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Concert Fri Dec 12 2014
Tristan Perich's Elegy for One-Bit Alone at the Logan Center (Hyde Park)
Tristan Perich.
Four years ago, Lampo hosted composer and installation artist Tristan Perich as part of its fall series, where he performed his composition "One-Bit Symphony" (2010), accompanied by visual accompaniment of his on-the-spot pattern generation across five black and white TVs. You can see my review of the event here. It was a hell of a thing, that night. Perich's composition, small enough to fit on a small circuit mounted inside of CD jewel case with a headphone jack, created its rising and falling patterns out of endless 1s and 0s, yet like Nancarrow's ultra-complex player piano work, the music was soulful and heartbreaking and lusty and vivacious, despite (or because of) its adherence to a restrictive medium.
Perich returns this Saturday (December 13) at 8 p.m. to the Logan Center for the Arts (915 East 60th Street, performance penthouse 901) to present "Noise Patterns," the next development in his one-bit music. Admission is free with RSVP.
Just as "One-Bit Symphony" was a progression from the previous "One-Bit Music" (2004), "Noise Patterns" will progress the binary austerity even further, leaving behind the tonal elements behind and creating music out of "varying probabilities of randomness," which are composed into rhythmic patterns.
Apart from his 1-bit audio works, Perich is also an imaginative installation artist. His "Microtonal Wall" is a set of 1500 miniature speakers, each emitting a single microtonal frequency, arranged subtly so that small shifts and eddies occur within the ear as the observer moves across the piece. I mention this only because it reinforces the fact that, although you can buy the 1-bit composition devices and listen to them in your home, Perich's works are composed to be heard in public, and it is essential that you make every effort to hear them in a strong, sympathetic listening space, such as the acoustically generous Logan Center.
