Double Square video excerpt
October 17, 2009
Excerpt from Double Square (2009) color animation with sound, 5 min. 54 sec.
Double Square was created in part by extending a 1968 Philip Glass work for two flutes into an audiovisual score used by custom software to simultaneously generate a grid-based animation and microsonic, multichannel sound.
Installation at Diapason
April 3, 2008
Diapason presents
Saturdays
April 5, 12,19 & 26
2-8 p.m.
Opening Reception: April 5, 6-8 p.m.
David Galbraith
lgOpre
an audiovisual installation
lgOpre (luh-GOP-ruh) is an audiovisual installation of multichannel sound and projected digital animation created with real-time software that links vintage grid pattern algorithms with vinyl record lock-groove samples. The software behind lgOpre, written by the artist, uses customized abstract image generation routines (c.1970), appropriated color schemes, and self-similar number patterns to create an animation that is also a visual controller for a modular digital sound studio. Each of the 34 grid pattern building blocks used for lgOpre is mapped to its own set of processed and unmodified lock-groove samples. The color of the underlying grid is used to select which sound will play as the basic grids from each animation frame are visually highlighted in turn for a determinate duration before advancing to the next frame. Aleatoric color scheme variants introduce a degree of chance to the sound-image mapping.
Compositionally, lgOpre first introduces each visual building block as a full-screen matrix using black and white, grayscale or a few saturated colors to create monochromes or relatively simple patterns accompanied by solo sound samples. The screen splits in half horizontally, then vertically, producing four quadrants with increasing pattern complexity. New color schemes and faster sequencing within a single animation frame trigger the look of blocky color video games or visualized computer core dumps and densely layered multichannel sound.
Locked grooves and the title of Galbraith’s 2002 video Open Research which juxtaposed animated black and white ‘big bit’ grids with human-sized inflatable sculpture from the late-1960s helped give lgOpre its name: locked groove Open research.
lgOpre installation documentation (excerpt)
April 2, 2008
lgOpre installation documentation video excerpt, 2:10. lgOpre (pronounced luh-GOP-ruh) uses software written by the artist to link grid patterns with vinyl record lock-groove samples. Full-screen elemental grids accompanied by a solo sound samples give way to the look of blocky color video games or computer core dumps and densely layered multichannel sound. Installation at Diapason Gallery, April 2008.
lgOpre (detail) video excerpt
April 1, 2008
Excerpt from lgOpre (2008) color animation with sound, 5:12.
Detail animation from the lgOpre installation with a stereo mix made from the original 8-channel sound.
Composition 2005 No. 1 installation at Diapason
September 1, 2005
Composition 2005 No. 1: Two Straight Lines Displaced, Nudged and Gently Spun
This exhibition pairs Galbraith’s 2003 mixed media work on paper Two Straight Lines For La Monte Young, originally shown in Berlin and on view at Diapason for the first time in New York, with a new work for multichannel sound entitled Composition 2005 No. 1.
The work on paper references American composer La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 No. 10 which reads ‘draw a straight line and follow it.’ Galbraith’s Two Straight Lines For La Monte Young uses twenty pages of tabular random permutations of integer numbers overlaid with systematically placed small blue dots. These pages are pinned to the wall each skewed so the blue dots produce a pair of vertical straight lines each over six feet long. With this work Galbraith breaks from the singular act called for by Young’s score and instead creates through repetition and serial techniques two straight lines that emerge from an infinite numeric field.
For Composition 2005 No. 1 Galbraith transformed Two Straight Lines For La Monte Young into a graphic score for string quartet. Galbraith realized this score by recording the process of hand tuning each note using his self-built analog electronic sound oscillators. The work is animated by the micro-intervallic tension between two sets of pitches: the ‘absolute’ sine tones determined by graphical analysis and the ‘string’ tones which are derived from the ‘absolute’ tones by quantizing each to the nearest note of a justly intoned scale. The final work is a multichannel edit of the ‘absolute’ manually tuned quadrature oscillator sine tones, digitally synthesized reference tones, and the recordings of the ‘string’ tone manual tuning process.
Exhibition announcement on Diapason website (opens in a new window)
Two Straight Lines For La Monte Young, mixed media work on paper, 2003.