Event

Éliane Radigue: Vice-Versa, etc… and Chry-ptus

4 Nov 2019

Regular hours

Mon, 04 Nov
19:00 – 20:00

Cost of entry

$25 General/ $18.75 Members

Save Event: Éliane Radigue: Vice-Versa, etc… and Chry-ptus

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About

This program highlights a turning point in Éliane Radigue’s career by presenting her final feedback piece, Vice-Versa, etc… (1970), alongside her first synthesizer piece, Chry-ptus (1971). Created less than a year apart from one another, the compositions share an interest in delicate control, sustained tones, and infinite variation while marking the beginning of a shift from the combination of asynchronous tapes to the imperceptible transitions between sound worlds that would become Radigue’s signature.

Between 1968 and 1970, Éliane Radigue created a series of works of variable and infinite duration in her home studio in Paris. Made with three tape recorders, a mixing board, an amplifier, two loudspeakers, and a microphone, Usral, Omnht, ? = a = b = a + b, and Vice-Versa, etc… consist of microphone and tape recorder feedback, reworked through studio techniques such as slowing down and reversal of direction. Recorded onto magnetic tape meant for simultaneous playback in loops of different durations, Radigue presented these eternally mutating works under the guise of Propositions Sonores in museums and galleries, anticipating the emerging  practice of sound installation. Created in 1970 as a multiple in an edition of ten for the Lara Vincy Gallery in Paris, Vice-Versa, etc… was Radigue’s final feedback composition. It is comprised of a single magnetic stereo tape with hand-written instructions for diffusion suggesting that any combination of channels—right channel alone, left channel alone, or both channels together—can be overlapped, on several recorders, at any playback speed, forward or backward, ad libitum.

Chry-ptus is the very next piece in Radigue’s output, immediately following Vice-Versa, etc… It is also the first piece Éliane Radigue created with a synthesizer, in 1971, using a Buchla 100 modular system that had been installed by Morton Subotnick at NYU and which Radigue shared with Laurie Spiegel. Although seduced by the fact that the Buchla had no keyboard, Radigue was at first frustrated with the instrument’s effervescent output, spending her initial months eliminating everything she did not like before finding a small sonic zone she could use as an extension of her prior output. Transferring the delicate touch of her work with feedback to the Buchla’s beautifully rich sonority, Radigue worked with patches and potentiometers to create morphing textures that transitioned from fluttering beats to sustained low frequency tones and back again. In keeping with her earlier sound installation works, Chry-ptus was made with two reels of magnetic tape, to be played simultaneously through four loudspeakers with up to one minute of desynchronization — essentially a canon at the unison. This subtle lapse produces tiny palpitations and new harmonic interplay to yield a variable music that is never exactly the same nor ever completely different. Chry-ptus was first presented in three variations on April 6th, 1971 in the auditorium of the New York Cultural Center.

Vice-Versa, etc… and Chry-ptus will be performed by Charles Curtis and Judith Hamann using newly produced reel-to-reel tape editions of the original masters, part of a series produced by Blank Forms in collaboration with Radigue for the high quality diffusion of her work. 

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