Description and Specification of the Musical Composition
“1. Description of and specifications for the musical composition component”
Our interest in this project develops from an early observation
of the nature of light’s interaction with the wall surface of the
AT&T Building facing Strawberry Way. The sun’s light makes its
way through the tall structures of this downtown business district
and very directly strikes the surface of the building. This
marks a clear and interesting contrast between the pedestrian
space of the walkway between the buildings, where sunlight is
almost unable to reach the ground plane of the pedestrian passage.
The time of year is clearly defined by the height of the
shadows cast on the wall by the adjacent buildings, especially
the spire of the First Lutheran Church on the opposite side of
the street. Near the summer solstice, rays of sunlight do reach
the ground plane, but for most of the year the limit of the shadows
is far beyond the reach of the pedestrian. Time of day is
also clearly defined by another specific movement of these
same shadows, as they travel along a horizontal axis, defining
time from sunrise to sunset.
Another clear interest of ours is to consider the nature of the
audience and their relationship to Strawberry Way. This walkway
is typically used as the shortest route on one’s way to
work. With the nature of the work schedule, the
commuter/pedestrian finds themselves passing through this
walkway at very regular times as defined by the clock, i.e.
passing from Liberty to Grant at 8:45 am and returning from
Grant to Liberty at 5:15 pm, Monday through Friday. As the
relationship to the time of the clock remains constant, the character
of light is very different at these same times throughout
the year. The early morning commuters make their journey in
darkness throughout many months of winter, while many commuters
even pass through before daybreak and return after the
sun has set. This can be contrasted with the experience of daylight
during the same times in summer. The shift is gradual and
slow – with no daily change great enough for one to perceive a
difference by itself. An exception is the occurrence of daylight
savings – on the first Sunday of April each year, the clocks are
set forward – giving one extra hour of sunlight in the evening
and one fewer in the morning, resetting the gradual shift from
darkness to daylight directly back to darkness. Just the opposite
happens on the last Sunday in October each year. These
changes can be jarring to the routine of the body’s clock as it
becomes so accustomed to the regularity of the daily experience
(see image 7.6).
These observations provide a very interesting framework to
both explore sound and develop an aural relationship between
the audience/pedestrian and the nature of their experience of
Strawberry Way. Framed by a regular schedule, a pedestrian
encounters a continual and gradual shift in the character, posi
tion and time of light throughout the year. Since the pedestrian’s
experience of and perspective towards the light are critical
to our interest in and development of this project, we found it
conceptually important for the light to be the source of energy
which will power this sustainable system of musical composition
and production.
Considering our two primary observations of light – the shift of
shadows along the horizontal axis as cast on the AT&T Building
(the relationship and demarcation of time in terms of the daily
cycle) as well as the shift of shadow placement along the vertical
axis (the relationship and demarcation this gives to the time
of year) – we are developing a musical composition to enhance
the awareness of time and experience as measured by light
position. We will use Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons as a point of
departure and will use the compositional framework this work
employs to describe musically the passing of time in seasons.
Instead of dividing our composition into four movements, one
for each of the seasons as Vivaldi has done, we will divide the
composition into 365 movements a year, one for each day. The
beginning of each movement will begin with the sunrise of a
new day and will continue through the day and night, drawing
to a close at the moment just before sunrise the following day.
We will loosely draw from Vivaldi to determine musical voices
as well as for elements and expression of the time of year as
articulated in the seasons of movements in his composition.
This gradual movement through the seasons as observed in a
daily progression through the annual cycle will be developed
into a musical compositional structure – a piece of music exactly
one year long in 365 movements (366 on leap years).
Technical and Submission Notes
Two tracks of audio are included on the enclosed CD as part of
this supplement to our original proposal and represent the
progress of our work in the development of the musical component.
The music will be generated via our custom compositional
generative software developed to create an ongoing composition
with its foundation built from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons,
using algorithms to re-compose music based on these primary
ideas:
1. To extrapolate and derive from Vivaldi’s compositional structures
and decisions defining spring, summer, autumn and winter
into a more specific gradation of seasonal time, specified by
the day (In other words, to transform the four distinctions of
seasons into 365 distinctions of days).
2. To take this new compositional data and structure each set
of data for the seasonal sound of one day into a complete
movement, to begin at sunrise and reach completion and resolution
in the moments before sunrise the following day.
3. To develop a sense of musical progression to define each
day into a series of sections, defined both by the natural distinctions
of the day (sunrise, morning, noontime, afternoon,
evening, sunset, night) as well as the artificial distinctions of the
day in the city as defined by work, commerce, and leisure (AM
rush hour, lunch hour, PM rush hour, night activities).