‘At bottom the esthetic phenomenon is simple; one need only have the ability to see continually a living play and to live perpetually surrounded by hosts of spirits, and one is a poet; one need only feel the drive to alter oneself (sich selbst zu verwandeln) and to speak out of alien bodies and souls, and one is a dramatist. Dionysian excitation is capable of communicating to a whole multitude this artistic power to feel oneself surrounded by such a host of spirits, with whom one knows oneself to be inwardly one. This process (Prozeß) of the tragic chorus is the originary dramatic phenomenon: seeing oneself altered before one's very eyes (sich selbst vor sich verwandelt zu sehen) and now acting, as though one had really entered into another body, another character. This process stands at the beginning of the development of drama. ... Here already the individual gives itself up by entering into an alien nature. And what is more, this phenomenon arises epidemically: a whole crowd feels itself enchanted in this way. ‘
from Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, trans. Samuel Weber

At its core, this project attempts the genesis of worlds, universes, using specific sonic and instrumental gestures. It is a project of I/Thou, in the sense explored by the above passage from Birth of Tragedy, which focuses on the invocation of a 'host of spirits' with whom we find ourselves at one; atoning, and exchanging identity, spirit, mind.
The limits of mind and 'microworlds', as birthed by sound.

VERWANDLUNG: Æther is one half of a 'double album' recorded across a few months in 2021. The two albums cleave in two, roughly along lines whereby the rowdier tracks fall into Prozeß and the softer tracks into Æther. But also as there are reworkings of two tracks on each, so the variation on a theme was simply appropriate to deploy in two separate 'listening blocks.' Thematically some of this material resonates with the Laws of Form EP, which was recorded 'live' in July 2021 for the Singularity Music Series curated by Alvaro Domene.

In all cases, the fundamental approach to gesture which we can extract from 'Laws of Form'- whether a physical gesture, a logical gesture, or a musical/sonic gesture- this orients the work towards a critical reimagining of 'genesis' and 'consciousness'.

VERWANDLUNG: Prozeß is here: thermalhowl.bandcamp.com/album/verwandlung-proze

Caveat Audiens! 
credits
released September 29, 2022

released September 2022

Ed Keller, solo electric guitar.
Recorded August-October 2021.
Mastered by Álvaro Domene at Singularity Studio (Kingston, New York)

Tracks were recorded in improvised, unrehearsed single takes. LoopyHD was used to remix the sessions in single, performative remix takes; ÆTHER - Verwandlung [Monovocities] was recorded as pure solo in a single take. The second pass of this track appears on Prozeß as PROZEß: Verwandlung [Dialog] 'mixed' live as a double loop. Similarly, Feroce is a remix of Suspense Feroce, which appears on Prozeß.

Signal path: Strandberg Boden 7 string >Audient iD4> iPad > Audiobus > BiasFX > LoopyHD > speakers. The signal path inside BiasFX is: Noise Gate > Compression > Boost > Splitter > dual Klon > dual amps [Tweed Deluxe and Matchless, sometimes a Rectifier] > Dark Memory Delay > Ambient Reverb.

Album cover: Synthesized by Ed Keller using VQGAN/Clip AI/ML.

ÆTHER PENDULUM ECLIPTIC

‘At bottom the esthetic phenomenon is simple; one need only have the ability to see continually a living play and to live perpetually surrounded by hosts of spirits, and one is a poet; one need only feel the drive to alter oneself (sich selbst zu verwandeln) and to speak out of alien bodies and souls, and one is a dramatist. Dionysian excitation is capable of communicating to a whole multitude this artistic power to feel oneself surrounded by such a host of spirits, with whom one knows oneself to be inwardly one. This process (Prozeß) of the tragic chorus is the originary dramatic phenomenon: seeing oneself altered before one's very eyes (sich selbst vor sich verwandelt zu sehen) and now acting, as though one had really entered into another body, another character. This process stands at the beginning of the development of drama. ... Here already the individual gives itself up by entering into an alien nature. And what is more, this phenomenon arises epidemically: a whole crowd feels itself enchanted in this way. ‘
from Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, trans. Samuel Weber

At its core, this project attempts the genesis of worlds, universes, using specific sonic and instrumental gestures. It is a project of I/Thou, in the sense explored by the above passage from Birth of Tragedy, which focuses on the invocation of a 'host of spirits' with whom we find ourselves at one; atoning, and exchanging identity, spirit, mind.
The limits of mind and 'microworlds', as birthed by sound.

VERWANDLUNG: Prozeß is one half of a 'double album' recorded across a few months in 2021. The two albums cleave in two, roughly along lines whereby the rowdier tracks fall into Prozeß and the softer tracks into Æther. But also as there are reworkings of two tracks on each, so the variation on a theme was simply appropriate to deploy in two separate 'listening blocks.' Thematically some of this material resonates with the Laws of Form EP, which was recorded 'live' in July 2021 for the Singularity Music Series curated by Alvaro Domene.

In all cases, the fundamental approach to gesture which we can extract from 'Laws of Form'- whether a physical gesture, a logical gesture, or a musical/sonic gesture- this orients the work towards a critical reimagining of 'genesis' and 'consciousness'.

Caveat Audiens! 
credits
released September 29, 2022

released September 2022

Ed Keller, solo electric guitar.
Recorded August-October 2021.
Mastered by Álvaro Domene at Singularity Studio (Kingston, New York)

Tracks were recorded in improvised, unrehearsed single takes. LoopyHD was used to remix the sessions in single, performative remix takes; PROZEß: Verwandlung [Dialog] was recorded as pure solo in a single take and 'mixed' live as a double loop. The first pass of this track appears on Æther as ÆTHER - Verwandlung [Monovocities]. Similarly, Suspense Feroce is a remix of Feroce, which appears on Æther.

Signal path: Strandberg Boden 7 string >Audient iD4> iPad > Audiobus > BiasFX > LoopyHD > speakers. The signal path inside BiasFX is: Noise Gate > Compression > Boost > Splitter > dual Klon > dual amps [Tweed Deluxe and Matchless, sometimes a Rectifier] > Dark Memory Delay > Ambient Reverb.

Album cover: Synthesized by Ed Keller using VQGAN/Clip AI/ML.

VERWAND Prolog and KAOS CYCLONICS

These tracks all dance across the terrain of a set of common themes, stretched out across a couple of years of erratic, spontaneous recording. They are extrapolations. It's possible that subconsciously these textures and ways of approaching the instrument were quasi-intentionally and strategically engaged, but it is also very possible that I simply had no idea what I was doing, that there's just a phase space of possible sounds that these hands make on that guitar, and every few weeks this constellation of gestures and sounds happened to happen. Like an asteroid cloud shepherded by a much larger gravitational force, the cloud adopts forms, geometries and patterns that it cannot itself perceive. Certainly with all of them, there was no rehearsal or preparation [...there is an exception. Apex Tonal Riot is an improvisation on a somewhat known tune I have played since the 1980s, but in the remix session it became unrecognizable, happily....] but there *was* a deliberate tactic of approach to the instrument qua guitar and specific techniques which I felt compelled to revisit.

And on the extrapolation side- there are also several opening harmonic moments- chords that again, the hands tend to grab- which echo other tracks on other albums. As Julio Cortazar has said: 'yes, but who will cure us of the dull fire, the colorless fire that at nightfall runs along the rue de la Huchette, emerging from the crumbling doorways... to burn like this without surcease, to bear the inner burning coming on like fruit’s quick ripening, to be the pulse of a bonfire in this thicket of endless stone, walking through the nights of our life, obedient as blood in its blind circuit... it would seem that a choice cannot be dialectical, that the fact of bringing it up impoverishes it... Why surrender to Great Habit? One can choose his ture, his invention...'

There are many monumental influences [from the world of guitar and beyond] catalyzing these sounds, which will go unlisted, but the clues might blush the surface in the hearing and the naming. I think I can hear them... I may have missed some... Quaerendo Invenietis!

The album cover art is a painting by Doug Diaz, dear friend and colleague for many years. In spring 2021 I reached out to explore whether soundscapes might be good provocations for his paintings, or vice-versa. Several of his paintings were then made under the influence of two of the tracks on this album, and this painting then resonated for me with the title, Axon Petal Riot, which is of course... a clue.

'We burn within our work, fabulous mortal honor, high challenge of the Phoenix. No one will cure us of the dull fire, the colorless fire that at nightfall runs along the Rue de la Huchette. Incurable, perfectly incurable...we invent our conflagration, we burn outwardly from within...' Hopscotch, Cortazar 
credits
released June 21, 2021

Ed Keller, solo electric guitar.
Recorded August 2018-January 2020.
Mastered by Álvaro Domene at Singularity Studio (Kingston, New York)

Tracks were recorded in improvised, unrehearsed single takes between 2018-20. LoopyHD was used to remix the sessions in single, performative remix takes [although tbh, sometimes the remix took several attempts to nail it!]; Three tracks were recorded as pure solos in a single take and 'mixed' live- Axon Petal Riot, Alteration Pox and Taproot Ax Line [which itself was the first layer of two for Opal Toxin Tear[s]].

Signal path: Strandberg Boden 7 string >Audient iD4> iPad > Audiobus > BiasFX > LoopyHD > speakers. The signal path inside BiasFX is: Noise Gate > Compression > Boost > Splitter > dual Klon > dual amps [Tweed Deluxe and Matchless, sometimes a Rectifier] > Dark Memory Delay > Ambient Reverb.

Track from AXON PETAL RIOT. Full album at bandcamp.

Taproot Ax Line

Guitar looping piece initially recorded in late 2015. Strandberg Boden 8 string guitar running directly into iPad. Positive Grid BIASFX, can't recall which amp models; to Audiobus; to LoopyHD. This recording is a remix done on November 3, 2016, specifically for the 'Sound Lab Series' Miami event, curated by MONAD Studio.

MelanViolaLoops

Working mix of ambient track [mixed as backing track], recorded November 3 2016. Improv and output remix from LoopyHD.  Parker Fly > iPad > Positive Grid Bias> Audiobus > Loopy.

Meditation on TIMELESS

Raw, unedited looping session. Morning of August 12 2013. Parker Fly into Guitar Rig running on Macbook.

Long Sigh

Raw loop. Recorded late 2013. Parker Fly direct into Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Can't recall exact amp, but pretty sure it was an AC30 mod with plenty of gain.  This loop is part of the long term remix project.
I was thinking of Ingram Marshall's 'Fog Tropes' when I recorded this, but hadn't heard Fog Tropes in many years. So any resonances are filtered thru deep subconscious registers.

*VERY* raw loop.  Gain problems with this one, so apologies. Recorded late 2013. Parker Fly direct into Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Probably an AC30 mod with plenty of gain. There may be octave doubling with glitches, which are perfectly acceptable. This loop is part of the long term remix project. Recorded same week as Fog, Dark, and Grace loops. All these rough loops will be remixed entirely as standalone compositions.

Dark

Looped live at CRAIVE Lab, RPI, May 2017, during a worksession testing interactive sound/MaxMSP installation, working with Carla Leitao and her students. Signal path: Parker Fly, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Exported as a 'reperformance/remix' directly out of Loopy. Serious gain issues during the recording so this is a shralped test and may not be salvageable, but captures some kind of mood worth sharing.

Pulsecompound

Looped live at CRAIVE Lab, RPI, during a worksession testing interactive sound/MaxMSP installation, working with Carla Leitao and her students. Signal path: Parker Fly, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Exported directly out of Loopy, this captures the live vibe almost exactly. Used a VPicks custom extra heavy 'Psycho' pick for all 'slide' guitar. Serious gain issues during the recording so this is a shralped test and may not be salvageable, but captures some kind of mood worth sharing.

PsychePlectrum

'Involuntary Morse code': what does it mean? 

Recorded live at CRAIVE Lab, RPI, May 2017, during a worksession testing interactive sound/MaxMSP installation, working with Carla Leitao and her students. Signal path: Parker Fly, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Exported as a 'reperformance/remix' directly out of Loopy. Serious gain issues during the recording so this is a shralped test and may not be salvageable, but captures some kind of mood worth sharing.

TransmissionFragment

"Ceux qui ont donné leur île pour survivre..."
A meditation on Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp's beautiful 'Here Comes the Flood'. 

Looped live at CRAIVE Lab, RPI, May 2017, during a worksession testing interactive sound/MaxMSP installation, working with Carla Leitao and her students. Signal path: Parker Fly, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Exported as a 'reperformance/remix' directly out of Loopy. Serious gain issues during the recording so this is a shralped test and may not be salvageable, but captures some kind of mood worth sharing. The use of eBow was especially problematic in the gain/signal path. There was also radio/celphone noise...

Le Deluge, C'est Ici

A very loose meditation on two eponymously related pieces of music. Looped live June 2017. Signal path: Strat, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Exported as a 'reperformance/remix' directly out of Loopy. This is a very improvisatory export mix and there is no guarantee that it reflects either the final mix product, or even the intentions of the author!

The Sentimental Lark's Tongue, Ascending

Caveat Audiens!   Weird attempt at muddy distortion joy. Looped live. Signal path: Strat, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Use of a fantastic delay/mod effect brought unexpected clicks and pops into the tracks. I have nto decided if they're acceptable or dreadful. Exported as a 'reperformance/remix' directly out of Loopy. This is a very improvisatory export mix and there is no guarantee that it reflects either the final mix product, or even the intentions of the author.  June 2017.

Muddy Joy

Fourth or fifth attempt to remix a very strange loop session. Episodic and definitely schizo, possibly to the point of collapse. June 2017.
Looped live. Signal path: Strat, into Positive Grid BIAS FX, into LOOPY. Exported as a 'reperformance/remix' directly out of Loopy. Purely improvisatory export mix and there is no guarantee that it reflects either the final mix product, or even the intentions of the author!  Caveat Audiens!

Schizo-Harmonic Layers

Very hasty meditation on Round Midnite, exploring the new Strandberg Boden7. Filled with errors and bad decisions on the mix, and I can't really play jazz, but there it is.
Signal path is the Boden with Sentient/Pegasus, into BIAS FX [amp model a very tweaked, phat, Tweed] into Loopy.  July 2017.

Midnite Scramble

Unstructured improv testing the new Boden7. Signal path is the Boden with Sentient/Pegasus, into BIAS FX [amp model a very tweaked, phat, Tweed] into Loopy.  July 2017.

Densities

Guild Navigator Widmanstätten: one of the least recognized of the Guild Navigators, better described as a rogue AI, this swarm entity uploads to cooling post-planetary debris, and performs calculations across hundreds of millions of years as the molten material cascades across the galaxy. Like Solaris, many purposes have been imputed to the Guild Navigator class intellect, but none have successfully extracted data from the crystalline remains of the Widmanstätten computations. 

Guitar improvisation: Strandberg Boden7, into various BiasFX patches, into Loopy. Almost devoid of mixing.   July 2017.

Guild Navigator: Widmanstatten

Test mixdown of an ambient soundscape looped live in early AM July 15, 2017, before a seminar I gave on Post Planetary Design and Cosmopolitics, at the 'Arts Letters Numbers' workshop. The soundscape was only indirectly related to the lecture/seminar and was more a meditation to prepare for the seminar.  Signal path: Strandberg Boden7 into BiasFX, Audiobus to Loopy. Background ambient 'water, subbass, percussions' were all generated in Native Instruments Reaktor/Metaphysical Function, as part of the 'SUTURE' soundscapes archive, dating back to about 2005, created with Carla Leitao; these backgrounds were mixed live and remixed, all within Loopy.

Mill - Ambient Morning

Loud, elegiac loop recorded 2014, remix sketch August 2017. Remixed using open back headphones on a flight from Lisbon to EWR, so the structure and mix is imprecise, shall we say!  Signal path and guitar info is lost- was recorded into LoopyHD, and was probably Parker Fly, but amp setup on iPad unknown.

When My Trumpet Sounds

Guitar loop recorded 2014, remix sketch August 2017. Signal path and guitar info is lost- was recorded into LoopyHD, and was probably Parker Fly, but amp setup on iPad unknown.

Lark-Horn Frippery

Guitar loop recorded July 2017, remix sketch August 2017. Signal path: Strandberg Boden 7 > iPad Audiobus > BiasFX > LoopyHD. First day with Boden7.

Abased, Phrased

Sustained elegy. Improv Sept 15 2017.  Getting acquainted with Boden7. Signal path Boden>iPad>Audiobus>BiasFX>LoopyHD.   eBow.  Remixed out to stereo as rough restructure.

A Harm, Soaring

Another elegy. Harry Dean left us. 
Improv Sept 15th 2017. 

Signal path Boden>iPad>Audiobus>BiasFX>LoopyHD. Remixed out to stereo as rough restructure.

Terlingua, Harmed

Space demon, with a hint of muted earthly nostalgia, the fragment from Timeless that earworms incessantly. 

Kind of a NGD: First test with Boden7, with new Fluence Modern pickups installed. These replaced the SD Pegasus/Sentient pair, which were very great pups, but not quite right for me. Recorded in live session at CRAIVE Lab with Carla Leitao and her team. Remixed to stereo from LoopyHD in a fast sketch mix. Signal path Boden7 Strandberg>focusrite>iPad>BiasFX>LoopyHD. September 2017.

L'arc Daemon Time[less]

35 minute rehearsal performance. Improvised live [looping and mixing live in single take] to a film re-cut including excerpts from Arrival, Vertigo, Under the Skin, Constantine, Mirror, Catch-22, Sunshine, and AfterLife. The movie remix will be posted, with both rehearsal and live performance versions, on youtube. Link TBA.  November 2017. 
signal path: Strandberg Boden7 guitar > iTrack > positive Grid BiasFX > LoopyHD.

'A Time Traveling Dead Man in Space'

Adab - The Demanding Memory

Meditation on Gully Foyle's plight, both on Terra and in the Void. Improvisation; Boden7 into BiasFX/Loopy HD. January 2018.

Blue Jaunte

'The Silence of Infinite Space Terrifies Me.'
Star striding, star slide. 

Boden7 guitar into BiasFX/Loopy. Improvisation. Brass slide played a key role.
January 2018. 
Cover image: fan art [http://www.blindsight.space/ ] for Peter Watts' novel Blindsight.

Ast[ar]riding

A sentient ship contemplates the edge of our solar system.

Boden7 and Steinberger Spirit 5string fretless into BiasFX and LoopyHD. Improvisation. January 2018.

Leviathan: Dreams of the Heliopause

35 minute performance at Arts Letters Numbers, July 13 2018. Improvised live [looping and mixing live in single take] to a film re-cut [edit by yours truly] including excerpts from Arrival, Vertigo, Under the Skin, Constantine, Mirror, Catch-22, Sunshine, and AfterLife. 
signal path: Strandberg Boden7 guitar > iTrack > positive Grid BiasFX > LoopyHD.

'... Consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language. With each literary-verbal performance, consciousness must actively orient itself amidst heteroglossia...an illiterate peasant, miles away from any urban center, naively immersed in an unmoving and for him unshakable everyday world, nevertheless lived in several language systems: he prayed to god in one language ( church Slavonic) , sang songs in another, spoke to his family in a third, and when he began to dictate petitions to the local authorities through a scribe, he tried speaking yet a fourth language...all these are different languages, even from the point of view of abstract sociodialectological markers. ...As soon as a critical interanimation of languages began to occur in the consciousness of our peasant... then the inviolability and predetermined quality of these languages came to an end, and the necessity of actively choosing one's orientation among them began. ‘
The Dialogic Imagination, Bakhtin

Adab, the Demanding Memory: July 2018 performance

Two remix variations on June 3 2019 solo guitar improvisation: for Michel Serres following his passage into the infinite.

ForSerresA05

ForSerresA19

Designer, professor, writer, musician and multimedia artist. 
Lecturer, RPI Architecture 2022-25; Mentor: LAB#03 Synthetic Minds 2023-24 MADRID MEDIALAB MATADERO.
2022-23: consulting Creative Director, SingularityNET. 
Creative Director, Venice Virtual Pavilion, 18th Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. 

With Carla Leitão, Ed is co-founder of Spec.AE, a speculative design practice, and AUM Studio, an architecture and new media firm with residential projects, competitions, and installations in Europe [Venice Architecture Biennale 2018/2021] and the US. They have convened more than 20 international conferences and lecture series.

He has taught architecture + film/media + technology since 1996; his research and practice explores the structures of feeling which link cultural, infrastructural, ecological, and technosocial systems, revealing emergent terrestrial and cosmopolitical potential. He has spoken on artificial intelligence, architecture, film, technology and ecology internationally; current research explores the relationship between philosophy, cosmopolitics, sound design and music in lectures and solo performances. His work and writing has appeared in Volume, &&&, SCHISM, EVOLO, Punctum, Praxis, A+U,  AD,  Arquine,  Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Wired,  Metropolis,  Assemblage, and Ottagono. 

From 2021-23, Keller co-directed the Post Planetary Universal Design program at The New Centre. In 2022, he was a visiting design Faculty at Rensselaer School of Architecture [RPI]. He served as a Creative Director, Italian Pavilion, 17th Venice Architecture Biennale 2021.  From 2012-2020, he was Director of the Center for Transformative Media [CTM] at The New School; from 2009-2020, Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design and Associate Dean [2010-12]. In a prior arc, he taught advanced architectural design studios, theory, and digital techniques at Columbia University GSAPP, SCIArc, UPenn, Pratt, FIU, and RPI, from 1998-2010.
Ed has been an avid rockclimber for over 40 years.

Ed Keller

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