Matthew Burtner, who is a member of the faculty on board, is from the Music Department at UVA , and is teaching a class on electronic music composition. He takes sounds from the environment and combines them with musical instruments. This is called ecoacoustics. He is one interesting dude and you can google him or read more about him here:
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~mburtner/
Matthew has inaugurated MICE a World Tour 2009 and this was the first performance. This stands for Mobile Interactive Computer Ensemble.
Last night he and his students had a mini ensemble performance on the bow of the ship at sunset. They had a very sophisticated microphone recording the wind as it blew across the bow. In addition Zoe Kinney, the daughter of faculty, played her cello. Matthew played a type of horn instrument (maybe a clarinet)and other students read some philosophical quotes about the wind. The sounds were all mixed and reorganized and played back to the audience. It was sort of like “found” music or captured sounds. While I am normally not a fan of this type of musical performance this was pretty cool. First of all it just happened in this moment in the middle of the ocean. Since it was windy and cold there was only a small audience. It was over quickly after the sunset. At one point I looked up and there was a great big Venus shining down upon us. Life does not get much better!
Their next performance will feature the sounds of the sand blowing about the desert in Namibia.
Tomorrow is Cadiz (pronounced CA deeth). Happy Birthday Mom!! I will try to call you.
It may be a few days before I get back to this. My next project is to try to download my photos to another website.
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