BASCHET SOUND SCULPTURE KYOTO 2013

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1 BASCHET SOUND SCULPTURE KYOTO 2013 Preface: This article is the transcription of the conference about the Baschet Sound Sculpture given in the University of Arts of Kyoto City, gently translated by Dr.Kakinuma after the restoration of two original Baschet masterpieces from 1970, and just before a concert played on them with Nagata Sachiko. Here is space for a technical chapter we then had to shrink, and we hope now you ll have time to think over. The lecture was illustrated with lots of pictures, fragments of videos and sounds. We have chosen a few of them and ad some links for you to find it on internet. 1. Introduction: from HISTORY to FUTURE Dear professors, students, colleagues and friends. It is such a honor and a pleasure to be here with you, to talk about the Baschet Sound Sculpture. As you may know I am in Japan for the restoration of the original Baschet Sound Sculture from Osaka 1970 EXPO, as I am representing the new Baschet Sound Sculpture Workshop at the University of Barcelona, working with François Baschet Sensei himself. It is a honor for us all to be here in Japan and find that still there is interest on the subject. So for me -representing the new generation of artists, musicians and researchers-, it is a great chance to share what we know, to share what we love, with you all. I will try to summarize in a short time the ideas and history of the Baschet Brothers, as it is interesting itself as history, but also because nowadays there are many new things happening with the Baschet Sound Sculpture all around the world, and you may be interested to take part of it. The Baschet s works, has always wanted to be a challenge, an invitation to everyone, so here we are! 2. BASCHET SOUND SCULPTURE The Baschet Brothers has been developing an extensive and complex corpus of Works for 60 years, so today I hope we can have a short and intense glimpse about it. If you are further interested, there are books and internet pages to go deeper, and also now you will have the chance of listening and playing some of their Sound Sculptures at the Osaka Tekkoukan. I have the blessing of knowing personally both Baschet Brothers, as they are old and wise men, and they teach me what they know and what they do. It took years for me to read, listen, try and experiment by myself. The Baschet s works are quite complex to talk about but easy to play them, so it becomes also easy to understand how it works if you try. The main Baschet s works can be summarized by the formula of Art + Science + Public participation. It is a special combination that mixes experimental acoustics with a social approach to arts. This is why it can be interesting to visual and spatial artists, and also to musicians, teachers, and provably everyone, as long as the sound itself is usually attractive to human beings. This interdisciplinary approach lead the Baschet Brothers to collaborate with many different people in different fields, so they developed their organologic principles to fit the specific purposes and circumstances. We will briefly se the application of their ideas in the Arts and the Music field, but also in the Pedagogical field.

2 3. ART + SCIENCE + PARTICIPATION: Research and Innovation since 1952 So let s start by the beginning: Bernard Baschet was born in 1918, François Baschet was born But they could not really start their sound art career until 1952, after the Second World War. The Baschet brothers where in the French resistance against the Nazis, fighting the Fascism, so when the war was over they decided to use their lives in doing something beautiful, doing what they like, doing something that other people can enjoy. Young François Baschet always wanted to be a sculptor like Rodin, and after the war he travelled the world with a special guitar he invented, playing Argentinian tangos and finding that music is a great mean for non verbal communication, so when he came back to Paris he started working with his brother Bernard, who was engineer, and also very interested in the new electroacoustic music of this period. This is quite important because the same sensibility that brought Pierre Shaeffer and his colleagues to record and process everyday sounds to find new kinds of musicality -this experimental need for different sounds so characteristic of the 20 th century- lead the Baschet brothers to work together with basic acoustic materials to find interesting sounds, new sounds that people can play without the need of electroacoustic manipulating skills. So the Baschet started studying every classical author in organology, from the physics of the ancient Greeks like Pitagoras to the XX century. They find many interesting acoustic principles, known by the scientists like Ernst Chladni, which never had been applied in any musical instrument. So from then on they always combine studies and experimental working, trying new combinations of materials and shapes, to obtain different sounds and create new sound objects. This is what they called Sound Sculptures. Many of these objects appeared in strange attractive shapes, different to any known instrument. So people would have to interact with the object to find out what kind of sound can be produced, without any need of previous musical knowledge. The Baschet brothers find themselves in a stimulating process of finding new ideas to apply in many different directions. They were building objects that could be exposed as a sculpture, and also could be played by musicians in concerts. So they started collaborating with Jacques and Ivonne Lasry, organ players, who worked with the Baschet for the first decade to develop the principles in new ways, and step by step find what could be changed to improve the playability, the sound, the tuning, etc. Since these first days, the Baschet has been writing down their knowledge in multiple international patents and sharing his ideas in books, essays and workshops with students. Public participation: PLEASE PLAY It is difficult to find information of the first period of their activities, because it was so new and different to anything else that the art reviewers and journalists didn t know what to write about. The Baschet teamwork was giving concerts and after the audience was invited to play the structures. Also soon they started making exhibitions, like the one at Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, in which they change the traditional rule in museums about not touching any art piece: they invited everyone to play the sculptures, or the piece was not complete! The called this HANDS ON exhibitions. At that time interactivity was not common as it is now so it was a great success. Every visitor could play, be free to do what they want, so the Baschet Sound Sculptures were open and never finished until a new person was trying its own playing. This was a new and radical idea about the social function of arts. Baschet wanted everyone to discover their abilities, to open their sensibility and imagination. This was against many established ideas about the roles of the artists and the audiences. Baschet wanted to be in the museums and galleries of course, but really wanted to be with the people in the street.

3 4. BASCHET S MODULAR ORGANOLOGY After studying many sources -authors and objects they opened like surgeons does- they found a new way of understanding every sound device. They find the essential parts and functions that every existing sound object have. So they established a chart analyzing and decomposing every known object, and they also could imagine every new possible combination of this items, it was just a question of time and good will. This represents a modular conception of functions and elements that everyone can understand even if not knowing about physics in academic mathematic parameters. It focuses on understanding the sound phenomena and acoustic behavior of materials and combined shapes. Nowadays we the new generations are using this conception to invent new kind of structures and sounds. It could take long time now to go into details, but Baschet like to summarize it in a simple organologic schema. They demonstrate that every sounding device presents at least 3 of these 5 elements or functions: -A vibrating element. -An energy/action to generate wave on the vibrating element. -A way to drive inner wave to air. -A way to modify the wave frequency, implement any sort of scale, etc. -Other elements that produces additional waves and resonances Let s take a close look: -A vibrating element Shapes and materials must be considered and studied. Same material with different shape produces different vibrating patterns. For instance, with aluminum, you can either have a Gong or a tuning fork, with different timbers and sound colors. -An Energy/action to generate wave on the vibrating element. We might be able to stimulate the vibrating element, depending on the dimensions and position of it. There are many different ways to do it, we may need to strike, beat, pull, pluck, blow, bow and rub, with hands or a great variety of devices as sticks, mallets, plectrums, or glass rods, etc. -A way to drive inner waves to air. Many waves remain inside materials so there is no sound produced, so we have to find the way to transmit the vibration to the air so we can listen to it. Baschet tried tuned pipes like in Gamelans, membranes, inflatable balloons and many different kinds of cones and bended metal sheets. -A way to modify the wave frequency, implement any sort of scale, etc. This can be done by adding more vibrating elements or applying devices to modify its lengths or tensions. -Other elements that produces additional waves and resonances Some instruments, such as Viola d Amore and Indian Sitars, present sets of stings that resonate by sympathy. Think about the pedal of the Piano that releases all the strings free for a reverberation effect, or even the tighten string inside a snare drum to chance the sound of the membrane adding great amount of noisy frequencies. Later on, if you want we can discuss about this and find how this chart helps us to understand how a Violin, a Piano, an Organ, a Trumpet, a Shiamishen or a Koto produces its sounds, but also how and why a Suikinkutsu sounds. This Schema has been used by the Baschet for 60 years and they never finished finding new possibilities. It is very charming to see how younger generations of musicians and sculptors take these ideas and imagine new structures. Of course, as the Baschet Workshop at the Barcelona University, we are having new ideas and the Baschet brothers are happy to see that the evolution is going on.

4 5. BASCHET ACOUSTIC APPLICATIONS The Baschet brothers created a huge family of sculptures and instruments, combining his ideas, mainly working on Stringed instruments (inflatable guitar, and other) Floating Percussions (free bars, pipes, plates, like gamelan or tubular bells, for fountains, windmills, etc) High Impedance Instruments and sculptures: acoustic impedance is a complex idea, maybe we do not need to talk much about. We can say that these Baschet structures use metal zungiri vibrating with low acoustic pressure and high internal amplitude. This energy is collected and amplified inside heavy metal bars, having low vibrating amplitude and high internal acoustic pressure. Therefore an energy conversion takes place, the energy of zungiri is amplified inside the heavy metal bar so it is ready to be driven to speakers where the energy is converted again into audible vibrations. If you are going to work on it, we can further on discuss about it. Let s just listen to it: Andreu Ubach s video with his Multisofon, Percussion with amplified rods, tonal tuning, widely multi-timbric. Amongst the Baschet High Impedance sound devices, there is a remarkable invention: the Cristal Baschet, the only family or system for new acoustic instruments of the XXth century. The vibrating elements are stainless zungiri, stimulated by glass rods. When rubbing them with moistened fingers, glass act like a bow in a violin, and the water acts like rosin. But this way is so much easy to produce a beautiful sound with no special technique training. It allows for great intuitive control of sound length and dynamics, just feeling the vibrations in your fingertips. This discovery was perfect for generating new kinds of sounds and therefore new music, but also it was an easy way for everyone's amazing participation in SoundScultupture exhibitions. Listen here to Cristal Baschet played by Michel Deneuve. EBISU-8 Correspondances 1er movement.

5 6. INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITY : EXHIBITIONS / MUSICAL APROACH / PEDAGOGICAL After 60 years, all this principles lead the Baschet Brothers to work and share the joy of producing sounds all over the world. -Exhibitions in galleries and museums, such as: Paris, New York MOMA, London Barbican Centre, Toronto, Berlin, Denmark, Chicago, Mexico Olympics 68, Madrid, Barcelona, and Osaka (mochiron!), amongst others -Musical approach: So after 60 years, many musicians used this diverse instruments for concerts, radio, movie original soundtrack, dancing, etc. Most of them focused on abstract avantgarde or free improvisation music; and other like Deneuve, Bousquet, Tardieux, focused on ancient, classical, baroque and modern tonal repertoire, from Purcell, to Bach and Mozart, or Satie, Pärt and Piazzolla for instance. Also, Takemitsu Sensei composed for Baschet structures, being played in 1970 by Yamash'ta Sensei. -Pedagogy: Following their wishes of an inclusive art for everyone, they developed a set of 14 little structures, specially designed for pedagogical purposes. It has been sold, rented and used since the 80' in hundreds of institutions, especially in France, where Bernard Baschet organize a network association of teachers of this new method of "sound awakening". This called Pedagogical Instrumentarium is a set of combining timbers in juxtaposition to open everyone's ears and learn to listen to complex sounds, listen to own playing and listen to our mates in order to enjoy and play together. It has been successfully used with different groups of people and with different ways of using, with children, adults, people with disabilities, and so Also François Baschet has always tried to share his ideas in projects with children and young people, students of arts and craftsmanship, showing them the physics of sound, and also hydraulics and Aeolian devices, to create sound-sculptures, sound-fountains and soundwindmills, in cooperative processes. François Sensei also wrote two books about his principles. He also designed a Do-it-yourself kit, so everyone will be able to buy the basic materials needed, all ready to combine as desired.

6 7. PRESENT TIMES and FUTURE HORIZON Nowadays, François Baschet has trusted our humble group at the Sound Art Laboratory of the Arts Faculty in Barcelona University, to preserve and develop his ideas. He has given us all the documentation he kept, for my Ph.D. about Baschet organology -pictures, sketches, recordings and so-, and trained our research group in metal bending, tuning and other necessary skills. He specially shares his feelings and experiences about his philosophy of participative art. Also, the Baschet Catalan collaborators (Casadevall-San, Ubach-San and others), join the workshop at the university. So nowadays we go on together continuing our Sensei s activities. We enjoy working in building, research, invention, teaching, sharing, participative exhibition, music and so other like restoration and international collaboration. We are working on the creation of a Gamelan Baschet project, we are taking also the paths of electroacoustic sound processing, and we also collaborate with other Catalan musicians, as Nico Roig, for instance. We have tried new materials, shapes and methods, to generate sound waves and irradiate them, for sculpture and instruments, setting our structures in Rumania and Czech Republic. Last year we recombined Baschet ideas and invented an after-baschet acoustic keyboard, using tuning forks to generate sound waves and balloons as speakers. It is called "Clavinimbus", ("cloud-keyboard") and composer Maria Coma recorded an album with it. These ideas now open new ways for Sound Sculptures. As you can see we have many things to do! On the preservation and release tasks, we are on the process of digitalization of every Baschet documentation, new internet page, with the creation of full multimedia catalog, the translation of original Baschet s books to Spanish, and hopefully into Japanese, and many others, like helping the Museum Art of Chicago for their 2012 Baschet exhibition, and of course the Osaka 1907 masterpieces restoration. On the research and creative works, we are always open to find new partners to collaborate. We have been working in France, Rumania in homage to Brancusi Sensei, and in Czech Republic collaborating with the Bohemian skilled crystal artisans. Dr.Cerdà, the director of our Sound Laboratory is also collaborating with Mexican and Brazilian Universities. We notice that interest in Sound Art is growing exponentially, as it allows people with different backgrounds and abilities to cooperate, and it is always interesting for the audience. Interactivity, Soundscape works, sound installations, digital arts is today well known around the world. We can feel how the interest on acoustic sound is growing amongst younger generations, with tutorials and many resources for DIY -do it yourself- practices. So now you can imagine how proud the Baschet brothers can be, when they can see that people around the world take his ideas to new stages, and the evolution of their principles takes places, as it always does in science. For all us, the Baschet Brothers, and the following generations, it is impossible to express our delight of being here, to invite you all to take part of this process, and add your specific sensibility and ideas. We all have enjoyed so much with this sound adventure, and we wish to go on with it. By now, two original Baschet masterpieces are restored and fully operational. You can listen and play it in Osaka Tekkoukan. Now we hope we can go on with the restoration of the other original pieces as a way to preserve our sound roots, understanding what Baschet brothers propose, and take it to the future. Personally, I always had a great admiration for Japanese culture, philosophy and arts, and I can t wait to see what we can do together. Beautiful Kokusai Kyodo Kenkyu had been opened by Baschet. Now we only have to take the chance. I thank you all for your kind attention and interest, and hope you will enjoy our playing with Nagata-san, as much as we always do. Here you have our meishi. [ As we use to say with François Baschet Sensei, we are going to seriously have fun.

7 Domo Arigatou Gozaimasu.

The String Family. Bowed Strings. Plucked Strings. Musical Instruments More About Music

The String Family. Bowed Strings. Plucked Strings. Musical Instruments More About Music Musical Instruments More About Music The String Family The string family of instruments includes stringed instruments that can make sounds using one of two methods. Method 1: The sound is produced by moving