A realisation of Alvin Lucier's Quasimodo the Great Lover (1970)
by Laura Cameron and Matt Rogalsky in Edinburgh, Scotland
Produced with support from the Institute of Geography at the University
of Edinburgh,
the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of
Glasgow,
the Royal Scottish Geographical Society,
and the collaboration of networked sites worldwide

NETWORKED PERFORMANCE: 1300-1400 UTC, THURSDAY MAY 10
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF SITES WORLDWIDE

AUDIO STREAM ACTIVE MAY 10: http://giss.tv:8000/transnational.mp3
(please check our website at http://www.mrogalsky.net/transnational
for any last-minute changes in the stream URL)

Alvin Lucier’s 1970 composition Quasimodo the Great Lover engages with
bioacoustics, particularly the sounds of the humpback whale, and its
ability to communicate great distances underwater. Lucier's poetic text
score is “for any person who wishes to send sounds over long distances
through air, water, ice, metal, stone, or any other sound-carrying
medium, using the sounds to capture and carry to listeners far away the
acoustic characteristics of the environments through which they
travel.”

The score describes how a realisation of the piece may be made, giving
wide scope for individual interpretation. At the core of the piece is
the idea that a live performance is made using “one or more
microphone-amplifier-loudspeaker systems to lengthen the distance over
which the sounds may be sent.” For any number of widely separated
spaces, sound is transmitted from one space to the next. Lucier
describes, for instance, using “the spaces of a three-story American
high school … connected by a four-stage system in which the performer’s
first stage is placed as far from the listeners’ last stage as possible
and in which the microphone-amplifiers of each stage are placed as far
as possible from their respective loudspeakers.”

In this way, the sounds which are transmitted acquire the acoustic
colouration of each space through which they pass—an effect which
Lucier explored beautifully in his I am sitting in a room (1969) (a
link to the first release on vinyl of this piece, as well as a radio
documentary about Lucier, may be found at www.ubu.com) . In our
realisation, sounds are passed from site to site via internet audio
streams. The streaming URL above allows the public to listen in to the
end of the chain.

Lucier describes that “the music of the humpback whale, Megaptera
novaeangliae of the family Baleanopteridae” is to be used as a model
for composition of “a repertory of simple sound events such as single
pitches of short or long duration, simultaneities of various densities,
upward and downward sweeps, and sounds with different envelope shapes …
accelerating or decelerating pulse trains, upward sweeps followed by
tones of short duration, or motives seemingly modal in character.” In
our performance we approach the character of whalesong through the
electronic manipulation of birdsong, in a nod to another layer of
biocommunication, referencing the migratory habits of bird species
which, like whales, travel great distances without regard for borders
(thus the title Transnational Ecologies).

MORE INFORMATION: http://www.mrogalsky.net/transnational

Collaborating sites:
Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Eric Laurier • Nina Morris
Live performance by Laura Cameron / Matt Rogalsky

Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences / School of Music,
University of Glasgow, Scotland
Hayden Lorimer • Rhian Thomas • Martin Dixon

Electroacoustic Music Studios/School of Music, University of East
Anglia, Norwich England
Simon Waters • Jason Dixon

The Music Centre, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield England
Dan Halford • Rob Godman

Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, De Montfort
University, Leicester England
Lorenzo Picinali

Okno/So-on, Brussels Belgium
Guy van Belle • Annemie Maes

School of Music, Queen's University, Kingston Canada
Kristi Allik • Mike Cassells

Music Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown CT USA
David Jensenius • Philip Schulze

Western Front, Vancouver Canada
Benjamin Rogalsky

Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Perth Australia
Cat Hope

TAG, The Hague, Netherlands
Anne Wellmer • Hicham Khalidi • Keir Neuringer