INSTALLATIONS

SPY ON THE WALL (2011)
Ambient Recordings from Wilco’s The Whole Love
6 channel sound installation, for Solid Sound Festival 2011
Ongoing on the John Cage/Merce Cunningham Bridge

Many Wilco fans have expressed to me a desire to be a “fly on the wall‚” for a Wilco recording session. When we started recording our latest album The Whole Love, I began to covertly capture sonic snapshots of the process on my hand held recorder. The result was a mix of overdubs, full band tracking, meals, discussions, pinball games and playbacks. I chose my favorite recordings—six for each of the six speakers comprising this installation. I then used the drumbeat that opens the record as a guide for their arrangement, assigning one recording to each voice of the beat. The rhythms of each voice determine when tracks are audible or muted. The result is a collage of mini-clips of our recording over an 11 month period. Each speaker has a dedicated collage that loops and goes in and out of phase with the other five speakers. Glenn Kotche, June 2011

INDIVIDUAL TRAINS (2011)
Music and film by Glenn Kotche with Pat Burns
Installed for Solid Sound Festival 2011

The formal structure of this piece is a stretched or expanded version of the first original drum beat that I came up with at age 15. I took each subdivision of the beat and stretched it several times in duration. Then each voice of its opposite rhythm was substituted with a more rhythmically complex texture. These textures come across as sheets of overlapping sound and are comprised of four elements including: a dense overlapping of all of the tracks from my drumkit installations record Next, that same Next “remix” in reverse, a half time version of my vibraphone piece MASK from my record Introducing and finally a track of pure electronic noise that I made from a chain of effects pedals and a mini-disc recorder. The placement of all of these elements adheres to the formal structure as dictated by that original drum beat. The rhythmically complex layers complement each other sonically and result in the feeling of concurrent individual events with a hidden connection. The film is created from overlapping images or glimpses of my home town, Chicago. These diverse clips of the city either directly or impressionistically relate to each of the sonic elements of the accompanying track. They are superimposed with footage of water resting on speaker cones which are playing back each individual audio track, resulting in a physical representation of the music through the sonic reaction of the water. Glenn Kotche, June 2011

SOUND SCULPTURES INSTALLATION (2011)
Installed or Solid Sound Festival 2011

   


INTERACTIVE PREPARED DRUMHEADS (2010)
Installed for Solid Sound Festival 2010

I came up with the idea of preparing a drum head with various materials and contact microphones several years ago while trying to get more non-traditional, non-rhythmic centric sounds out of my drums for use in free-improvising situations. The initial idea was inspired by John Cage's prepared piano music as well as certain percussion instruments like the cuica or lion's roar. The head that I devised was perfectly suited for my solo piece Monkey Chant that was being written around the same time. I ended up using the distinct sounds from the prepared drum to represent the main characters from the Ramayana story to which Monkey Chant is set. In subsequent years I've used prepared drum heads in most of my musical outlets but most prominently in my solo shows. I love that I'm still able to use the drum as a drum and also use it as a resonator for these amazing timbres. In this exhibit you'll find several different types of preparations. I've created certain heads with just one type of preparation as well as some with many different types, the latter being similar to ones that I use when performing. Glenn Kotche, August 2010