"...Euterpe was the muse presiding
over
music"
Project Description, with excerpts from curators Eva Comuzzi and Orietta Masin's essay
Link to the full video (for Cervignano)
Link to the full video on the little screen, with sound.
flickr set. (photos of the sculptural objects)
music (with Carlotta Buiatti).
Link to an interview about the project on Cosmos Radio, NYC with
Bill Buschel.
Performances/Installations:
November 17-28, 2018 / Trieste / New York
Festival di Arte e Robotica @ Hydrodynamic Station of the Trieste Old
Port
curated by Maria Campitelli
March 31, 2019
The Energy of Places @ Galleria Miroslav Vilhar in Ceroglie
Curated by Fabiola Faidiga
Project Description
Catalyst Euterpe was conceived as a series of events and objects based on the
Seikilos
Epitaph. In our research to prepare the debut of the work we learned about the
Antikythera Mechanism and incorporated it.
At the core of this project are objects that embody the seemingly
contradictory qualities of the eternal and ephemeral. One, an ancient
funeral Stele inscribed with a poem and music about the eternal and
ephemeral (with a complex history, described
below), and the other, the earliest example of an orrery - and
considered by some as the world's oldest computer. Both objects,
believed to have originated from approximately the same time and place,
exhibit a complex orbital path through time and culture. Within
Catalyst Euterpe their internal and external qualities orbit each other
at "angles" created by media, form (time) and perception.
This kinetic interrelationship has a heterodoxical effect on the
qualities of both original objects. This effect is a poetry embodied in
the objects and forms that comprise the work - the sculpture, code, video,
music, and performance. The eternal and ephemeral are real, and
persistent, but their reality is kinetic and transitory and influenced
by known and mysterious forces. Culture is formed from similar dynamics
across a wide range of qualities. The perception and experience of this
bounded fluidity, this ebb and flow, embodied in various states and degrees and perceptions is central to the aesthetics of
Catalyst Euterpe.
For this first installation we had two elements: a collaborative,
networked performance with artist/vocalist Carlotta Buiatti and artist Fabiola
Faidiga, entitled
Catalyst
Euterpe/Through the Waves, that occurred on November 18, 2018
in the Hydrodynamic Station of the Trieste Old Port, and a sculptural
installation composed of 3d resin prints, video, and sound, that was exhibited in the Fesival di Art e Robotica curated by Maria
Campitelli at the Hydrodynamic Station of the Trieste Old Port in November 2018.
A future performance of
Catalyst
Euterpe/Through the Waves is scheduled for March, 2019 in
Malchina, Italy as part of L'ENERGIA DEI LUOGHI, curated by Fabiola Faidiga and Casa C A V A.
The sculptural installation included two 3d prints in resin, based on
the
Seikilos Epitaph and
Antikythera mechanism, video, and music.
Below is information about each of the elements of the installation.
You may scroll down to read each section, or use the following links to
jump to specific information.
About the original objects:
The Seikilos Stele and its inscriptions
The Antikythera Mechanism
About the relaltionship between the Antikythera Mechanism
and Seikilos Epitaph within Catalyst Euterpe
The objects within the installation
The music
The videos
+++
About the original objects:
The Seikilos Epitaph
and its inscriptions
The Seikilos epitaph contains the earliest example of written music,
and a dedication.
The dedication reads:
Seikilos to Euterpe
Εἰκὼν ἡ λίθος εἰμί. τίθησί με Σεικίλος ἔνθα μνήμης ἀθανάτου σῆμα
πολυχρόνιον.
eikṑn hē líthos eimí. títhēsí me Seikílos éntha mnḗmēs athanátou sêma
polukhrónion.
"I am a tombstone, an image. Seikilos placed me here as a long-lasting
sign of deathless remembrance."
The lyrics of the song:
Ὅσον ζῇς φαίνου
hóson zêis,
phaínou
While you live, shine
μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ
mēdèn hólōs sù
lupoû have no grief at all
πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν pròs
olígon estì tò
zên life exists only for a
short while
τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ. tò télos ho khrónos
apaiteî. and Time demands his due.
The Antikythera
Mechanism
As we prepared for these events we learned about the Antikythera
Mechanism - perhaps the earliest known analog computer, that dates from
approximately the same time as the Stele. Discovered in an ancient
shipwreck in the early 20th Century, the Antikythera Mechanism was a
mystery until independent researchers were able to decipher its
intentions and reconstruct it. The Antikythera mechanism was used to
calculate, through a geared mechanism made of brass and wood, synodic
movements in 19 year cycles. It appears that the Greeks studied the
celestial observations encoded on cuneiform tablets by the Babylonians,
and through these studies observed patterns and cycles. They invented a
mechanism that can kinetically calculate and visualize these cycles
forward and backward in time.
The small scale of the mechanism suggests that it may have been for
personal use. The combination of the predictive, kinetic, and personal
qualities of the object suggests a sense of individual inquiry, agency
and an awareness of one's place in the world that became a cornerstone
of
the Western mind. The song and epitaph of the Stele similarly portray
an individual's thoughts and expression about time, remebrance, love,
death, joy and sorrow, as well as an idea that the object would outlive
its creator, and remain meaningful to future persons.
The relaltionship
between the Antikythera Mechanism and Seikilos Epitaph within Catalyst
Euterpe
To us, the coincidence of these two objects and the ideas behind them
seem revolutionary for their time and foundational for ours.
The Stele embodies the paradox of the ephemeral and eternal. Its
history, including its presence within
Catalyst
Euterpe, and
Catalyst
Euterpe/Through the Waves embodies
how this paradox permeates life and culture, and how it inhabits
different forms as it persists through culture. Our project traces
this paradox across time and media - beginning with the original, hand
carved, marble stele, through various incarnations into a presence both
within networked, digital culture, and as sculptural objects and
performance.
The cosmos of the Antikythera mechansim is one of periodic, cyclic,
kinetic
interrelationships - not unusual in the Bronze age (3000 BC – 1200 BC) that preceded the
era of our mechanism and stele. The mechanism provides a way to observe
these
interrelationships freely from different points in time. This
individual, free relationship with elements of one's environment based
on a dynamism of empirical data was revolutionary at the end of the BC
era, and continues today, reborn in countless inventions and objects.
The Antikythera Mechanism was lost at the bottom of the sea for almost
2000 years, only to be found, scientifically analyzed and
re-constituted using a form of individual, intellectual freedom and
inquiry of which it was, perhaps, the original exemplar.
Classical Antiquity (or The Greco-Roman world [800 BC - 600 AD]) , the
period of the Antikythera Mechanism and Seikilos Stele, developed the
idea of events progressing through linear
time. Classical Antiquity's sense of time and action differed
from the Bronze age, in which time and events were understood primarily
as
cyclic.
At the dawn of the era, during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian
astronomers developed a new empirical approach to astronomy. They began
studying and recording their belief system and philosophies dealing
with an ideal nature of the universe and began employing an internal
logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important
contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science, and some
modern scholars have thus referred to this novel approach as the first
scientific revolution. This approach to astronomy was adopted and
further developed in Hellenistic astronomy.
The Antikythera mechanism, made of bronze gears within a wooden frame,
was a mechanical computer that made cyclical movements through
Babylonian data observed at the dawn of Classical Antiquity/end of the
Bronze Age. The Seikilos Stele, inscribed with poetry
and music also echoes a sense of cycles and rewewal. Both are rooted in
a
collective past that is periodically reborn in the present, with its
context of individual progression through time as one searches for
truth (itself a paradox of empirical facts and heuristic, poetic
wisdom). The flow and tension between the eternal (cyclical) and
ephemeral (things to be superceded/obsolesced, to be put in the past by
a new discovery) are embodied in both objects.
It is worth noting that during the era, and in the approximate location of both artifacts numerous debtor revolts were occuring.
A side-effect of Classical Antiquity's and Contemporary cultures'
sense
of progress and linear time is a
deracinating effect, separating us from a cyclical mode of
understanding rooted in our collective connection with environment. In
the Bronze age, human actions were understood within
a framework of original, perhaps "natural" order moving toward chaos
and returning to order.
Culture was the collection of beliefs, actions and objects that
interact with the environment in such a way as to return/renew the
relationship between people and environment to one of original order.
Culture, it could be argued, is the same process today - i.e.,
embodiments of that which is to be maintained/renewed, albeit within a
different set of beliefs. Our project is about the presence of this
eternal, wave-like rhythm
pulsating through contemporary material culture, meaning, individualty
and the search for truth within the
present.
The objects within the
installation
The Seikilos Stele
We fabricated a reproduction of the original Stele, using measurements
of the object which is currently in the Department of Antiquites of the
National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet), in Copenhagen. Our
digital reproduction was then digitally "cut" into two pieces. One, the
lower half, containing the original music, was 3d printed in resin. We
also included a small screen embedded in the print that shows the
entire text of the complete object in fragments, and with occasional
variations.
The Antikythera Mechanism
We fabricated a reproduction of the Antikythera mechanism as an
artefact - as it was found at the bottom of the sea. We then 3d printed
the digital model in clear resin. We included a small screen that is
showing a video that is a mix of Fabiola Faidiga's
Through the Waves, footage of
water where New York's East River meets New York Harbor, and the
digital model of the top half of the Seikilos Stele.
Both the Stele(s) and the Antikythera Mechanism were created in the
same way:
The objects were 3d printed in clear resin from digital models of the original Stele
and Antikythera mechanism.
The music
in Performance:
For the performance the electronic music is based on the notated music
on the stele. We wrote some software that analyzes a recording Carlotta
Buiatti made of the epitaph music. The software tries to determine the
most prominent phrases/notes, and plays them in sine waves, in very
close to real time. When the software is left running after the song
file has finished playing it responds to its own output, and creates
variations as it listens to itself perform what amounts to a memory of
the original music. Over time, the software transforms the melody into
something unique. We sent these recordings of the software to Carlotta
and she used them to create her own variations on the music. We
combined these different sounds into the soundtrack we made for the
performance,
The audio for the performance is
here.
in the Installation:
For the installation the music is a mix of the composition we created
for Carlotta Buiatti and Fabiola Faidiga, and algorithmic/robotic
variations on the sound elements used for
that composition. The music should alternate approximately every 10
minutes between the fixed composition, and the dynamically created
variations.
The videos:
Artist Fabiola Faidiga has created a video for the performance and
installation entitled
Through the
Waves. The video will be shown during the performance together with
a video we made. Both videos were shot around the ports of our
respective cities - Trieste and New York. We shot our video on the East
River ferry going between Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, as the water
from the East River meets the water of the Harbor of New York at the
base of Manhattan. Featured in our video is a digital model of the top
half of the stele - a virtual companion to the lower half of the stele that was printed and exhibited in Trieste.
The full video, with sound, is
here.