Coppice Vinculum (Courses) and Vinculum (Courses) [Version Baschet]

Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Vinculum (Courses) and Vinculum (Courses) [Version Baschet]

2011

Photo by Stan Carpenter

Photo by Nathan Keay

Prepared shruti box
Electronics
Free reed boxes
Plastic tubing
Accordion
Sister
Eight speakers in wooden resonators

Version Baschet:

François and Bernard Baschet’s Aluminum Piano (1962)
Pump organ
Prepared shruti box
Electronics
Speaker Boxes

The performed installation Vinculum (Courses) presents the development of action-capture-reduction that constitutes the registration process of Vinculum, Coppice’s archive of sonic artifacts. The trajectory of live sound shedding into reproductions is exemplified also as a spatial path through the diffusion of audio over multiple speakers away from the source instrument.

In the first stage, thirteen brass free reeds are sequentially activated by the mouth while being recorded. Each recording is then electronically processed live, and introduced into eight speakers. In the second stage, the process is repeated but with each free reed activated by means of bellows and a tubing system, which is supplemented with minimal tactile rhythms and acoustic filtering. These manual effects blend with the electronic processes that progressively hollow out and transform the audio. By the third stage the original recorded material has integrally evolved and become segmented. Finally, Pivot, a minimalist accordion passage, is played to reprise the original onset. The piece dissipates in the spread of events and long silences.

The one-time-performance of Vinculum (Courses) [Version Baschet] captured and dispersed the sounds of the François and Bernard Baschet’s Aluminum Piano (1962) across a 4-channel installation of small speakers.

The recordings of both versions of Vinculum (Courses) mix different recording positions in space, forming flattened perspectival documents of dispersed action.

August 26, 2011 – Crystal Baschet Concerts, curated by MCA Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow Timothy Grundy, Museum of Contemporary Art; Chicago, IL
October 13, 2011 – The McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival 2011, curated by Robert Greenwood, David Nelson, and Robert Peterson; Shreveport, LA
March 25, 2011 – Music With A View 2011, curated by Kathleen Supové, The Flea Theater; New York City, NY
March 20, 2011 – Articular Facet 3: Loft Dinner,Pop-Up Gallery @ 220 S Wabash; Chicago, IL (preview performance)

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