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Climate Controlled | Performance with the TOOB | Requiem Aeternam
Arvid Tomayko-Peters is a composer and performer of electronic and experimental music, and a creator of unique electronic instruments. His interests span both the compositional and the technical sides of electronic music, the one informing the other.
Arvid is a recent graduate of Brown University where he concentrated in Computer Music and Multimedia and Geological Sciences. As such, some of Arvid's work is an attempt to use geologic data and ideas to create a hybrid artistic/scientific experience and tell the Earth's story through music.
Arvid performs regularly, both solo and with ensembles ranging from a 'psycho-electro-free-jazz' sextet to duos with a vocalist. He plays trumpet, flugelhorn, TOOB and other unique digital and analog electronic instruments.
An interactive audio-visual installation that plays back the last 5.3 million years of climate data from the geologic record as sound, with accompanying visuals and light. Eight speakers are positioned geographically, each representing a location where deep ocean sediment cores were extracted. Each speaker plays back the data from that particular core as sound.
Visitors are able to control time - setting the sound in motion either backwards or forwards through time at any speed, with fluid realtime control via a tactile timeline interface. One can hear temporal and spatial variations in ocean core data as the Earth's climate changes through time. Projected visuals display date and average global climate at the current location in geologic time. The software contains a library of important dates in geology, biology and human evolution that are indicated textually when the piece arrives at the corresponding date. A map display shows which cores are active at any given time and gives visitors a sense of geography. The space is also visually activated using computer-controlled lighting that reacts to the climate data - turning the whole space red or blue along with glaciations and warm periods.
Each speaker (corresponding to one deep ocean core) is an instrument that performs as part of the ensemble. Various elements of the sound of each speaker (timbre, pitch, amplitude, etc) are modulated by various parameters of the data from that core (Calcium Carbonate content, reflectance, deposition rate, magnetic susceptibility, etc). The octophonic sound landscape, which is impossible to represent in a stereo audio file, is intended to allow the listener to determine not just temporal, but also spatial climate patterns spanning the atlantic and pacific oceans.
Climate Controlled was an undergraduate honors thesis project of Arvid Tomayko-Peters. It was installed at Brown University's Production Workshop in March 2007 and was chosen for the Pixilerations gallery exhibit in downtown Providence in October 2007.
Climate Controlled Sample 1 - 4:34
Climate Controlled Sample 2 - 6:52
See Arvid's geophonics page for more documentation
The TOOB is a wireless electronic 'hyper-trumpet' I created to bring some of my trumpet playing skills into the electronic music realm. The instrument is created not out of a desire to emulate or build upon the trumpet itself, but to take some of the familiar gestures and memes of trumpet performance to a whole new place. The goal is to have the same fluid control of sound that I feel when playing the acoustic horn, but with a diverse sonic palette and the ability to incorporate and process environmental sounds on the fly in an improvisational or composed setting. The TOOB is flexible enough to be used in many contexts and quick and easy to setup or break down.
For more technical information about the TOOB, see the Instruments Page
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This quick video demonstrates the TOOB's interface and capabilities.
In September of 2008, I worked with Butch Rovan to produce a concert at Brown's Grant Recital Hall called "Trouble With TOOBs" that included solo TOOB performance, a duo with Butch Rovan [sax], and a sextet performance.
A collaboration of Arvid Tomayko-Peters and vocalist Christie Lee Gibson. 2008
Requiem Aeternam is a composition for improvising musicians created for the Cryptic Providence festival and performed in the North Burial Ground in Providence, RI. Requiem Aeternam draws its inspirations from classical requiem masses and from the gravestones at the North Burial Ground. A number of ghostly characters emerge, long dead souls who might lurk in among the gravestones at night.
This recording is an abbreviated (about 1/2 its original length) performance of Requiem Aeternam at the Pixilerations festival in downtown Providence in October of 2008. While the two previous performances took place among the actual gravestones, this stage performance includes visual images from the graveyard projected behind the performers that react subtly to the performance.
The Video and Audio Versions below are the same performance. Choose whichever option you like.
Requiem Aeternam Uninterrupted - 14:43
Requiem Aeternam - 2:36
The Empty Ghost - 3:06
The Poltergeist - The Stately Ghost - 1:57
The Mournful Ghost - The Drowned Ghost - 2:42
Gravestones - 2:07 | Gravestone texts are from the North Burial Ground, Providence, RI
Requiem Aeternam - 2:15