Posts from — November 2009

The Pass­ing of a Grand Woman
Flo­rence Boyd-Gra­ham: Dec 22, 1913 — Nov 24, 2009

Flo­rence was born in Toron­to into the era of the First World War, lived through The Great Depres­sion, and with her hus­band, Lt Cdr William A. Gra­ham (RCN, RN, RCNR) and four (soon five) chil­dren, sur­vived the Sec­ond World War in Hal­i­fax, Nova Scotia.

The fam­i­ly moved back to Toron­to, did anoth­er NS stint fol­lowed by over 50 years based in Oakridge Acres, Lon­don. Los­ing her moth­er Nell at age 15 impact­ed her great­ly: she ded­i­cat­ed her­self to moth­er­ing, fol­lowed by first class grand and great-grand-mothering.

Hav­ing seen her chil­dren through the var­i­ous lev­els of high­er edu­ca­tion, she returned to Uni­ver­si­ty (the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario) her­self in her late 70s, grad­u­at­ing with a BA/Hons BA (but did an equiv­a­lent of an MA) in Phi­los­o­phy. Dur­ing these years, she worked in Vet­er­ans Affairs, was a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Church, the Uni­tar­i­an Fel­low­ship (a ded­i­cat­ed choir mem­ber in both), and the Albert Schweitzer Soci­ety, fol­lowed by the Rag­ing Grannies (add ‘Rev­el­ing,’ she always said) who sing protest songs for good causes.

On the envi­ron­men­tal front, in 1962 she brought home Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, got involved in ‘Pol­lu­tion Probe’ and The Coop Store. An active mem­ber of CFUW and the Oakridge Ratepay­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, she nev­er ceased doing pub­lic service.

She trav­elled wide­ly to vis­it her chil­dren far and wide, and became a fond sup­port­er of The Find­horn Com­mu­ni­ty in NE Scot­land (where she vis­it­ed eight times).

Her favourite gath­er­ings were her local week­ly ‘cof­fee group’ with dear friends Pat Dins­more and the late Eve­lyn March, her month­ly book club with David Smith and friends—and of course good-spir­it­ed bridge parties!

Flo­rence was, in essence, a grass­roots philoso­pher who spoke her mind, whose search for ‘truth’ was unstint­ing. Her inter­ests were both wide-rang­ing and breath­tak­ing. Our fam­i­ly home, ‘540’, was vir­tu­al­ly an Open House for over 50 years, fea­tur­ing notable par­ties, work­shops and late night ses­sions. She brought the World into the Cana­di­an sub­urbs and turned her back­yard into a wood­land wildlife haven. She rep­re­sent­ed the best Cana­da can boast of: A Grand Woman—not a ‘lady’, she said, that smacked too much of ‘the aristocratic’.

Our world is less with­out her phys­i­cal pres­ence, but indeed, she walks tall amongst us in the best of Cana­di­an life, what made us Cana­da from 1913–2009, and through her sur­viv­ing chil­dren, Robert, Joan, Leona and Ralph—her dar­ling youngest son Ian passed away in 2005—and final­ly through her grand-chil­dren Lau­ra, John, Bruce, Nathalie, Kim-Ellen, Lila, Alex, Lara and Dan­ny; and her great-grand­chil­dren Gabriel­la, Gar­rett, Sean, Geordy and Charlton.

Fly high and free ‘Sophia’-Florence, as you trav­el the heights with Socrates and Plato—and of course, the Great Sappho.

A memo­r­i­al ser­vice was held at Mt Pleas­ant Chapel on Fri­day Decem­ber 4 from 1–2pm (see pro­gramme below).

Memo­r­i­al pro­gramme — click for PDF

Main pho­to cour­tesy of the Lon­don Free Press

On Sun­day last I had the almost unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend a per­for­mance of George Antheil’s Bal­let mécanique at the West Road Con­cert Hall in Cam­bridge, part of the Cam­bridge Music Fes­ti­val. The con­cert also marked the 100th anniver­sary year of the pub­li­ca­tion of the Futur­ist Man­i­festo.

My atten­tion was drawn to the event by my friend Paul Lehrman, whom I knew orig­i­nal­ly as a bril­liant jour­nal­ist who used to write for me when I was Edi­tor of Stu­dio Sound back in the 1980s. Since then we’ve done a bunch of stuff togeth­er includ­ing music for KPM Music Library and much more.

Today, Paul is a music pro­fes­sor based at a uni­ver­si­ty in the Boston area, and he has made quite a name for him­self for his real­i­sa­tion of a ver­sion of Antheil’s work which calls (at least in its full ver­sion) for a per­cus­sion orches­tra of three xylo­phones, four bass drums and a tam-tam (gong); two live pianists; sev­en or so elec­tric bells; a siren; three aero­plane pro­pellers; and 16 syn­chro­nized play­er pianos. As you can imag­ine, it’s a flam­boy­ant, con­tro­ver­sial, down­right noisy piece of avant-garde music.

This large-scale ver­sion of the piece, com­posed around 1923, was nev­er per­formed in Antheil’s life­time, appar­ent­ly because the friend of Antheil’s who told him you could sync up 16 play­er pianos was wrong: the tech­nol­o­gy of the time did not allow it. Paul Lehrman, how­ev­er, was com­mis­sioned by music pub­lish­ers G. Schirmer to realise the work for the 16 play­er pianos called for in the orig­i­nal man­u­script, using mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in the form of dig­i­tal play­er pianos, MIDI, and sam­ples for the air­craft propellers.

This he did, and the first per­for­mance took place at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, Low­ell, exact­ly ten years ago (on 18 Novem­ber, 1999). Since then it’s been per­formed on numer­ous occa­sions around the world. You can read more about it, and about Antheil, at Paul’s site which you can find here at antheil.org.

Cam­bridge: rat­tles, pianos, Pianola and elec­tric bells

This was not the ver­sion per­formed at West Road on Sun­day, how­ev­er. That was a some­what more restrained ver­sion per­formed on this occa­sion on a sin­gle Pianola plus two live pianists, three xylo­phones, drums and per­cus­sion, rat­tles (per­form­ing the pro­peller parts), two elec­tric door­bells and a hard-cranked siren. Musi­cal­ly, it was a ver­sion first per­formed in 1927 (and not very often there­after). Paul asked me if I could go along and inter­view Paul Jack­son, the con­duc­tor, expe­ri­ence the per­for­mance and find the answers to some ques­tions about this par­tic­u­lar version.

This sound­ed as if it could be enor­mous fun (which indeed it was) so I duly turned up for the event, Music hard and beau­ti­ful as a dia­mond, part of the 2009 Cam­bridge Music Fes­ti­val, con­sist­ing of three works per­formed by Rex Law­son on Pianola, Julio d’E­scriván on iPhone, the Anglia Sin­fo­nia, Anglia Voic­es and MEME, con­duct­ed by Paul Jackson.

Pianola mech­a­nism with roll

The con­cert itself was pre­ced­ed by a 45-minute pre­sen­ta­tion by Law­son and d’E­scriván about the Pianola and the iPhone as an instru­ment respec­tive­ly (d’E­scriván’s piece start­ed the evening). I was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in Law­son’s expo­si­tion on the Pianola.

The Pianola is quite dif­fer­ent from the Repro­duc­ing Piano and is not even tru­ly the stuff of “play­er pianos” in saloons in cow­boy movies, though they all use a “piano roll” to pro­vide the notes. In the case of the Repro­duc­ing Piano, the roll con­tains not only the notes but all the tem­po, expres­sion and oth­er aspects of an actu­al per­for­mance. Thus the big sell­ing point of these sys­tems, there­fore, was to get famous per­form­ers and com­posers to per­form their works, which could then be flaw­less­ly repro­duced at home.

Actu­a­tors in posi­tion over the Stein­way keyboard

The Pianola, on the oth­er hand, began life as a “cab­i­net play­er” – a box on cas­tors that you wheel up to a con­ven­tion­al piano (a Stein­way grand in the case of the Sun­day per­for­mance) and lock into place so that its felt-cov­ered actu­a­tors can press the keys. It’s pow­ered by ped­als, which dri­ve the roll and also force air through the holes in the roll to sound the notes. By chang­ing the pres­sure on the ped­als (eg by stamp­ing on them) you can also change the loud­ness of the notes – in oth­er words, give the per­for­mance dynam­ics – that can be applied to dif­fer­ent parts of the range. There’s also a tem­po slid­er – and even tech­nol­o­gy that picks out the top line automatically.

This is all rather impor­tant, because the piano roll for a Pianola con­tains only the notes – the play­er deter­mines the tem­po and expres­sion (in a solo per­for­mance, for exam­ple, includ­ing visu­al cues print­ed or writ­ten on the roll). Thus a Pianola per­for­mance actu­al­ly is a per­for­mance, and not a play­back. Yes, the notes are pro­vid­ed, but the expres­sion is man­u­al­ly applied.

Pianola rolls were not cre­at­ed by play­ing the instru­ment and record­ing what the per­former did, as in the case of the Repro­duc­ing Piano. Instead, they were cre­at­ed sim­ply from the score. Imag­ine a MIDI sequence cre­at­ed in step-time with no veloc­i­ty infor­ma­tion and you get the idea.

Most peo­ple could­n’t be both­ered to learn the sub­tle nuances of Pianola per­for­mance, how­ev­er, and sim­ply ped­alled away, giv­ing the instru­ments a rather life­less, mechan­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion which was entire­ly unde­served. Ulti­mate­ly, mech­a­nisms were built into (usu­al­ly upright) pianos – and hence the play­er pianos in the bars depict­ed in the cow­boy movies aforementioned.

The drum sec­tion and Paul Jack­son, Conductor

Rex Law­son, who per­formed the Pianola part in Sun­day’s con­cert, is a lead­ing expert on the instru­ment, and his pre­sen­ta­tion dis­posed of quite a few myths, espe­cial­ly when it came to the per­for­mance of Bal­let mécanique. The fact that the play­er con­trols the tem­po means that the Pianola can actu­al­ly fol­low a con­duc­tor in the con­ven­tion­al way – the Pianola does not have to set the tem­po and have every oth­er play­er sync to it. In Paul Lehrman’s per­for­mances, in con­trast, the MIDI replay sys­tem that dri­ves the play­er pianos also gen­er­ates a click track that every­one follows.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the fact that you can con­trol the dynam­ics of the Pianola means that the instru­ment does not sim­ply bash out all the notes at full blast. As a result, pri­mar­i­ly, of these two fac­tors, Bal­let mécanique takes on a whole new degree of light and shade. Yes, it’s still a cacoph­o­ny of 20s avant-garde exu­ber­ance, but it takes on a good deal of addi­tion­al subtlety.

Law­son feels that the piece is designed to be played on these Edwar­dian instru­ments rather than mod­ern dig­i­tal sys­tems, and that you need to actu­al­ly per­form the Pianola part – as he puts it, you need to “sweat”. How­ev­er, he is inter­est­ed in get­ting some fel­low Pianola-own­ing friends togeth­er to per­form the work on four Pianolas syn­chro­nised as far as tem­po is concerned.

Law­son thinks the idea of 16 play­er pianos was Antheil show­ing off, that it was prob­a­bly orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for four live pianists, and that the big prob­lem with per­form­ing it at the time was that there were not near­ly enough play­ers in Paris who knew the sub­tleties of the Pianola and how to use its tem­po and expres­sion capa­bil­i­ties. In his planned 4‑Pianola per­for­mance, he would set the tem­po at his Pianola and the oth­ers would fol­low the tem­po he set by using step­per motors to sync them to his unit. Which sounds like a great idea, though there might be issues due to stretch­ing or slip­page of the rolls: it might need sprock­et­ed piano rolls, which did actu­al­ly exist.

The box­es for the three pianola rolls

The Sun­day per­for­mance of the sin­gle-Pianola ver­sion used three piano rolls, and to allow chang­ing them the per­for­mance was split into three movements.

The per­for­mance, for me, shed new light on a fas­ci­nat­ing com­po­si­tion from the 1920s. A rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion from Paul Lehrman’s, it sug­gests inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for a Lawson/Lehrman collaboration.

• The pro­gramme also includ­ed Grand Pianola Music by John Adams (no Pianolas involved), and Julio d’Escriván’s inge­nious and expres­sive Ayayay! Con­cer­to for iPhone, Pianola and orchestra.

In this video, lead­ing British folk musi­cians Coope Boyes & Simp­son pro­vide the music in their unique and mov­ing acapel­la style with the song “Only Remem­bered”, as we view aspects of the unique exhi­bi­tion by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in the immer­sive 3D vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The exhi­bi­tion sim­u­lates aspects of life in the trench­es on the West­ern Front dur­ing the 1914–1918 war and presents work by the “War Poets” of the period.

As vis­i­tors explore the sim­u­la­tion, they can lis­ten to the voic­es of vet­er­ans recount­ing their expe­ri­ences of the war, view orig­i­nal film footage and pho­tographs from the time, and learn about life on the West­ern Front, encoun­ter­ing some of the most pow­er­ful poet­ry in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture by see­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, turn­ing the pages of the poets’ war diaries and let­ters, and lis­ten­ing to readings.

The video is tak­en from the 10 Novem­ber 2009 episode of the TV series Design­ing Worlds, a week­ly live show cov­er­ing design and design­ers in vir­tu­al worlds, pro­duced by Prim Per­fect mag­a­zine and Treet.TV.

“Only Remem­bered” (Bonar/Sankey/Tams Voice Pub­lish­ing) is used by per­mis­sion and is tak­en from the album Pri­vate Peace­ful The Con­cert (No Mas­ters NMCD24) by Coope Boyes & Simpson.

For more infor­ma­tion, read this arti­cle on The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in Sec­ond Life.

Leona helped to co-ordi­nate resources at the 9th World Wilder­ness Con­gress (WWC), in Meri­da, Mex­i­co between the 6th and 13th of November.

“Launched by The WILD Foun­da­tion in 1977, the World Wilder­ness Con­gress (WWC) is now the longest-run­ning, pub­lic, inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal forum. With over 30 years of con­ser­va­tion achieve­ments, the WWC has become a high-pro­file plat­form for act­ing on com­plex wilder­ness and wild­lands issues.

“WWCs include senior-lev­el rep­re­sen­ta­tion from gov­ern­ments, the pri­vate sec­tor, native peo­ples, non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, acad­e­mia and the arts in a struc­ture care­ful­ly designed to bring togeth­er the full spec­trum of wilder­ness-relat­ed views. Broad-based par­tic­i­pa­tion, com­bined with the spir­it of open and bal­anced debate, cre­ates a con­struc­tive, objec­tive ori­ent­ed envi­ron­ment, and gen­er­ates prac­ti­cal con­ser­va­tion outcomes.

“The Con­gress con­venes every three to four years around the world. Past WWCs have been held in South Africa (1977, 2001), Aus­tralia (1980), Scot­land (1983), USA (1987, 2005), Nor­way (1993), and India (1998).

“Since its ori­gins, the World Wilder­ness Con­gress has been a result-ori­ent­ed con­ser­va­tion project that begins long before the actu­al con­ven­tion of del­e­gates takes place, and WILD 9 will be no dif­fer­ent. In the months lead­ing up to Meri­da, sev­er­al com­mit­tees, groups, agen­cies and orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing on mod­els, objec­tives and tar­gets that address a glob­al agen­da and aim to achieve prac­ti­cal con­ser­va­tion results through a diverse and inter­est­ing pro­gram –with a Latin rhythm!”

Click here for more infor­ma­tion.

Last day’s feed from the Congress:
Video clips at Ustream

I’d like to draw your atten­tion to the fol­low­ing press release regard­ing the open­ing of the Sec­ond Life pres­ence of Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive. I was involved in record­ing some of the audio for this project, includ­ing sev­er­al poet­ry read­ings, tuto­ri­als and the intro­duc­tion and epi­logue to the instal­la­tion. More details here; video at foot of this article.

An excit­ing new project in inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tion will launch on 2nd Novem­ber 2009, draw­ing togeth­er the resources and exper­tise of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for immer­sion and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty offered by the vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive and the Learn­ing Tech­nolo­gies Group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford have col­lab­o­rat­ed to bring togeth­er a wealth of digi­tised archival mate­r­i­al from the First World War into an envi­ron­ment that allows this pow­er­ful mate­r­i­al to be explored and expe­ri­enced in a rad­i­cal­ly new way.

“The aim of the ini­tia­tive is to place the poet­ry of the Great War in con­text,” explains Stu­art Lee, Lec­tur­er in Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, “It allows the vis­i­tors to the exhi­bi­tion to visu­alise archival mate­ri­als in an envi­ron­ment that fos­ters deep­er under­stand­ings. Vis­i­tors also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take advan­tage of the social and inter­ac­tive aspects that the envi­ron­ment offers.”

The project has import­ed into the Sec­ond Life envi­ron­ment a range of digi­tised archival mate­ri­als from the major poets of the First World War (includ­ing poet­ry man­u­scripts, let­ters and diaries) along with con­tex­tu­al pri­ma­ry source mate­ri­als.  These have been posi­tioned with­in an envi­ron­ment which has been mod­elled to rep­re­sent areas of the West­ern Front, 1914 — 1918.

The mate­ri­als have been sup­ple­ment­ed with new inter­pre­ta­tive con­tent and a spec­trum of inter­ac­tive tools and tuto­ri­als, stream­ing video and audio effects to cre­ate a vivid immer­sive expe­ri­ence that is, accord­ing to vis­i­tors, deeply moving.

“I had, of course, read about the First World War, and seen archive news footage too,” says Saf­fia Wid­der­shins, a Sec­ond Life res­i­dent.  “But to have the feel­ing of walk­ing along nar­row trench­es on duck­boards half cov­ered in mud, to see the dugouts, or to stand in a dress­ing sta­tion, hear­ing the voic­es of peo­ple who had been there describ­ing their own expe­ri­ences – this is all incred­i­bly powerful.”

There will be a Sec­ond Life Press Launch at 4.30am SLT (12.30 UK time) and again at 2pm SLT (22:00 UK time) on Mon­day 2nd Novem­ber. Come to the land­ing point at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Frideswide/219/199/646/ and take the TP to Theatre.

The instal­la­tion will be open for explo­ration from 2am Mon­day 2nd Novem­ber 2009.  We ask vis­i­tors to pre­serve the atmos­phere of this envi­ron­ment by wear­ing the cloth­ing pro­vid­ed at the land­ing area.

This week­end I had the plea­sure of spend­ing a day with a col­lo­quy of friends in the ven­er­a­ble Uni­ver­si­ty city of Oxford, cen­tred around a vis­it to the Muse­um of the His­to­ry of Sci­ence to see their Steam­punk Art exhi­bi­tion.

I’d been past this build­ing before – it’s the orig­i­nal home of the Ash­molean – but nev­er inside. Turns out it’s a won­der­ful lit­tle muse­um on about three floors and a ver­i­ta­ble store­house of ancient sci­en­tif­ic instru­ments of all shapes and size, with an empha­sis on brass and the odd bit of mahogany.

The muse­um would be worth vis­it­ing at any time just to take in the devel­op­ment of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal instru­ments over the last few hun­dred years – there are micro­scopes, tele­scopes, astro­labes, elec­tri­cal machines and a great deal more – but it also made the per­fect loca­tion for the first UK muse­um exhib­it of Steam­punk Art, which runs until Feb­ru­ary 21, 2010. I would rec­om­mend a vis­it if you’re in the area or can arrange to be.

Steam­punk, one could say, is a genre that imag­ines what might have hap­pened if the tech­nol­o­gy of the 19th cen­tu­ry had not been eclipsed by that of the 20th. It’s Jules Verne and H G Wells’ vision of tech­nol­o­gy; you also get a cer­tain feel­ing of it from Oxfor­dian Philip Pull­man’s His Dark Mate­ri­als trilogy.

Thus the base­ment of the Muse­um is cur­rent­ly filled with all man­ner of mys­te­ri­ous con­trap­tions with glow­ing incan­des­cent fil­a­ments, whirling (or poten­tial­ly whirling) mech­a­nisms, and mechan­i­cal pros­thet­ics. Some of them are shown in the accom­pa­ny­ing photographs.

I was joined by Oxford res­i­dent Pol­ly (with whom I work on Design­ing Worlds), Lynne (my col­lab­o­ra­tor on the iPhys projects for Sun­der­land City Col­lege) and her hus­band Richard, and also, at least for part of the day, by Ann and Knick who it was love­ly to see again and kind­ly put me up for the weekend.

L to R: Lynne, me, Richard, Pol­ly (pho­to by Knick)

After the exhi­bi­tion and some refresh­ment, we took in the last full day of a fas­ci­nat­ing exhi­bi­tion on book-bind­ing at the Bodleian, fol­lowed by the open-top bus tour of the city, which is worth the effort. Mid-after­noon we end­ed up at Black­wells’ where we all seemed to acquire a set of John Grant’s series of sci­ence books, Dis­card­ed, Cor­rupt­ed and Bogus Sci­ence. We then retired to the cof­fee shop upstairs to dis­cuss falling stan­dards in British sec­ondary and fur­ther education.

In the evening, an excel­lent din­ner at the Trout in Wolvercote.

More pho­tos on Face­book.