“Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean” is a symphonic “program music” completely composed via natural random processes in 2017. It describes the descent of the composer in an imaginary sonic diving bell through 4 zones of the ocean, which covers 71% of Earth's surface, contains 90% of the Earth's biosphere and is 95% unexplored. The composer simply steers or navigates the random processes, akin to cybernetics, until he arrives at the last zone, the Abyss, which stems from the the Greek abyssos, meaning bottomless. The random processes, embodied within the software instrument IFORMM, are mapped to, or “play”, samples, that is, recordings of individual orchestral instruments. These samples originate from hardware sound modules: the EMU Proteus/2, released in 1990, and the Kurzweil 1000PX, released in 1987. As such this recording is concerned with history. With the history of bells, the inharmonic series and serialism, but approaching the result with probability theory rather than with deterministic permutation procedures. Musically, the composer remembers Stockhausen’s “Gruppen” and “Stop”. These serve here as starting points from which the composer speaks a new language for beings not from outer space, but for the Earth’s inner space, the unexplored oceans. Perhaps not surprising, the composer does get to bottom of it all, only to find it bottomless. |
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Catalog No: | FLX144 (LN506) |
Title: | Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean |
Sound Artist: | Frank Rothkamm |
Visual Artist: | Holger Rothkamm |
Label: | rothkamm.com |
Length: | 43:50 (2630s) |
Composed: | 2017 |
Location: | Los Angeles |
Instruments: | Emu Proteus/2 Atari ST emulator Formula Kurzweil 1000PX Emu Pro/cussion Roland JV1080 Atari ST |
Release Date: | 07/02/2018 |
Format: | Digital |
Tags: | IFORMM orchestral |