The Ephemeral City: Songs for the Ghost Quarters

Katt Hernandez

Abstract The towers of the Stockholm skyline twine with radio transmissions, flying out over the city, drifting down through the streets and sinking into the underground telephone system below. Stockholm has buildings that have been there for centuries, but is also full of modern and contemporary architectures, all jostling for their place in parallel collective memory. In taking the city up as a subject, this artistic PhD project in music expands allegories to these architectural instruments into the world of the mechanical and the electrical. By taking up and transforming the materials of the cityscape, this project spins ephemeral cities more subtle than the colossal forces transforming the city. The aim is to offer those materials, wrought into music and sound works, for urban dwellers to deepen, remember, evoke and envision their own ephemeral cities. The themes in the project are drawn from urban memory and transformation, psychogeography and the ghosts of the imagined city, aiming to empower a sense of place beyond commercial forces, through the fleeting, subtle and imaginary. There are three questions the artistic works of this project reflect on and address. The first is about the ability of city-dwellers to regain or create some sense of place, history or belonging through the power of their imaginations. The second reflects on the possibility for imagined alternatives to re-empower a sense of place for the people who encounter them. The third seeks out the points where stories, memories, or alternative futures are collective, at what point are they wholly individual, and how the interplay between them plays out in listening. There is an improvisatory practice in how we relate to urban environments: an ever- transforming inter-play between the animate and inanimate. Each individual draws phantoms of memory and imagination onto the cityscape, and this yields subtle ways people can be empowered in their surroundings. The artistic works of this project are made to illuminate those subtleties. They are comprised of a group of compositions, improvisations, artistic collaborations and sound installations in music and sound. I have created them utilizing modular synthesizers, field recordings, pipe organs, multi-channel settings; PureData and SuperCollider programs; string ensembles with hurdy-gurdy, nyckelharpa or violin, and; sound installations. This choice of instruments is as an allegory to the architecture of Stockholm. The final result is a collection of music and sound works, made to evoke the imagined city. Taken as a whole, the works of the project create an imaginary city–one possible version of The Ephemeral City–to argue that the evocation of ephemeral space is a way to empower urban dwellers. The mechanism of that empowerment is the force of imagination, immune to the vast forces tearing through the fabric of Stockholm life by virtue of the ghostly, transitory and mercurial, as compelling to the inner eye as brick and mortar to the outer life. Populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning Kyrkspirorna och tornen på Stockholms horisont blandar sig med radiosändningar som flyger ut över staden bredvid privatiserade våglängder, driver ner genom atmosfären och sjunker ner i det övergivna underjordiska telefonsystemet. Stockholm har byggnader som funnits där i århundraden, men är också full av den mest moderna och samtida arkitektur. Allt konkurrerar om sin plats i det kollektiva minnet. Det här konstnärliga doktorandprojektet i musik tar upp och omvandlar stadsbildens grundmaterial, skapar bilder av staden, mer subtila än de starka krafter som är i rörelse; där staden förändras så snabbt och på ett sätt som ofta skapar maktlöshet. Syftet är att erbjuda material, bearbetat till musik och ljudverk, för stadsbor att fördjupa, minnas, frammana och föreställa sig sina egna efemära städer. Ämnena i projektet är tagna från urbana minnen och omvandlingar, psykogeografi och andarna i den efemära staden. Syftet är att möjliggöra en upplevelse av tillhörighet och hemmahörande som sträcker sig bortom kommersiella krafter och istället framhåller det flyktiga, subtila och imaginära. Projektet tar sig an tre frågeställningar: Hur kan musik och ljudkonst möjliggöra ett återtagande av tillhörighet och platskänsla genom kraften i individens fantasi? Hur kan alternativa inre bilder av staden förstärka en upplevelse av tillhörighet och platskänsla? När blir berättelser, minnen och alternativa framtidsvisioner kollektiva, när kan de delas med andra och när är de helt individuella? Det finns ett improvisatoriskt samspel mellan det levande och det materiella i staden vilket möjliggör subtila sätt för de boende att återfå inflytande över sin omgivning. De konstnärliga verken i det här projektet är gjorda för att belysa dessa subtiliteter, centrerade runt ett antal kompositioner, improvisationer, konstnärliga samarbeten och ljudinstallationer. Med användande av modulära synthesisers, fältinspelningar, piporgel, multikanaluppsättningar; PureData- och SuperColliderprogram, stråkensembler med vevlira, nyckelharpa eller violin och ljudinstallationer. Valet av instrument och material är en efemär metafor för Stockholms arkitektur. Slutresultatet är en samling musik och ljudverk, gjorda för att belysa den imaginära staden. Tagna som en helhet, skapar verken i projektet en imaginär stad – en möjlig version av Den Efemära Staden – för att kunna argumentera att detta frammanande av ett efemärt rum är ett sätt att stärka de boende genom fantasins makt, immuna mot de starka krafter som förändrar livet i Stockholm, med hjälp av det drömlika, omformande och flyktiga. Lika övertygande för det inre ögat som tegelsten och murbruk är i den yttre världen.

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Repository of Music and Sound Works:

Deuterium: Dome of Visions

The Dome of Visions dominated the Valhallavägen face of KTH from September of 2015 to October of 2017.x A great Plexiglass dome based on the ”dymaxion” architecture of R. Buckminster Fuller, it stood in a city with a history of ”Bucky” domes. Those previous two domes were designed and built by the artist and architect Bengt Carling, and both were located in the garden of the Moderna Museet, in 1971 and 2011, respectively, which you can read more about here.

The concert was comprised of three pieces: a graphic score from Bruno Andersen,Deuterium: Dome of Visions, and a solo improvisation I played more in the style of the SO(U)LEN(SKIN(NER) material, drawn from the same bird recordings we transposed as a group. Unfortunately neither the video camera I borrowed, nor part of the recording apparatus we had, worked properly due to malfunction and electrical problems, but there is this video documentation of a portion of the piece taken by an audience member,x and a good room recording of the entire concert from our rehearsals, as well as photographs. The Dome was very hot that day (geodesic domes can sometimes be flawed in temperature regulation), but there were roughly 40 people in attendance from the KMH and KTH communities.

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Deuterium: Dome of Visions. Concert, Dome of Visions, Stockholm. May 29th, 2017.

Deuterium: Dome of Visions is focused on two types of material: field recording transposition, and rhythms abstracted from folk tunes Lisa gave me, combined with abstracted material from the structure of the Dome.

This was the first time I involved others in the practice of transposing field recordings I sometimes employ in my work. The other musicians made very interesting and imaginative materials from the recordings we used: Tekniska Högskolan subway station, from when it still had metal turn-styles; magpies, jackdaws, björktrast and crows in Bredäng; Sailboats, water and seagulls at Skärholmens brygga, in Sätra, and; a combination of sounds taken from the central hall of the central library and from Järnvägsrestaurang, both large, round rooms with special acoustic qualities, indicative of unique Stockholm architecture from the time in eth were built in the earlier 20th century. These became four sections in the score, as if we were traversing these places by playing them.

Our method was simple, and was exactly what I had been doing with field recordings on my own. We listened to a recording once or twice, and then played along several times more, mimicking different features. I recorded this rehearsal, and then transcribed the materials as modules, to be used as reference for improvisation in different sections. There is an example of this work at Map Point: Skärholmens brygga.

The second method of composition in the piece was to write rhythmic material based on folk music Lisa Gerholm gave me to include, two gånglåtar (“walking songs”) which I combined with algorithmic work drawn from the geodesic architecture of the dome. I used measurements of the three sorts of triangles that would usually go into building a dome of that size to generate various phasing rhythms that were to be played in cycles, basing the more melodic aspects of the patterns on the music Gerholm had given me. It seemed important include material from that aspect of the two folkloric instruments, and the gånglåt, was a kind of secret commentary on the idea of the person who wanders in dérive as well.

To the right is the score for Deuterium: Dome of Visions. There was a noted score for Andersen and I, and a "word score" for Gerholm, who doesn't use written notation.

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