Shortlisted for Wellcome Foundation sciart grant
Picture: slides from Strangers Gallery 4: View Master stereo
reels
View From The Strangers' Gallery is an oratorio that illustrates important current topics in cognitive science. I set out to find a musical language to represent the simultaneous and "multitrack" nature of "processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs" as described by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in Consciousness Explained and other works. By flexibly varying the depth of polyphonic structures in the piece, I illustrate simultaneity in the brain and the ebb and flow of activation and attention.
A rich internal dialogue and debate rages within each of the three movements, with the music's stops and starts and overlapping voices reflecting the constant revisions and alterations of the multiple streams of consciousness (as described in Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model. Throughout the piece, I use fragmented, abstract musical forms to represent the issues of subjective experience and "self-binding" that the philosopher Nicholas Humphrey sees as central to the project of "creating a person's life."
 | Full orchestra* with keyboard synthesizer, alto and tenor saxophones, five timpani**, and a drum kit |
| Eight pop singers (miked) and one classically-trained soprano. |
*Any instruments other than strings can be supplemented
with MIDI instruments
**If piccolo timpani is not available, use tom-tom or roto-tom
instead
View from the Strangers' Gallery - Excerpt from Mvt. 3 "The Presiding Secretariat" (.mp3 format)
To hear the file, right mouse-click on the link above, choose "Save Target As...," save to your desktop, and play it from there.
(Click on photo to enlarge)
Mvt. I - House Speakers Mvt. II - The Central Chamber Mvt. III - The Presiding Secretariat
To view the scores:
1. The Scorch plug-in is required to view the scores in your browser; first download it for free here::
Get Scorch plug-in for free2. Turn off your speaker volume, since the score documents are formatted with non-standard MIDI settings and will produce only drum sounds.
3. Click on the links below, which will bring up the scores in your browser. You can then click on the Next and Prev buttons on your control to advance forward and back, through the scores, one page at a time.
Full Scores:
Mvt. I - House Speakers Mvt. II - The Central Chamber Mvt. III - The Presiding Secretariat
Vocal Scores:
Mvt. I - House Speakers Mvt. II - The Central Chamber Mvt. III - The Presiding Secretariat
2. The Court Gossip - lieder for two singers and
chamber orchestra (2001, 20 min.)Presented at the ArtSci festival in NYC
Description
The Court Gossip is inspired by the Dennett / Humphrey paper on Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), "Speaking For Our Selves." It continues my work in musical polyphonic and pointillistic techniques to illustrate the multi-layered complexity of processing systems in the brain and the significance of recursive structures. Here, I go further in tracing Humphrey's ideas of "self-binding" to his subject's experiences in child development. I musically illustrate Dennett's "Cerebral Celebrity" amplification of his Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness by altering which voices will win out in fugal competition and will leave an effect on the musical development of the rest of the piece. In addition, I convey the veiled and simultaneous competitions of parallel processing in conscious experience and make a brash analogy to the competitions of ideas, writing style, and fame which these two famous philosophers have with each other. By imposing myself in this manner, I illustrate a problem philosopher David Chalmers notes of giving a "first-person perspective" report on mental states.
Dennett's amplification of the Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness, and Humphrey's idea of "self-binding" as traced to child development. The piece, inspired by the Dennett/Humprey paper on MPD ("Speaking For Our Selves"), shows how that meaning in music, such as there is, is not merely referential or structural, with the rest being "beautiful scribble." Rather, fragmented, abstract forms can be used to refer to simultaneous events that occur in the brain over very small time frames, and that flexibly varying the depth of polyphonic structures can illustrate the ebb and flow of activation, attention, and simultaneity in multiple streams of consciousness. Above all, it is our hope that by applying the musical language of popular song to fugal composition, that we will have created a work that will delight and inform the scientific and artistic community.
Performance Requirements
| String quartet (2 Vl., Vle., VCl), trombone, trumpet, flute, piano |
| Two pop singers |
Mvt. 1 "The Origin of Selves" Mvt. 3 "Speaking For Our Selves
Mvt. 4 "The Thick Moment" Mvt. 5 "Clamoring for Clout"
To hear the files, right mouse-click on each of the links below, choose "Save Target As..." and save them to your desktop. Once it's saved, you can then double-click the files on your desktop to hear them. Each file should take a few minutes to download with a 56k modem. All files are in .mp3 format.
Lyrics
1. The Origin of Selves 2. epi sodes 3. Speaking for our Selves
Scores
To view the scores:
1. The Scorch plug-in is required to view the scores in your browser; first download it for free here::
Get Scorch plug-in for free2. Turn off your speaker volume, since the score documents are formatted with non-standard MIDI settings and will produce only drum sounds.
3. Click on the links below, which will bring up the scores in your browser. You can then click on the Next and Prev buttons on your control to advance forward and back, through the scores, one page at a time.
Full Scores:
1. The Origin of Selves 2. epi sodes 3. Speaking for our Selves
4. The Thick Moment 5. Clamoring For Clout
Other production work
I also produced three CDs performed by the opera singer and writer Elif Savas, including an enhanced CD featuring a book of fairy tales and opera songs, stories, and readings.
