available in an online version. The program makes music in real time from Internet ping times.

But the resulting sounds from N.A.G. are less reminiscent of the ambient sound of other media artists than they are of John Oswald‘s controversial Plunderphonics, which reworked the music of pop icons into incomprehensible jumbles. And like Oswald, Freeman also must face the record companies as he ventures into the minefield of peer-to-peer networks. With file sharing being a giant sore spot for the recording industry, such a project cannot exist without some scrutiny into its lawfulness. Freeman easily shrugs off worries about offending the powers that be. His program makes use primarily of very short segments usually no more than a few seconds long (and as we learned from the James Newton vs. the Beastie Boys case, 6 seconds of music is “unoriginal as a matter of law” and therefore not subject to copyright restrictions…) In addition, there is no built in way to record N.A.G. creations, although Freeman insists that this is more of an aesthetic and technical choice than a protective one. “I haven’t put in the recording function, more than anything, because it would be incredibly difficult to do…[and] partially because I feel like a lot of it is the moment of the experience and not really something that people should want to preserve.” And what about the demonstrative sound samples on the N.A.G. website? “If someone sends me a cease and desist letter, I’ll probably just cease and desist and take the samples down, but I don’t expect that will happen.”