Let us examine two techno-artistic artifacts, the virtual and home pipe organ – from a media perspective in an attempt to understand why they took their respective forms. One way is to look into the respective aims and expectations of ‘users’. Hauptwerk is actually not one instrument but a digital multi-purpose tool with the purpose of creating an aesthetic experience in settings ranging from the own living room to recording studios to concert halls. Through its digital nature it can hence be used for public as well as for private performances in various locations and for multiple purposes. In contrast, the customized home pipe organ is a physical instrument and much more limited in scope. It is not as mobile or as versatile but it compensates this with its natural generation of sound. Furthermore it was intended for the sole purpose of the singular and personal aesthetic experience.


According to media studies scholars Bolter & Grusin "each act of mediation depends on other acts of mediation. Media are continually commenting on, reproducing, and replacing each other, and this process is integral to media" (1999, p.55). ‘Remediation’ in this sense means the improvement or refashioning of media occurring in direct relation with other media and the respective cultural context. Remediation describes the way certain media are repurposed in order to convey an (emotional) experience as authentic as possible. Although the authors deal mostly with visual media, this idea seem to be transferable to sound fidelity in the study of music and musical instruments as well; particularly when technology is involved to such a large extent.


Two main concepts describe these processes of remediation. On an epistemological level hypermediacy describes the medium’s obviousness: the medium itself is an important part of knowledge gathering. Psychologically, the direct experience of the medium makes the whole experience more realistic in itself. Immediacy on the other hand has the psychological effect of providing a direct and authentic emotion without any detour. Epistemologically, immediacy means transparency – the absence of any visible mediation or representation. Both appeal to the unaltered authenticity of experience. Hypermediacy does it by multiplying and emphasizing the sources of information while the other, immediacy, tries to erase the medium completely.


The customized home pipe organ can be seen as achieving immediacy through the presence of the actual, physical instrument with its pipes and mechanics and the diffuse sound field being recreated around it through the microphone – reverb unit – speaker system. In contrast, the virtual pipe organ tries to compensate for the missing original instrument by merging separate elements like MIDI keyboards, graphic representations of consoles, speaker systems and of course the necessary sample sets, creating hypermediacy in the process.


With version 4 of Hauptwerk, you can make your instrument as flexible as you wish: add as many generals or divisionals to the organ as you want; add missing sub and super couplers which the original organ doesn’t have; switch keyboard assignments with the push of a piston; add four crescendo pedal settings to instruments that have none (Mullin , p.2).

In that sense, the virtual pipe organ becomes much more than a mere recreation of an original: it is transformed into a new instrument, a sort of ‘hyperorgan’: “an organ with extended capabilities that seamlessly blend the electronic and acoustic worlds” (Harlow 2011, p.3). The organist is aware that he is not playing on an acoustic organ but the illusion is so elaborate that it is accepted – not necessarily as real alternative to a church organ but rather as a whole new kind of instrument. A techno-artistic artifact with many possibilities still to explore. 


References


  • Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge Mass/ London: MIT Press.

  • Harlow

  • Mullin

Hypermediacy and Immediacy