Coming soon!
Remnants of the Passage
by Brandon Vaccaro
Remnants of the Passage was a sound installation created for the show discard at Object + Thought Gallery in Denver, Colorado during October-November, 2007.
For this installation, I was asked to address the themes of remnants and waste. Many of the visual artists for the show used waste material for their pieces. My work as a composer often results in more discarded material than finished music. I liked the idea of using these odds-and-ends to create new work.
The installation featured a deconstruction of my composition for string quartet, electric guitar, and computer, The Passage. The recording features the Tosca String Quartet, best known for their work on The Waking Life soundtrack and with David Byrne, The Dixie Chicks, and Terry Bozzio.
The installation was a large white cube that sat in the middle of the gallery space. It was meant to be functional, with pamphlets and other items for the show. A number of sensors were embedded in the cube in different locations measuring things like the distance to the closest person in various directions, the level of ambient light in the gallery, etc. This data was then used to set parameters for the generative computer process that I had developed for The Passage. It was the first time that I had done a sound installation, and I really loved the idea of a piece that sounded different in the morning than the evening, different when a lot of people were in the gallery than when it was empty, and only the employees at the design firm heard it…
I never got around to releasing any documentation of the installation. This first release is from two different times. One is from October 1, 2007 at the opening of the show. The second is from the middle of the day during November 7th. It’s been really fun revisiting this stuff. I listened to so much of it when I was working on The Passage, and only a small amount of it made its way into the final piece. I really loved having such a long form piece so that others could hear some of it.