7′40″ | six-channel acousmatic performance
Hextet explores a six-channel sound system through two deliberately selected materials: three-note organ chords and sounds produced by rubbing the skin of a bass drum with a rubber ball.
The organ sonorities belong to a family of precomposed materials that I have used in Pyramid for David Tudor and other works. I return to these materials because experience has taught me something about how they behave in different spaces. They are not interchangeable samples. Each can stimulate an architecture, environment or sound system differently, bringing particular acoustic figures into audibility.
For Hextet, I selected the organ chords and bass-drum sounds in anticipation of how they might behave within the PAMM auditorium and its six-channel system. During the limited preparation time available, I adjusted some of the component tones of the chords toward resonances I identified in the hall.
The sounds entered through the six loudspeaker channels at different times and traveled along spatial trajectories I had designed in advance. These trajectories were independent of any particular sound and could accommodate whatever materials I introduced into them. During the performance, I controlled their speed, intensity, routes and other parameters.
As the precomposed chords occupied different positions and overlapped, they formed larger, shifting harmonic conjunctions. The materials were familiar to me, but their relationships were newly formed through the live performance, the six-point-source system and the acoustic response of the auditorium.
Although some of its sounds belong to other works, their particular combination here became Hextet: a unique sound object shaped for—and partly shaped by—the architecture it was invited to occupy. I think of these recurring materials as members of a family. They may appear together in different configurations and circumstances, but each realized and recorded combination becomes a piece with its own identity.
FOR STAN BRAKHAGE
Hextet was commissioned to be performed between films in a program devoted to Stan Brakhage, not as accompaniment to them. The movement of sound through the auditorium became a form of drawing in space.
Sounds entered, crossed, accumulated and formed changing relationships. I associated these spatial gestures with the marks and trajectories of Jackson Pollock and with Brakhage’s way of composing movement, color and light across film. The visual field became architectural, and the drawing occurred through sound.
Hextet was one of two works commissioned from me by Obsolete Media Miami and the Frost Museum of Science for The Films of Stan Brakhage. The other was Small Sounds in a Large Space, a seven-minute work. Both premiered in the auditorium at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) on May 5, 2016. The piece was released by Subtropics Editions as part of the limited edition art album, INDIVISIBLES.
Hextet (2016) | 7′40″ | Complete binaural recording made during rehearsal in the PAMM auditorium. Special thanks to Barron Sherer, Kevin Arrow, the audiovisual staff at PAMM, Obsolete Media Miami and the Frost Museum of Science. Released in 2022 as part of INDIVISIBLES by Subtropics Editions.