Engineers’ Notebooks the Geometry of Color

ment on the species. The parallel of loss in human experiences is the perception of and adjustment to altered boundaries. In order to fully support the depth and range of the emotional and psychological content of the work, I felt a live musical performance appropriate . It also seemed like a good opportunity to put into practice a new live performance system with which I had been experimenting. In this work, my solo instrumental performance is enlarged (by a sophisticated computer-music system) to orchestral levels of musical expression. The system is designed to allow a wide variety of configurations of musical textures, rhythms, recorded sounds, signal processing , accompaniment, etc., to be called up at will by a performer. However , none of the actual musical material is determined in advance. Everything is derived during the performance from the notes and gestures of that performance. Polyphonic accompaniment can be based strictly or loosely on the harmonic, dynamic and rhythmic structure of the performed material. In the Sudden Changes performance, I performed on a soprano saxophone equipped with a pickup and an IVL pitch-to-Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) converter. The system included a NeXT computer , Lexicon signal processors and Yamaha synthesizers. The NeXT computer controlled the configuration of the system, processed musical mateFig . 4. MaryJean Kenton, With a Sealed System Which is Kept to Lower, stone quarry, latex, stinging nettles, 1988-1989. This work is a detail from an ongoing installation of horticulture , natura11y occurring materials and paint. (Photo:JimRosenberg) '~" - -- . ( "".......---..~.:-.- . . .'-~ ".oj, r -r~:;'~ . Editor's Note: The Geometry of ColOT (Fig. 4), is an ongoing installation ofhorticulture. naturally occurring materials and paint that is limited only by the boundaries of the 49-acre farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, on which MaryJean Kenton lives and works. The farm contains woods and meadow, an old stone quarry and a creek. Kenton studied catalogs and ordered hundreds of cultivars of daylilies and irises with regard to their shape and colors. She planted them in an integrated fashion with the already existing wild orange daylilies, old apple trees, pear trees, weeds and wild berries. Most environmental installations are planned from a sculptural point ofview, but, since Kenton is a painter, The Geometry of Colorwas planned in a 'painterly' manner. Plantings were set out with regard to color in ways that are related to Kenton's Engineers'Notebooks-notebooks containing graphed pages that have been filled with thousands of painted marks. She works on The Geometry of Color and the Engineers'Notebooks together and feels that the works are related and complementary. Michael McNabb, 120 Virginia Ave., San Francisco, CA 94110, U.S.A. E-Mail: mmcnabb@next.com Sudden Changes is a new work for five dancers by choreographer Liss Fain for the LissFain DanceCompany. It premiered at the New Performance Gallery in San Francisco in May 1991. Fain commissioned me to produce an original score for the work. Sudden Changes consists of (in her words) a series of episodes that originate in real-life events, evolving from her interest in reactions to environmental loss and diminishment. The movement idiom originates in descriptions of animal behavior and environments and the effects ofland developTHE MUSIC FOR SUDDEN CHANGES MaryJean Kenton, Box 42, Merrittstown , PA 15463, U.S.A. E-mail: cgh!amanueljr@dsLcom I live on Grey-brown Podzolic soil near the base of the Appalachians. The technology of firearms turned forest into farmland, but now it is seeded with broken tractor parts and the bones of our indigenous disappeared . I look for traces of the Monongahela People in the wild plants they might have used, in kinds of trees they might have loved, in the wings of the Great Horned Owl I buried in the orchard. The apple trees in the orchard are old ones, of no commercial value. Snow Apple, Catshead, Blue Pearmain -the appeal of antique names whets urges to identify. Bred by chance, the same as us, and subject to rain concerning which the term 'postindustrial ' does not apply, they suffer from the abnormally warm winter days the past few years have offered. In spring their blossoms blow and fall like brushstrokes in my notebooks, disappearing into soil whose gridding is guarded...