sonic translations of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawing #797
Inevitable Music #2 is a collection of sonic translations of Wall Drawing #797 by Sol Lewitt. The artist gives the following instructions to make the drawing: “The first drafter has a black marker and makes an irregular horizontal line near the top of the wall. Then the second drafter tries to copy it (without touching it) using a red marker. The third drafter does the same, using a yellow marker. The fourth drafter does the same using a blue marker. Then the second drafter followed by the third and fourth copies the last line drawn until the bottom of the wall is reached.”
In order to translate this drawing into sounds, 3 groups of 3 musicians were assembled. Each group worked in the studio with the same sound material: 6 electronics sequences, composed prior to the session, and made of electronic synthesised sounds only.
The following procedure is applied to each session: Musician A, listens to an electronic sequence. While listening to the sequence a second time, he/she records an imitation of this sequence. As A records, musician B listens. Once A is finished, B imitates A. Then, as B records, musician C listens. When B is done, C imitates B. Then A imitates C and so on.
These imitation games happened:
• in Berlin, as a clarinet, trumpet and contrabass trio
• in New York, as a cello, electric harp, and electric guitar trio
• in Paris, as an electric guitar, percussion and electroacoustics trio
Before listening to the pieces, here are few definitions needed to understand the titles of the pieces:
• Imitation: recording of one instrument imitating an electronic sequence or another instrument
• Generation : a group of three consecutive imitations (ie for given city, each generation contains ONE recording of EVERY instruments)
• Superimposition form: imitations or generations are superimposed on each other.
• Successive form: imitations are played one after the other.
• Synchronisation: between the instant the musician hears the sound to imitate and the moment this musician starts the imitation, there is a little delay. In some pieces, this shift is kept, in other ones it is removed (in the track listing above, it’s not yet specified but it will be soon).
The space between the two speakers is a timeline. For each piece, the earliest imitation is on the left speaker, and the last imitation is on the right speaker.
In Berlin: Laurent Bruttin (clarinet), Nils Ostendorf (trumpet) et Mike Majkowski (contrabass), recorded by Jean-Boris Szymczak and Andreas Stoffels.
In New York: Okkyung Lee (cello), Zeena Parkins (harp) et Kenta Nagai (guitar), recorded by Andrew Raposo and Daniel Neumann.
In Paris: Eric Chenaux (guitar), Maxime Echardour (percussion) and Lionel Marchetti (electronics), recorded par Camille Lézer.