HIGH ZERO SOUND INSTALLATIONS
Friday September 17th through Monday October 7th

For the past three years, the High Zero Festival has expanded beyond pure improvised music to include a rich program of gallery sound installations, which have been highly stimulating. Here the emphasis is on unusual environments and experiences which require special preparation and represent new collaborations or a single individuals vision.

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This year's festival presents three original works:

Samuel Burt and John Berndt :
"Speakeroids: Object Disoriented Synthesis"
The Contemporary Museum
104 W. Centre St., in Mount Vernon
Tel: 410-783-5720
Open noon to-5pm Thursday, Friday and Saturdays

A technocratic hommage to Rube Goldberg's didactic machines of the 60's, using auditory electro-acoustic wavefronts instead of visually perceivable motion. The Installation involves 8 objects (both large and small) that each are wired to act independently as both microphone and speaker, for instance: a gong, a long wire, a metal duct, a plate glass, sheet metal, a large plastic water bottle, etc.

Each object will has it's input and output signals routed through a computer-controlled system for managing volume levels and directing the input and output signals to different objects. Some of the objects will hang from chains, while others will be freestanding. The sound will be complexly controlled feedback within the objects themselves, making maximum use of their particular complex resonant properties, and all of their relative combinations and permutations to create complex spectrally charged sound events that move through space and are generated by the physics of each object through feedback amplification.

The title is a joke, as the 'objects' are pysical objects. The computer program will produce a self-generating permutational/random mix that will change over long cycles (an hour or more), such that the installation has a changiong sonic character from moment to moment. The soundmoves around the room, transform, and demonstrate a form of synthesis where the "logical operators" are actually physical objects in the analogue realm, making these dead objects into new kinds of resonnant filters, oscillators, and amplifiers.

Neil Feather : "High and Long/Low and Turning"
The Brown Center at Maryland Institute College of Art
1301 West Mt. Royal Ave.
Open daily

High and Long is a long string at the center of a system comprised of vibrators, sail, transformers, amplifier, oscillating fan, and magnets. It is constant and subtly active. Low and Turning is a modified mangle iron with 24 strings and more hardware than you can shake a stick at. It sits in the shadow of the long string needing only an electrtical outlet and a finger to press its button and make it sing. For more information, go to www.neilfeather.org...

David Moré : "The Perilous Fight."
The True Vine Record Store
1123 West 36th St. 21211
Open weds-sat 11-8PM, Sunday & Monday 11-6

"Essentially I'm working on elaborate ways to play records. Currently I plan to use three turntables attached to motion detectors. Having the installation make a continous sound is not ideal in the interest of the shop, so I plan to use the motion dectors to control the on and off of the turntables. I might actually do away completely with the turntables and just use actual motors. And I still might do away with motors completely and just use hand cranks made from bike parts to spin the records. The phonographic needles are filled down metal objects, well, only springs thus far, attached to cans and maybe styrofoam coolers, and probably large cardboard tubes. I am very interested in not using electrical amplification.

The recorded source is likely to be the star-spangled banner as performed by the mormon tabernacale choir." - David Moré