How many interests can a single article be relevant to?

[sabotabby]

Electronic music. Communism. Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. Futurism. Alchemy and the occult.

There are a few times that I've wished that I were more mechanically and musically inclined. Alas, I lack the talent to ever build one, though given that it's played by drawing, I'm pretty sure I could actually play one.

ETA: Here it is being played (starts at around 4:17):

Comments

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Wow, all the names are checked!
Seriously, though, a very good piece and I did not realize the link between the Italian Futurists and the occult.
I always thought of them as people who would declare as atheist machine-lovers if polite society would allow it.

Thinking of Soviet era music puts me in mind of these "industrial symphonies" (following quote from a zine by a firend of mine):

Arseny Mikhailovich Avraamov (1886 – 1944) was an avantgarde Russian composer and theorist. He studied at the music school of the Moscow Philharmonic
Society, with private composition lessons from Sergey Taneyev. He refused to fight in World War I, and fled the country to work, among other things, as a circus artist. Returning in 1917, he went on to compose his famous Simfoniya Gudkov and was a pioneer in Russian sound on film techniques.

Among his other achievements were the invention of graphic-sonic art, produced by drawing directly onto magnetic tape, and an Ultrachromatic 48-tone microtonal system, presented in his thesis, The Universal System of Tones, in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart in 1927. His microtonal system predated the creation of the Petrograd Society for Quarter-Tone Music in 1923, by Georgii Rimskii-Korsakov. Today, his most famous work is Simfoniya Gudkov (Гудковая
симфония, Symphony of factory sirens). The piece was conducted by a team of conductors using flags and pistols. It was performed in the city of Baku
in 1922, and less successfully in Moscow, a year later.

The Symphony of the Factory Sirens is Arseny Mikhailovich Araamov’s most famous composition and took place to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Soviet Republic. The original performance of Simfoniya Gudkov took place in 1922, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It involved:

naval ships' sirens and whistles
buses and car horns
all the factory sirens of Baku
cannons
the foghorns of the entire Soviet flotilla in the Caspian
artillery guns
machine guns
seaplanes
trucks
25 steam locomotives
a specially designed ‘whistle main’
a full infantry regiment
several large choirs
a team of conductors on specially constructed towers using flags and pistols.

[sabotabby]

It's shit like this that makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life. If not composing it, at least writing about it.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Well, it's early yet!
I find history is full of ideas not pursued and toads not taken; that's the most fun part to write about.

[sabotabby]

I more meant in an academic sense. Though this is totally going in the thing I'm working on.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Understood.
Also, I meant "roads", not "toads".

B~P

[lienne.livejournal.com]

I mean, I'm sure history is also full of toads not taken. They might even outnumber the roads! You just don't hear about them as often.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Well, they were awesome in the Emerald Forest!

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Argh my Russian is in such terrible shape.

[sabotabby]

At least it exists! Whereas mine is good for drinking and that's it.

[ironed_orchid]

Muthafucking theosophists! They get into everything.

[sabotabby]

Heh.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

Love it.

I know there's some software that can generate music from art. It's been a while since I looked at it, so I'd hope the tech has come along further these days than it used to be. But I know it's out there. :)

[sabotabby]

Oh, I already have an ANS emulator and the first series of images I'd like to use with it. It just doesn't run on a Mac. And given how easy it looks to use, I would theoretically want to build one that had a more performative aspect to it. And by "theoretically" I mean I contacted a friend who knows how to do this shit.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see an ANS emulator in concert with a theremin:

[sabotabby]

Apparently you can make a theremin for about $120 and buy them for $300-400. This is something that I've considered doing. I'd obviously rather make my own (bonus: finding people to teach me how to play) but I don't know how.