The narrator in Jorge Luis Borges' 1945 story "The Aleph" describes a remarkable singularity his friend discovers under his cellar stairs: the titular point where, if one lays in just the right position, the universe can be experienced in its entirety:

"Each thing (a mirror’s face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon — the unimaginable universe."

At the end of the story, the narrator describes other Alephs that might exist in the world:

"The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court...No one, of course, can actually see it, but those who lay an ear against the surface tell that after some short while they perceive its busy hum...The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions, since, as ibn-Khaldun has written: ‘In nations founded by nomads, the aid of foreigners is essential in all concerning masonry.’"

The mysterious column and its inner cosmos are imagined in several different ways: as the long, closed tube of the baritone saxophone formed by fingering the lowest note on the instrument, the harmonic series on this note (from which a majority of the piece’s pitches are derived), and the "alif" character, the vertical first letter of the Arabic alphabet that shares a lineage with the story’s title. Many of the melodic contours in the piece were loosely traced from Arabic orthography, translations of a few phrases from Borges' story.

Foreign Masonry (2014)

the shape of it

technical test turned into composition. first result of getting sounds out of the 1980 CBM 8032 computer. massive cloud of Lexicon 480L reverb in 2nd part and a low sine wave generator. The rest is pure 8 bit.

http://www.roberthenke.com/installations/8032series.html


8032 Alpha

"…ce dangereux supplément…" is a set of phonetic studies for voice, video, and electronics. A suite of three pieces [(tRas), (spɛktʁ), and (sɑ̃dʁ)] the work is based on a close examination of the sounds used in everyday linguistic activity, which are juxtaposed against more extreme vocal effects. The live performance is supplemented with electronic voices which stretch and transform this common vocality. The visuals range from rapid-fire successions of symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet, to more suspended meditations on elaborately arranged orthographic tapestries made from the same symbols.

"…ce dangereux supplément…" is a poetic rehearsal of the Derridean supplement, that unbelonging excess in a binary opposition which is (contradictorily) crucially indispensable. This takes place throughout the work via a dialectic between linguistic articulation (consonants) and voiced intonation (vowels). While moving between these two poles, the performer acts out a futile search for the primary referent (or "master signifier"), but eventually realizes all that is to be found is an infinite hauntology, a spectral chain of traces, specters, and cinders.

Recording with visuals:  https://vimeo.com/156198149

“…ce dangereux supplément…”

Performed by Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie and Jon Singer , December 15, 2015. Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016. 7:30pm.

Info: http://jsmishalanie.com/music/piece-for-eight-microcassette-recorders/


PIece For Eight Microcassette Recorders

Medical text pp. 57: Age is an aggressive, virtuosic, and remarkably vulnerable piece crafted around the text found in the educational tome Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine Vol. 1 published in 1845. 
The chapter that this piece addresses is on the topic of age and its effects on the body through the multiple stages of life, beginning with nascent burgeoning growth and advancing to eventual unerring onset of decay. This piece manipulates the coherence of text and plays off of humanities want to comprehend speech in voices, often crafting phones and consonants that are similar to speech but contorting them beyond understanding. When juxtaposed with recognizable text and married with a plethora of timbral driven gestures and extended vocal techniques, smooth transitions between nonsense and meaningful text help to drive the piece through continuums of obfuscation and clarity.

Medical Text p.57 - for voice and live electronics

composed by Jason Charney

Amish community worship includes singing from the Ausbund, a 16th c. collection of hymns. The book contains no musical notation, only texts from the old Swiss Anabaptists. The tunes are passed orally in true folk tradition, generation to generation.

In practice, each hymn begins with a call from the Vorsänger, and the entire congregation responds - singing loud and slow.

Ausbund

Please Charge Roomba

Written for Sam Wells for the first annual SPLICE Institute at Western Michigan University.

Grain Elevator - For Trumpet and Electronics - Performed by Sam Wells

Arr. by Wesleyan University's Toneburst Laptop & Electronic Arts Ensemble, feat. Jennifer Beattie & Matthew Evan Taylor

Foreign Masonry (2014)

Jason Charney

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