Bourdon 60Hz is a sound meditation performance of sine waves and trombone tuned to 60Hz. When one is asked to spontaneously hum a note, the pitch tends to match the utility frequency, or mains hum, because this frequency is integrated into our perceptual habits. In North America and parts of Asia, this frequency is 60Hz, while in the majority of the rest of the world it is 50Hz. Bourdon—meaning drone and derived from French for bumblebee and buzz—invites the audience to tune their individual embodiment of this ubiquitous tone by softly humming along as they listen. Bourdon offers space for contemplation and regeneration with an otherwise unwelcome frequency.
Gadget Berry Dimple: A Glossary of False Translation transforms the poetry of Hugo Ball using Oulipian games, a Benjolin synthesizer, and a vintage Merlin music machine.
The original poem:
Gadji beri bimba
gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori
gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini
gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim
gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban
o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo
gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen
bluku terullala blaulala loooo
zimzim urullala zimzim urullala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam
elifantolim brussala bulomen brussala bulomen tromtata
velo da bang band affalo purzamai affalo purzamai lengado tor
gadjama bimbalo glandridi glassala zingtata pimpalo ögrögöööö
viola laxato viola zimbrabim viola uli paluji malooo
tuffm im zimbrabim negramai bumbalo negramai bumbalo tuffm i zim
gadjama bimbala oo beri gadjama gaga di gadjama affalo pinx
gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen gaga di bling blong
gaga blung
…
Our falsely translated version:
Gadget Berry Dimple
Gadget berry dimple; grand treaty. Louder, lonely tandoori.
Pajama gamma, buried home, timbales, grand tree. Melis-iss-sa: “Lolita longs for me.”
Gadget berry (gin blossom glossary). Louder, lonely cats or you, sad salad? Bim:
“Pajama toughen!” I, some olive, been banned. Glee club? Wow! only me (gin berry) banned.
O cat and lonely mice. [rhinoceros solo] Hans Tammen: “Lolita longs for me.” Who?
Pajama Rhinoceros. [solo: Hans Tammen]
Blue queue tarantula; blue lager low.
Chin, chin, you rule a lot. Chin, chin, you rule a lot. Chin, chin, sandwich bar. (Some olive sham!)
Elephant totem, bruised salad. Pillow men: “Bruised salad.” Pillow men: “Drum louder.”
Hell, no! Ha! Pang bland. A fellow purse of mine, a fellow purse of mine. [legato: tire]
Pajama bee’s halo. Grand treaty glossary. Zinc starter, pimp! Alone ogre grow.
Voilà: lacks a toe. Voilà: sing this hymn. Voilà: Oulipo Fallujah Morneau.
Toughen, ein sing this hymn? No, not mine. Bungalow? No, not mine. Bungalow toughen—I shim.
Pajama timbales. Oh, berry pajama. “Dada the pajama,” a fellow pins.
“Dada the bungalow, bungalow,” god of men.
Dada the bring blonde?
Dada brung!
Kepler–37, the star for which this project is named, is orbited by four small exoplanets, which were discovered when scientists sonified data captured by the Kepler space telescope. Careful listening revealed the smallest exoplanets on record.
Being unable to see either the settings of the benjolin synthesizer or each other, Grey & Morneau must rely on active listening and a practiced musical telepathy to confront the inherently chaotic nature of benjolin’s circuitry and shape its sounds into a coherent performance.
Used here as a physical constraint to deprive one sense (sight) in order to amplify others (hearing and touch), the blindfold is laden with symbolic meanings. Justice wears a blindfold as a symbol of impartiality: an ideal that treats everyone as equal regardless of gender, race, or appearance. In tarot readings, a blindfold may be interpreted as a willful blindness that skews perception and reduces clarity. Research indicates that the assumption of “gender-blindness” or “color-blindness” in one’s treatment of others can become a blindfold to one’s inherent biases, impeding or ignoring the pursuit of equality.
mem mer mère transforms eight measures of Debussy’s La Mer into one giant slow-motion wave that begins deep in the ocean’s trenches and rises through the Abyss, the Midnight, the Twilight, and finally the Sunlight as it breaks through the brilliant sun glitter on the water’s surface.
Agricultural and industrial pollution, coupled with global warming, have created more than 600 dead zones—seasonal hypoxic zones that can be responsible for mass mortality of fish, damaging coastal ecosystems. mem mer mère is underscored by a roll call reading of these dead zones—compiled by the research of Dr. Robert Diaz (Professor Emeritus, Virginia Institute of Marine Science) and Dr. Rutger Rosenberg (Professor, Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg).
Performed by Melissa Grey (live sound processing, data sonification), David Morneau (trombone), Kate Dillingham (cello) and Marc Fiaux (live projection processing)
Oulipo (short for Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) was founded in 1960 by the French author Raymond Queneau with a group of authors interested in exploring the potential of literature by applying constraints to the creative process, often rooted in mathematics.
Photon Ecstasy is a performance project that engages music, sound, and science fiction to address the hubris of certainty. Created by composer-performers Melissa Grey & David Morneau, it is a concert-length spatial performance for spoken word, trombone, and electronics—including the beeps of subverted video game systems, samples from the NASA Audio Collection, the randomness of the Benjolin modular synthesizer, the data sonification of star maps, and custom-built interactive wearable technology. It is based on Dan Rose’s The DNA-Photon Project, an artist book and twenty-five machine-sculptures, which ironically explores the certitude of industrialized capitalist countries, national security secrecy, and corporate overreach. New York Arts wrote that with repeated listenings "there’s more to be moved and impressed by, to learn from…."
The first installment, Photon Ecstasy (HD 7924), was commissioned by and premiered at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center in conjunction with the exhibition of Dan Rose’s artist books, Plaisirs Arbitraires | Arbitrary Pleasures (October 2016).
Photon Ecstasy is a performance project that engages music, sound, and interactive light. Created by composer-performers Melissa Grey & David Morneau, it is a concert-length spatial performance for trombone and live electronics—including custom-built interactive wearable technology, the beeps of subverted video game systems, the randomness of the Benjolin modular synthesizer, the data sonification of star maps, field recordings of pre-dawn coyote vocalisation, and samples from the NASA Audio Collection. Commissioned by University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Photon Ecstasy is an adaptation of The DNA-Photon Project, an artist book and twenty-five machine-sculptures by Dan Rose. New York Arts wrote that with repeated listenings "there’s more to be moved and impressed by, to learn from…."
Sound the Asylum is experimental documentation that catalogs spatial recordings of resonant frequencies—the aural identities—activated in decaying interiors of 19th century Kirkbride Plan hospitals.
The Empty S(h)elf, second iteration
Angela Grauerholz
in collaboration with Réjean Myette
soundscape by Melissa Grey & David Morneau
Throughout August 2022, Grey & Morneau recorded the midnight songs of insects that live in a 120-year old garden in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. They gently shaped the rhythmic pulsing of insect communication to phase in and out of alignment with the animated text. They designed an insect organ: a wavetable synthesizer that produces tones using samples from their field recordings and chimes periodically.
Melissa Grey directs a performance of Pauline Oliveros’s Tuning Meditation (1971), a vocal improvisation beginning with a single pitch, at the outdoor site of Max Neuhaus’s sound installation Times Square (1977).
