Thursday 9 October, from 19.30 pm, Frirelli HangarBicocca presents an evening with alvin lucier. The American musician and composer, one of the pioneers of research on electronic and minimal music since the mid-60s, will perform in a concert, admission freeon the occasion of the exhibition Parrot by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva (running until 26 October). The will also be screened documentary No Ideas but in Things – The Composer Alvin Lucier by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder.
Alvin Lucier, whose maxim is "don't ask me what it means what I did, but what I did", bases his poetics on the exploration of the sound elements that characterize the reality around us, creating devices and "experiments" that make the acoustic qualities of environments, natural phenomena, objects and the human body.
In the evening in Pirelli HangarBicocca Lucier will present two historical compositions and a more recent work: Music for solo performers (1965), created following a meeting with the neuroscientist Edmund Dewan, is based on the rhythm of the Alpha waves, the slowest ones emitted by the brain when it is in a state of absolute stillness. In it Lucier sits motionless facing the audience wearing electrodes that record and filter his brainwaves, transmitting their rhythm to loudspeakers that in turn play percussion instruments. I am sitting in a room (1970), is considered one of the first pieces of "process based" music, that is, which places the sound production process at the center rather than the final result: in it the composer's voice is recorded over and over again until the acoustic properties of the room in which the action takes place interfere with the human voice, transforming the text into a purely acoustic element; in Nothing is Real (1990) The Beatles song fragments Strawberry Fields Forever played on the piano they are recorded and broadcast from within a teapot which modifies their sound.
The evening will be preceded, at 19.30, by the screening of the documentary No Ideas but in Things – The Composer Alvin Lucier by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder, Lucier's assistant since 1995, present during the evening. The film – whose title is inspired by the great modernist poet Williams Carlos Williams – is an unpublished portrait of the musician who tells firsthand his early works, the experience of the Sonic Arts Union collective, his relationship with John Cage and David Tudor coming up to recent years.
Like the works of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva explore events and aspects of reality that are not immediately perceptible, so the poetics of Alvin Lucier introduces us into a world that expands beyond the surface of things, beyond their aesthetic code or their meaning and use. His sound compositions, like the works of Gusmão and Paiva, are based on theinteraction and oninterference between different communication systems, investigating the sensitive phenomena of perception.
Alvin Lucier (Nashua, USA, 1931) is a pioneer in the field of experimental music and sound art. In 1966, together with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, he founded the collective Sonic Arts Union which remained active until 1976. He collaborated with the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and with The Farber Dance Company. Since 1970 he has been professor of music at Wesleyan University. Among the numerous artists with whom he has collaborated, there is also Joan Jonas, the protagonist of the exhibition Light Time Tales at Pirelli HangarBicocca (from 2 October to 1 February 2015): the audio of one of the videos of the workVolcano Saga (1985-1994) is written by Lucier himself.
Alvin Lucier: a concert
Thursday October 9 2014
19.30: Screening of No Ideas but in Things – The Composer Alvin Lucier
21.00: Concert
Free admission until seats last
