Gustavo Matamoros stands before a seated audience surrounded by tropical plants and historic architecture in Vizcaya’s central courtyard. Photo by Luis Olazabal.

Organ

public art / installations

2005–2007
Residency project comprising five related sound, text, video and performance works
Gustavo Matamoros
Contemporary Arts Project, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Miami, Florida

Residency: 2005–February 15, 2007
Opening performance: November 15, 2006
Organic Pipes installation: November 16, 2006–February 15, 2007

Organ is the collective title I gave to five related works created during my residency at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens: Digital Organizer, Of the 87 Organ Rolls, Sight Organ, Headed for Ganymede and Organic Pipes for Russell Frehling.

The residency inaugurated Vizcaya’s Contemporary Arts Project, a commissioning program created to invite artists to develop site-specific work in relation to the historic estate. I was nominated, invited to apply and selected by a panel as the program’s first artist.

DISCOVERING THE ORGAN

When selected for the residency, I was taken on a tour of Vizcaya in search of an appropriate site for the commissioned work. One of the last places we visited was the Living Room, which housed the Villa’s pipe organ. I was thrilled to learn that it was a player organ and that Vizcaya possessed a collection of 87 mechanical paper rolls, 25 of which were in sufficiently good condition to be played.

Two of the great pleasures of the residency were having access to Vizcaya after hours and spending time with Ken Whiting—“El Socio”—who knew everything there was to know about how the organ worked.

Gustavo Matamoros seated beside video equipment used in his work with Vizcaya’s historic player organ.
Gustavo Matamoros working with the player organ and video-based control materials developed for Digital Organizer. Photograph by Luis Olazabal.

James Deering had reportedly been concerned about whether such an expensive instrument could be heard throughout the house. When the organ was installed in 1917, the central courtyard was still open to the sky. It is now covered by a translucent pyramidal glass roof that assists with temperature and humidity control but also changes the courtyard’s acoustical behavior.

Without electronic amplification, I could not imagine how the organ could have filled the entire house with sound—even through the arched openings above the hallway doors that had been incorporated for that purpose. Deering apparently wanted to hear the organ while eating in the breakfast room. That desire gave me a reason to investigate the relationship between the instrument and the architecture.

Historic ground-floor plan of Vizcaya arranged around its large central Inner Court, with the Organ Room at upper left and breakfast rooms at right.
Ground-floor plan of Vizcaya’s Villa, showing the Inner Court at its center, the Organ Room at upper left and the breakfast areas at right. Organic Pipes investigated how organ tones aligned with the building’s resonances could carry through this architecture. Plan by F. Burrall Hoffman Jr. and Paul Chalfin.

FINDING THE HOUSE’S TONES

After helping organize a three-day tuning session with Ken Whiting, I recorded the historical music preserved on the playable organ rolls. I also recorded Ken as he tuned the instrument, capturing individual pipe tones from which I could later extract material for the installation.

With the organ tuned to A=440, its sound reached across the courtyard, but without the intensity I expected. I suspected that the organ’s conventional tuning did not align closely with the resonances inherent in the Villa’s architecture.

I mapped the Courtyard by producing controlled feedback through a wireless microphone suspended from helium-filled balloons. As the microphone moved through the space, the architecture revealed its resonant frequencies. The process yielded 182 tones. Of the organ’s conventionally tuned pipes, only A2—110 Hz—coincided directly with one of the identified resonances.

Gustavo Matamoros uses helium-filled balloons to suspend a wireless microphone while mapping resonant frequencies in Vizcaya’s courtyard.
Fishing for resonances in Vizcaya’s Courtyard. A wireless microphone suspended from helium-filled balloons generated controlled feedback while moving through the architecture. Photograph by Lea Nickless.

This suggested that the organ might carry through the house more efficiently if it were tuned to the architecture. Such a retuning, however, would make the surviving historical rolls sound noticeably out of tune according to conventional expectations. New music would have to be composed specifically for this unusual tuning.

Rather than alter the historic instrument, I created an installation that could demonstrate the idea.

ORGANIC PIPES FOR RUSSELL FREHLING

Organic Pipes for Russell Frehling was a site-specific 5.1-channel sound installation created for Vizcaya’s Courtyard. Five loudspeakers and a subwoofer were concealed within its planted areas.

From the recordings made while Ken Whiting tuned the organ, I selected pipe tones closest to the resonant frequencies discovered in the Courtyard. I then transformed and combined those tones to create what I thought of as organ shadows: partial traces of the instrument shaped to interact with the acoustical signature of the architecture.

The five principal tracks contained material of unequal duration and repeated continuously, producing changing combinations over an approximately 62-minute playback cycle. The sounds were not spatialized to travel from speaker to speaker. They remained associated with their playback positions, but the resonances they activated made them appear to emerge from—and occasionally move through—the architecture itself.

The installation effectively connected the organ to the Courtyard without retuning or physically altering the historical instrument. The resulting composition was determined as much by Vizcaya’s architecture as by the recorded organ pipes.

Organic Pipes was dedicated to Russell Frehling, from whom I learned the technique of locating resonances within architectural spaces. Because its tones and harmonic relationships were derived from this particular site, the work cannot be transplanted elsewhere and remain the same piece.

The installation operated continuously during regular museum hours from November 16, 2006, through February 15, 2007.

FIVE RELATED WORKS

1. Digital Organizer

A performance system assembled from recordings of Vizcaya’s historical organ rolls and video-recorded control information gathered from their operation. During the opening event, these materials were combined with the live organ and sounds from Organic Pipes to generate a new composition.

2. Of the 87 Organ Rolls

A text composition assembled from phrases and sentences in which the sound of the word “organ” appears in English. Beth Boone performed the text during the opening event.

score: PDF – OF THE 87 ORGAN ROLLS

3. Sight Organ

A video meditation composed from thirty photographs made by Luis Olazabal inside Vizcaya’s organ chamber. The images reveal an interior architecture and mechanism ordinarily hidden from view.

Sight Organ

4. Headed for Ganymede

A ten-minute internet-based downloadable work constructed from elements developed through the other pieces in the Organ project.

5. Organic Pipes for Russell Frehling

A 5.1-channel installation of recorded and transformed organ tones tuned in relation to the resonant frequencies of Vizcaya’s Courtyard.

ORGAN: A PERFORMANCE IN FOUR PARTS

On November 15, 2006, the residency was introduced through Organ: A Performance in Four Parts. All four elements unfolded simultaneously within and around the Courtyard:

  1. Digital Organizer — live organ, recorded organ-roll material and sounds from Organic Pipes
  2. Sight Organ — video projection using photographs by Luis Olazabal
  3. Of the 87 Organ Rolls — text performed by Beth Boone
  4. Organic Pipes for Russell Frehling — the continuing sound installation
Gustavo Matamoros performing during the Organ opening event in Vizcaya’s central courtyard.
Organ: A Performance in Four Parts, Vizcaya’s Courtyard, November 15, 2006. The event combined Digital Organizer, Sight Organ, Of the 87 Organ Rolls and the continuing Organic Pipes installation.

Original program: Organ: A Performance in Four Parts, November 15, 2006 | PDF

THE MUSIC OF VIZCAYA

The residency also produced The Music of Vizcaya: Selections from the Museum’s Historic Organ Rolls, an archival CD of music preserved in Vizcaya’s roll collection. I recorded and produced the sound during the residency, with Ken Whiting operating the organ and Mark Bynon conserving the rolls. Robert Heath coordinated the project.

Foldout cover for The Music of Vizcaya, featuring photographs of the historic organ and information about Vizcaya’s collection of organ rolls.
The Music of Vizcaya: Selections from the Museum’s Historic Organ Rolls. Gustavo Matamoros, recording and sound production; Ken Whiting, organ operation; Mark Bynon, roll conservation; Robert Heath, project coordination. CD design by inkbyte design; photography by Bill Sumner.

EXHIBITION

Organ
Gustavo Matamoros
Contemporary Arts Project
Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Miami, Florida

Opening performance: November 15, 2006
Organic Pipes installation: November 16, 2006–February 15, 2007

DOCUMENTATION

Promotional card for Gustavo Matamoros’s Organ project at Vizcaya. Photo by Luis Olazabal.
Promotional card for Organ, Gustavo Matamoros’s residency project at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 2006–2007. Photo by Luis Olazabal.

Score: Of the 87 Organ Rolls | PDF

Video: Sight Organ, photography by Luis Olazabal

SELECTED PRESS

Scanned Miami New Times article reviewing Gustavo Matamoros’s Organic Pipes installation at Vizcaya.
“Aural Art,” review of Organic Pipes published by Miami New Times.
Scanned Miami Herald article about Gustavo Matamoros’s Organ residency project at Vizcaya.
“A Symphony of Tonal Hues,” coverage of Organ and Organic Pipes published by The Miami Herald.

CREDITS

Artist and project conception: Gustavo Matamoros
Organ tuning and operation: Ken Whiting
Of the 87 Organ Rolls, reader: Beth Boone
Sight Organ, photography: Luis Olazabal
Resonance-mapping photograph: Lea Nickless
Project coordination: Robert Heath
Organ-roll conservation: Mark Bynon
Audio recording and production for The Music of Vizcaya: Gustavo Matamoros
CD design: inkbyte design
CD photography: Bill Sumner
Organic Pipes dedicated to Russell Frehling

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