New Music (Unlisted)

🚬

artun çekem

Arachnish

Performed by Ekmeles:

Charlotte Mundy, soprano
Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano
Tim Parsons, countertenor
Steven Bradshaw, tenor
Jeffrey Gavett, baritone and director
Steven Hrycelak, bass

Production:

Recorded by David Adamcyk 
Filmed & edited by David Bird
Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn, March 2021
Produced by Nina Fukuoka and Hannah Kendall for Columbia Composers
Special thanks to Kristina Golubkova and Engin Dağlık for their assistance in the mix

Program Notes:

Silicone Skin and Fleshy Masses is built on an imaginary song that is sung by a machine entity that has been abandoned by its creator. Living through an ever-continuous process of corporal disintegration, the machine is left to witness its own decaying beauty and thus yearns for the healing touch of its maker. Although an original version of the song does not exist, this temporally stretched and fragmented reimagining of the music is meant to illustrate a moment in the machine’s perpetually deteriorating state. 

This work is part of an ongoing endeavor of the composer to analyze the human voice and repurpose it within new, instrumental settings. Through this instrumental resynthesis, the composer intends to defamiliarize the original source material and capture a liminal zone in between what may be perceived as “human” and “non-human”. In Silicone Skin and Fleshy Masses, the instrumental constituents of the imagined voice are made of six actual human voices. The vocal performers, together with the accompanying sine waves, collectively constitute the voice of the fictional entity. Therefore, the ensemble is given a twofold role, which is to evoke the soulful singing of a seemingly sentient being, while simultaneously manifesting its uncanny nature.

Art: Yugo Kohrogi

Silicone Skin And Fleshy Masses (2020-21) for voices & sine waves

Fabricated Memories, I. (2021) for six electric guitars

Performed by Science Ficta:

Sydney ZumMallen, bass viol
Loren Ludwig, bass viol
Caroline Nicolas, bass viol
Liam Byrne, bass viol 

Recorded by David Adamcyk
Scandinavia House, New York, March 2022

Program notes:

In Harmonie Universelle, Marin Mersenne writes the following about the viol:

"If one were to judge musical instruments according to their ability to imitate the human voice, and if one were to esteem naturalness as the highest accomplishment, so I believe that one cannot deny the viol the first prize, because it can imitate the human voice in all its modulations, even in its most intimate nuances..."

Indeed, there used to be a tradition of viol writing that particularly underlined the instrument’s perceived likeness to the human voice, among which a popular work being Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines. My piece Human Voices (2022), dedicated to the gamba quartet Science Ficta, is meant as a present-day response to this humanistic endeavor.

Acting as a 21st century counterpart to Marais’s Les Voix Humaines, Human Voices aims to question what “naturalness” might encompass in regard to the human voice. In order to liken the ensemble’s sound to the human voice, I 3D printed six human vocal tract models that are each tuned to a different vowel shape (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/)[1], and amplified the gamba quartet through these tubes. Therefore, the quartet’s acoustic sound would be physically filtered through these models, imbuing the live performance with a vocal quality.

I did not conceive Human Voices as a singing machine; but rather as a musical experiment in which the listener is continuously invited to ask: “Did I just hear a voice in there?” The music is ultimately intended to function from within the realm of the uncanny, from a liminal zone that borders the human and non-human, or the so-called natural and unnatural. The sudden occurrences of the human sonic image therefore behave as brief transgressions that disturb this distinction. The human voice, a feature that is regarded to be unique to us, becomes reduced to a material construct, thus emphasizing our own material nature in return.

[1] I greatly benefited from Takayuki Arai’s acoustic research for this piece. The 3D models for the tubes /a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/ were downloaded from his website https://splab.net/apd/v100/. I modeled the tubes /u/ and /ə/ myself based on Arai’s work. Many thanks to Takayuki Arai for giving me permission to use his models in my piece.  

Art: Yugo Kohrogi

Human Voices (2022) for amplified viol quartet

For Orchestra and live electronic reduction. 
Premiere recording 08.02.2014 
Sinfonieorchester des SWR Stuttgart, Johannes Kalitzke, Experimentalstudio des SWR

Mehr als die Hälfte (2013)

Performed by Wavefield Ensemble:

Nicholas DeMaison, conductor
Roberta Michel, flutes
Madison Greenstone, bass clarinet
John Gattis, horn
Jen Baker, trombone & 3D-printed vocal tract tube
Dennis Sullivan, percussion
Erica Dicker, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Iva Casián-Lakoš, cello
Tristan Kasten-Krause, bass

Recorded by David Adamcyk
Mastered by Murat Çolak http://www.muratcolakmusic.com/geryon-sound.html
Filmed by Michael Sinicropi
Edited by Stuart Breczinski
DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, March 2023

Program Notes:

The term "disembodied voice," much like Alice's "grin without a cat," poses an inherent ontological problem. The voice, which is typically produced as a result of purely material processes, now exists detached from its physical source and becomes the sole manifestation of our human essence. Despite the present impossibility, however, our psyche seems to be able to close this gap rather easily.

Being our primary medium for language and expression, the voice can readily function as a portal between our corporeal existence and whatever we might choose to call the rest: a soul, a consciousness, or a persona. The voice can be a placeholder for all the latter, as made apparent in phrases such as “one’s inner voice,” “the artist’s voice,” or “making one’s voice heard.” It is for this reason that disembodied voices have commonly been used to represent human-like entities in many works of fiction, ranging anywhere between ghostly presences to super-intelligent AIs.

“This Person Does Not Exist” was titled after the website with the same name[1], through which Nvidia’s neural network StyleGAN can be used to generate human faces. While the original website reproduces artificiality through AI generated images, I wanted to approach the same uncanny possibility by creating the semblance of a disembodied voice. For this purpose, I designed and 3D printed a small instrument that models the human vocal tract with a trombone mouthpiece attachment. The trombonist, who remains concealed behind the suspended frame drum at the center of the stage, performs this instrument to produce human-like sounds ranging from soft moans to loud, distorted screams. With the use of both pre-recorded and live performances of this instrument, I wish to elicit the presence of a disembodied, artificial voice, and thus underline the reproducible nature of our own human essence.

[1] http://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com

Art: Yugo Kohrogi

This Person Does Not Exist (2023)

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/X_Hi_iEzjtc?si=kjAh1fZZxPIOmKzh

Gaudeamus Festival 2023

Music & Concept: Artun Çekem

Performance: Moving Strings http://www.movingstrings.com/

Shana Brown - Violin
Maya Felixbrot - Viola
Aina Font - Saxophone
Noortje Köhne - Viola
Jonathan Nagel - Double Bass
Irene Sorozábal - Voice
Alex Welch - Viola

Costume: Moving Strings
Mastering: Murat Çolak http://www.muratcolakmusic.com/geryon-sound.html 
Recording: Concertzender
Video: Roman Zotter
Venue: Het Huis Utrecht

Program notes:

MERGE CORP. is a fictional entity that exists in a world where the fusion of multiple bodies and minds is possible. In this world, organisms that have been spliced together have every possible advantage, whether it be through their shared hive minds or conjoined physical power. In this world, refusing to integrate is refusing to belong. It is to reject being part of a stronger entity. It is self-imposed isolation.

Among all conjoined entities, MERGE CORP. is the largest, a gargantuan body that harbors countless smaller bodies within its frame.

///

corporation (n.)
mid-15c., corporacioun, "persons united in a body for some purpose," … "embody, make or fashion into a body," from corpus (genitive corporis) "body, dead body, animal body," also "a whole composed of united parts, a structure, system, community, corporation, political body, a guild"
-Etymonline.com

///

In MERGE CORP., the conjoined organism is itself the corporation. There is no distinction between the physical and the legal entity. MERGE CORP., the body, is a cluster of grafted anatomies, fused membranes, entwined limbs; a sea of sarcous tendrils and appendages. MERGE CORP. is also a plural supermind, an overseer of affairs, and a political agent with unparalleled influence.

MERGE CORP. (2023)

Britt Sairanen, clarinet
Sonja Lankinen, bass clarinet
Jonas von Au, contrabass clarinet
Yuwa Roten, violin
Tilman Sandvoss, viola
Sophie Kauer, cello

Creative Dialogue Finland, July 2024

Art: Jiří Anderle

Soup-Like Homogenate (2024)

A track from the draft version of the Raining Spiderling album Hell Canto. The whole work in progress can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/nikolaigalen/sets/hell-canto.

Weeping

A track from the draft version of the Raining Spiderling album Hell Canto. The whole work in progress can be heard here: soundcloud.com/nikolaigalen/sets/hell-canto.

Man's world

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Insensatez Remix (Re - Model By Alva Noto) + Brian Eno & J. Peter Schwalm - Intenser

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Insensatez (Re - Model By Alva Noto) + Brian Eno & J. Peter Schwalm - Intenser

Les Cris de Paris - Geoffroy Jourdain (dir) 
Festival de Royaumont 2012 

AND (amnesia4) [2012]

Matteo Cesari (flutes) Dario Calderone (db)
58th Venice Music Biennale (2014)
Cà Giustinian - Sala delle Colonne, Oct. 2014

own pace (amnesia 3) [2011]

Gareth Davis (bass cl) Koen Kaptijn (tbn) Pepe Garcia (perc) Dario Calderone (db) Una Cintina (org)
Amsterdam, Orgelpark, 22 ap. 2017 [live recording]

POLAR [2017]

Performed by Ensemble X:

Ellen Jewett - Violin
Elizabeth Simkin - Violoncello
Xak Bjerken - Piano

Turkish Premiere - August 2018, Cappadocia.

Art: Max Ernst

Leaked Tape from the Sacred Mysteries (2018) for piano trio

Øyvind Torvund - Forest Construction

www.artuncekem.com
a_cekem@hotmail.com

///

Profile art: Christian Rex van Minnen
Cover art: Mario Panciera