Historical rooms that are obsolete machines.
Recorded in May 16 and 24, 2018 at the Yerkes Observatory, Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
Composed in 2021 using virtual acoustics of the Yerkes Observatory, through which are simulated the diffusions of the works Circumpass (2013) and Compass (2018), each of which abridges Coppice’s studies in Bellows & Electronics (2009-2014) and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses (2014-2018), respectively.
Captions for time and shapeshifting music.
Legend of Passing Time with Instruments and Captions is an abridged account of Coppice’s custom and modified instrumentation since 2009. Ranging from handheld objects and digital models to actual and simulated architectures, Coppice’s instrumentation is overviewed as an evolving idea. Presented from within the documentary space of the now defunct Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, Coppice captions the passing of time and the shapeshifting music within it.
Presented in 2021 for the 10th International Scientific Meeting for Sound, Music, and Musical Instrument Studies in Gardunha, Portugal; and for the Sound Studies Lab at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
This presentation is an annex to Coppice’s script for audio paper Stewardship to Obsolescence and Preservation: Listening to Specimen Music through Yerkes Observatory’s Refractor and Reflector Telescopes.
A manufactured sonic frame.
Founded in 1892 and known as the birthplace of modern astrophysics, the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin ceased operations in 2018. That year, its mechanical technologies were captured by Coppice (Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer) to draw parallels between its acoustic signatures and functions, and those of Coppice’s glossary of study since 2009.
Musing on the lack of delimiting frames (Chion, 2016) and vanishing point (Carpenter and McLuhan, 1972) in the auditory, Coppice manufactures a frame out of Yerkes’ architectures and acoustics. Within that frame, Coppice’s creative processes are anecdoted, while pointing to coordinates where conjunctions of its music may be found. Highlighting the intermediary influence of recording and reproduction technologies on perception and perspective – both in limiting and enhancing ways – open-ended questions of actuality and fiction are posed.
In this self-reflexive documentary experiment of music and phonography, obsolescence and preservation are creative resources that span from instruments and devices to shapeshifting spaces. Addressed directly, the listener observes sonic identities in flux, and finds footing through retrospection, projection, and imagination.
Coppice’s sonic artifacts in alignment with Yerkes’ telescopes intersect multiple domains of time, space, and scale. How is experimental music conceived over time and what is seen through it?
Listen to the peer-reviewed audio paper on Seismograf.
Read the script on Issuu.
An asymmetrical emblem of balance.
Chrome/Boundaries reports the long distance realities of documentation. Its images assimilate sight and hearing and the mechanics of audiovisual/information frames – relations at times incongruous. Things we see but do not hear, things we hear but do not see-through.
Executed, composed, and presented during Syros Sound Meetings’ Sounding Paths Residency (Ano Syros), and in Athens, July 2018.
Read: Imaginary Correspondence (2018) and TinyMixTapes Interview (2018)
Studio and live versions of Wet Hologram.
Digital accommodation for songs with concrete voices.
Post-industrial device music.
A chiral object of memory.
Music for driverless dream cars on their self-driven way to the junkyard.
#777777
Fake air was modeled between 2015-2016 and used in many Coppice compositions of that period. Read about and listen to Fake Air Storage at Noemata.
A molten image of songs, falsehood, and deflection.
Sensual music for a folding world in which songs are directions to look.
An object induced by manipulated magnetic fields.
Blueberry is an object induced by manipulated magnetic fields.
Opportunities to receive Blueberry were extremely limited; none remain available at this time.
For more information, please visit suppedaneum.com
Territory sees digitally held air seeing edges holding.
A story with many holes.
A proposed “idealisation” of experience of parts.
Series of remixes, interventions and interpretations of Hoist Spell.
Studies, alternate takes, and live versions from the Big Wad Excisions sessions.
Ex includes an excision of the original board photographed for the Big Wad Excisions artwork, a CD-R with studies, alternate takes, and live versions of material revolving around Big Wad Excisions, and a handwritten carbon note. The twenty copies produced were offered in support of Coppice’s Compound/Excisions tour in March 2014.
Accretion, excision, nostalgia.
A navigable composition for software.
Soft Crown Transparencies is a ‘navigable composition for software’ that repositions the listener in a new type of active listening. It provides coordinates for engaging shifts of vantage point (as all sound layers develop in time) through a navigable vertical axis on the screen. Multiple sectors are accessible for close listening of different points of the interior of the prepared pump organ and of the multiple generations of tape processes.
Soft Crown Transparencies isn’t a game or a tool. It invites the listener to figure a porous journey through a listening format that they can intersect as the music unfolds – to obtain finer details of the music’s materialities and to localize additional audio not found in the stereo mix of Soft Crown.
Version: 1.0.1
Size: 252 MB
© 2014 Coppice
Compatibility: MacOS 10.6.8 or later
*Requires QuickTime
(Currently not available for Windows OS)
Special thank you to Mathieu Ruhlmann, and to Joey Beaver, Cole Friel, Ryan Hogg, Anthony Martinez, Tim Mena, Brad Nayman, Phil Pobanz, Brent Reardon, and Kyle Schroeder for their help in the construction of portions of the Estey Expander Module electronics present in Soft Crown.
Two cordoned-off vantage points.
A summer amalgam.
What is kept in.
Artifacts on tape pulled from cassettes used in a dual tape-processing device.
All index transfers are artifacts on tape pulled from cassettes used in a dual tape-processing device. Side B contains a sequence of trio performances of Seam (2010), recorded between 2011-2012 in Chicago. In order of appearance: Carol Genetti, Sarah J. Ritch, Berglind Tómasdóttir, Julia A. Miller.