Moon ‘Venus.
Mercury dviars dupiter
Saturn Dranus Neptune Pluto
TIMERS
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T Dea a Gru @ Ari G:And a CrB ce Lyr § Vol 1 Cen ¢ Teo
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of Udo Kasemets
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M48 M&7M6 M25 M20 M67 M41 Me NS? M35 M21°M76 M36 MAT
M38 M23 M37 M46 Mi M18 Mie MS2 M29 MiO3 MIL: Ma oMa2
M107 M28 Mio M19 M55 Mi4¢ MI3.M69 M5°M3 M80 M15.
M30 M56 M68 M2 M54 M79 M53 72° M70 Ma MAL
M33 M81 M82 M83 M64 M63 M94 -NIO2 MS2 374
Ml0@ M95 M106 M77 M93 M8B M100 M49. M56
NG¢ 205 NGC 221 NGC 6822 NGC 185
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aC 447 40.196
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SITYSUCASp STIYO YATMpic BANG Xho Back
The function of art is to imitate nature
in its manner of operation.
- John Cage
TIMETRIP is divided into three parts, the first and last
with five interlocking subdivisions each:
PART ONE:ASTROSONOMICS ba
LUN (H) ARMONICS a 2
HARMONICES MUNDI OF JOHANNES KEPLER. 73
COMETALLICS .4
STELL (H) ARMONICS. 2.00.60. 6 00 essences 5
MESSIERMUSICS
with GALACTIQUASARICS............. 6
PART TWO: BIG BANG or TURNING THE TIMEGLOVE INSIDE OUT...... q
PART THREE: CHAOSMOSIS. . eevee ee z .8
QUARKANON sj eci:tielherenjae ways wed oem aie stele ee 9
HADRONDO. eee to
NUCLEARIA. s 11
NUCLEOTIDINGS.. 12
HELIXONG
with PROTEONATIONS,....seeeeseee eS(: ATRRSRE ics)
...is based on the premise that when we look at the night
sky, we see TIME - lights of heavenly bodies emitted
seconds (moon), minutes (sun, inner planets), hours (outer
planets), days (comets), lightyears, thousands and millions
of lightyears (stars, clusters, galaxies) ago; with
state-of-the-art telescopes we can reach the outer limit
of the universe, i.e. the beginning of TIME. In PART ONE
we travel from EARTH and NOW through the above phases at
ever-accelerating speed until we arrive at the limit of
the universe where there is NOTHING ON THE OTHER SIDE:
NO SPACE, NO TIME.
xe RRRCOURSE OF THE JOURNEY
PLANETS
MUSICS OF THE JOURNEY
EARTH LOOP from HARMONICES
MUNDI OF JOHANNES KEPLER)
WUN(H)ARMONTCS (= Lunar harmon-
ics): music for six sinewave
oscillators representing the six
lines of the I CHING hexagrams
pertaining to the Second Moon
of the lunar calendar
RMONICES MUNDI JO) IES
KEPLEI speed-manipulated
tape-loops of violin glissandi
representing the orbits of the
six planets of Kepler's Music
of the Spheres
COMETALLICS (= metallic comets):
improvisation on metal percussion
instruments standing in for
comets of various sizesTHE BRIG!
GALAXIES
SUPERCLUSTERS
RADIO GALAXIES
QUASARS
*
kee
STEL: ICS (= stellar
harmonics): music made of sine-
tone aggregates, their timings,
frequencies, densities, durations,
envelopes determined by the
lightyear distances, spectral
types and magnitudes of the stars
MESSIERMUSICS: glass percussion
improvisations based on photo-
imagery of star clusters, nebulae
and galaxies, catalogued by
Charles Messier, a French 18th-
century astronomer
with
GALACTIOUASARICS (= galactics
and quasarics): percussion music
for four sets of instruments of
distinctive characteristics
representing four categories of
phenomena
+e eeTURN THEE LOVE
So far we have travelled from NOW backwards in time and
thus arrived at the beginnings of our known universe. In
order to return to NOW we take our imaginary glove of time
- the five fingers of which pointed one by one to the five
phases of our trip (via the moon, the planets, the comets,
the stars and the galaxies) - and turn it inside out so
that we can follow time's forward flow through five phases
of cosmological evolution - the five fingers of the now
inverted glove pointing again to their corresponding
phases.
eke ee(= chaos ARS h smosis)
...Charts the course of the ermergence of cosmic life from
the beginnings of nuclear evolution through the pivotal
fusions of the chemical evolution
the DNA double-helix and the
chain.
COURSE OF THE JOURNEY
QUARKS...up...... down. ......5
strange. ..charmed
beauty. truth
green. .blue..red
SUBATOMIC PARTICLES..........
hadrons. ..leptons
baryons. ,.mesons
photons. ..protons
neutrons
to the structuring of
formation of the protein
COURSE OF THE MUSIC
QUARKANON (= quark canon):
multi-layered montage of
vocal sounds representing
the six flavours and three
colours of quarks
HADRONDO (= hadron rondo):
skin and wood percussion
sounds representing the
baryon and meson octets of
the hadron family of particles
and antiparticlesNUCLEAR EVOLUTION. ........5
hydrogen, .helium
ICLE
«carbon
nitrogen. .oxygen
BASES. .
adenine..
guanine..
TIC CODE. .
uuu
ucc
UGG
UAA
ccu
ccc
CAG
uUuc UUG
uUCG UCA
UGA UAU
cuu cuc
ccc ccG
CGG CGA
CAA GUU
GcU GCC
GGC GGG
GAG GAA
AUA ACU
AGU AGC
AAC AAG
tee
snickel
.zine
thymine
.cytosine
UGU UGC
UAC UAG
CcUG CUA
CCA CGU
CAU CAC
Guc GUG
GCG GCA
GGA GAU
AUU AUC
ACC ACG
AGG AGA
AAA
*
NUCLEARIA (= nuclear aria):
multi-layered montage of vocal
patternings depicting the
gradual nuclear fusion process
from hydrogen and helium up to
the production of metals such
as iron, cobalt, nickel, copper
and zine
NUCLEOTIDINGS: multi-layered
montage of vibraphone pattern-
ings representing the molecular
structures of the four
nucleotide bases
HELIXONG (= helix song):
multi-layered montage of vocal
tones representing the 64
codons in combination with the
20 amino acids as they combine
to form the DNA double helix
with
PROTEINATIONS (= protein rota-
tions): multi-layered sequences
of marimba patternings depicting
the formation of protein chains
kok keeTHE MAKING(S) OF TIMETRIP
This CD is the third incarnation of TIMETRIP. The first
TIMETRIP emerged in 1990 as a script for an elaborate
multi-media production involving sculptural displays,
computerized projections, field-recordings of natives’
voices, choreographed movements, and pre-recorded and live
musics, but remained only on paper. The second TIMETRIP
was a greatly reduced version of the original idea
tailored to feasible budgetary resources, discarding
digital technology (save for sound-recordings) and reducing
considerably the number of participants/contributors. The
realized performances of the revised script - featuring
dance (choreographed by Holly Small), slide projections
(by Reinhard Reitzenstein), pre-recorded sounds (edited
by Chris Devonshire), percussion music (played by Richard
Sacks and Gayle Young), and words about creation of
ancient and indigenous cultures (spoken by Paul Dutton
and chanted by Susan Layard) - took place in Toronto
October 5, 6, 7, 1992. These initial renditions of TIMETRIP
pear a subtitle ‘multimedia theatre to illuminate creation
myths, past and present', and were originally inspired by
the reading of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Since the recorded realization of TIMETRIP transports
it from a theatrical environment into a purely acoustical
space, there was a need to make appropriate adjustments.
In the live presentation of the piece much of the musicand choreography of the return journey consisted of
reshuffled materials of the initial travels. Now the music
of the BIG BANG and what follows it is almost entirely
newly conceived and composed. Speeches and chants have been
entirely omitted, and the contemplation of ‘creation myths’
has given way to a musical interpretation of scientifi-
cally obtained factual data pertaining to the evolution
of the universe. Information gained from reading Hubert
Reeves' Atoms of Silence provided much added stimulus for
the musical reworking of the return leg of the TIMETRIP.
Indeed, all musical structures of the entire score
have been derived from charts, tables and graphs describ-
ing the events in the universe which form the stepping
stones on our sonic timetravel. The method is straight-
forward and simple: sets of data depicting certain funda-
mental quantities in observed natural phenomena are matched
with corresponding sets of data referring to quantities
or qualities of sounds, or to their distribution in time
and space. Obviously these relationships are arbitrary,
but what is attempted here is a translation of the poetry
of nature and science into the poetry of sounds and
music. What follows is a step by step description of this
process.PART 1 — ASTROSONOMICS
..in its early phases (LUN(H)ARMONICS, HARMONICES MUNDI)
reflects concepts from an ancient culture (the Chinese
lunar calendar) and speculations of a scientist from an
earlier era (Johannes Kepler). But once the Solar System
has been left behind, modern astronomical observations
determine the character and timings of the musical
events. The distances from Earth of the stars, clusters,
nebulae, galaxies, quasars, etc. are in one-to-one corre-
spondence with the timings of the sounds which represent
them. In order to compress some ten billion lightyears
into a time bracket of fifteen minutes, it was necessary
to first equate each lightyear with a ten second span,
and then after each minute and a half raise logarithmi-
cally the count of lightyears within each ten second
segment to the next power of ten, i.e. 1'30" = 10
lightyears, 3' = 100 ly, 4'30" = 1,000 ly, etc., to
13'30" = 1,000,000,000 ly, 15" = 10,000,000,000 ly.
LUN(HJARMONICS traces the passage of the moon as it is
notated in the lunar calendar, which in turn has its
correspondences with the I CHING oracle system. The thirty
or twenty nine days of each of the twelve moons of the
lunar year are divided into five six-day (or five-day)
"weeks", each of the sixty "weeks" being represented by
one of the 64 I CHING hexagrams (the remaining four hexa-
grams standing in for the four seasons). The soundmateri-
al for the musical representation of the I CHING-relatedlunar calendar consists of six-tone sets of sine tones
tuned to the harmonic series of the foundation tone of 60
Hz (odd harmonics - YANG, even harmonics - YIN). At the
start of each moon six oscillators are set to the six
frequencies representing the six lines of the first hexa-
gram of the moon. Over a period of two minutes a gradual
(slowly sliding) retuning of the oscillators will lead to
the tuning of the second hexagram of the moon, and so
forth. It would take close to two hours to cover the com-
plete lunar year. This recording features the Second Moon
of the Lunar Year, chosen because it coincides with the
Vernal Equinox, the beginning of the astronomical year.
HARMONICES MUNDI OF JOHANNES KEPLER follows Kepler's
speculation that the orbits of the planets create sliding
musical tones within certain scopes of intervals, and
together they form a ‘Harmony of the Spheres’. In 1979
Yale professors Willie Ruff and John Rodgers, using
computer technology, produced an LP reproducing a sped-up
version of Kepler's ‘Harmony’ from the scientist's birth
year 1571 up to 1835. The present recording uses a similar
method to that of Ruff's and Rodgers' for projecting
Kepler's concept into audible range, but does it with
live sound material and elementary technology. Minute-long
tape loops representing Kepler's orbits at their calculated
frequencies and timings were first recorded in the basic
violin range, and then, by simply altering tape speed,
were transposed up or down until they appeared at the
proper relationships established by Kepler. (The Earth
loop is heard from the beginning of this track, is theneventually joined by those of the other planets which, in
turn, one by one take off to their proper orbits.)
COMETALLICS is an improvisation (because comets" appearances
are irregular) of single, separate, basically gentle and
quiet sounds, to be played on a variety of metal instru-
ments with extended decay (the comet's tail!), and avoiding
any regular patternings or repetitions.
STELL(HJARMONICS is an acoustic atlas of the seventy
brightest stars in the sky. Aggregates of two to six sine
tones between frequencies of 33 Hz and 3264 Hz represent
the individual stars. The distances of the stars are
indicated through the placement of the sounds in time in
accordance with the principles described above (Rigel
Kentaurus, the closest at 4 lightyears appears at 30"
from time count, the next, Sirius, 9 ly at 1'20", ete.;
the farthest bright star, Naos, 2,300 ly, is sounded at
4'46"). The spectral types of the stars show in the numbers
of tones and densities of the intervals representing them,
and their apparent and absolute magnitudes are reflected
through the durations and envelopes of the aggregates.
MESSIERMUSICS is a score for a percussionist using glass
instruments. The score is made up of photographs of clus-
ters, nebulae and galaxies (taken by American astropho-
tographers John H. Mallas and Evered Kreimer and published
as ‘Messier Album' by Sky Publishing Co., Cambridge,
Massachusets) depicting the 110 entries of the catalogue
compiled in the second half of the 18th century by theFrench astronomer Charles Messier. The timings of sounds
relate again to the distances of the celestial events.
Although the photo-images serve as stimulants for impro-
vised gestures, the performer has to follow certain
rules, such as establishing, either through the choice of
instruments and/or playing modes, distinctivnesses of the
categories of events (clusters, nebulae, galaxies) as
well as of their subeategories (open and globular clus-
ters, planetary and diffuse nebulae, elliptical, spiral,
barred spiral and irregular galaxies).
GALACTIQUASARICS move out from the Milky Way to the far-
ther realms of galaxy groups, superclusters of galaxies,
radiogalaxies and quasars. Similarly to the previous
score, the performer is requested to produce definitive
timbral and playing mode distinctions between and within
the listed categories, their subcategories, and also
sounds which would stand apart from those of the Messier
catalogue. While in the latter the performer was respond-
ing to visual images, here he is reaching out to a realm
beyond human vision, to the acoustic edge of the universe.TURNING THE TIMEEL OYE INSIDE OUT
..was produced by compressing the last two minutes of
GALACTIQUASARICS (featuring the music of radiogalaxies
and quasars) first into 60 seconds, then into 30 seconds,
15 seconds, 7.5 seconds, 3.75 seconds, and so on toward
infinity, i.e. the end of time; and then reversing the
process by having corresponding compressions, in inverted
order, of the first two minutes of QUARKANON emerge from
what the ancients described as the ‘anteriority of nonex-
istence'.PART 3 — CHAOSMOSIS
...is a musical-poetic mapping of some phases of the evo-
lutionary process set into motion by the Big Bang, trac-
ing the course from the ‘quark soup' of the first one
billionth of a second of the universe to the life-forming
‘primordial soup! and the emergence of genetic processes
some eleven billion years later. Tables listing the vari-
ous interactions of subatomic particles, nuclei, atoms,
molecules, bases and acids which contribute to this
everongoing evolutionary process form the backbone of the
musical scores depicting it. Complementary non-Western
concepts, presenting fascinating parallels to scientists’
observations, have been most useful for structuring the
musics, The sound sources for the musical travels in the
first part of the TIMETRIP were sine tone oscillators,
violin, and a great array of percussion instruments of
many varieties. In contrast, the nuclear/chemical/biolog-
ical half of the journey is portrayed through most eco-
nomical means: a single human voice and a graded selec-
tion of percussion instruments of limited timbre and
range, starting with wood and skin, moving then to metal
and finally to a full compass marimba. The treatment of
the sound input - samples of single tones or elementary
patterns or rhythms - is, in keeping with the early
stages of evolution, most "primitive". Cumulative dub-
bings and programmed organization of time - all based on
data culled from various scientific tables - are the
methods used throughout the final section of TIMETRIP.QUARKANON is a canonic mix of utterings (on odd harmonics
of the note 'a' compressed into the range of two octaves)
of words representing the six 'flavours' (down, up, strange,
charmed, beauty, truth) and the three ‘colours' (red,
green, blue) of the still unexplainable quarks (cf. James
Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake':"Three quarks for Muster Mark!").
HADRONDO brings into play the families of particles
which evolve from various combinations of quarks and
antiquarks: the group of hadrons, and its subdivisions
mesons and baryons. Physicists recognize patternings of both
mesons and baryons as octets with very definitive built-in
symmetries, Fritjof Capra in his 'Tao of Physics' draws
many parallels between a number of Eastern and Western
concepts. It does not take much imagination to relate the
meson and baryon octets with their unique symmetries to
the two trigram octets (the Pre-Heaven and Later Heaven)
of the I CHING, with their respective symmetries.
Moreover, the analysis of I CHING hexagrams contains also
the observation of their ‘nuclear hexagrams'. Since the
baryons proton and neutron together with the lepton elec-
tron play a key role in the nuclear/chemical process, it
was (poetically) logical to equate the two classes of
instruments - wood and skin percussion of indefinite pitch
- with the meson and baryon octets, and thus also with
the two I CHING octets, and then make use of these corre-
spondences to structure the music according to principles
which govern the special system of ‘nuclear hexagrams'.NUCLEARIA portrays the path of the nuclear/chemical
process from the early emergence of hydrogen and helium
through the fusion of first carbon and oxygen, then mag-
nesium and silicon, and so on, up to the formation of such
metals as iron, cobalt, nickel, copper and zinc. The musical
score is derived from a graph depicting the neutron num-
pers of atoms of the chemical elements on the horizontal
axis, and proton/electron numbers on the vertical. Two
sets of simple patterns from one to eight notes on five
pitches represent the neutron and proton numbers from one
to eight. Simply by adding layers of patterns standing
for certain numbers, every five second period introduces
a new proton/neutron interaction and thus contributes to
the gradual “thickening of the evolutionary plot".
NUCLEOTIDINGS features the four nucleotide bases adenine,
cytosine, guanine and thymine which form the links in the
genetic molecular chain DNA. The same sound patterns which
represented the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms
in NUCLEARIA, are again used here, but now in sequential
and superimposed arrangements derived from the molecular
structures of the four bases. After first being exposed
one by one, they make a repeated appearance imitating the
A and C G base-pairing scheme of the DNA helix.
HELIXONG is based on the structural parallels between the
genetic code, the binary numerical system and the sixty
four I CHING hexagrams (as first pointed out by the
German thinker Martin Schénberger in ‘The Hidden Key toLife'). The eight first odd harmonics of the series based
on the tone ‘a' (compressed into a two octave range), and
their mirrored correspondents of the inverted "sub-harmonic"
series stand for the eight lower and upper trigrams
respectively of the I CHING system, and are paired to
produce the sixty-four hexagrams-cum-links of the DNA chain.
The interlocked weaving in and out of the pairs of sounds,
and their stereophonic movement and distribution between
the speakers corresponds with the structure of the helix.
PROTEINATIONS complete the protein-producing program of
the DNA RNA process. Since the formation of proteins is a
transfer of information from DNA into another evolving
state, the same sound material as in HELIXONG serves to
illuminate this process. The tones of the ‘'a'-based har-
monic and "sub-harmonic" series (only here in groupings
from one to eight rhythmically distributed sounds, rather
than single sustained tones of HELIXONG; and spread over
four octaves) are again used to build the sixty-four
hexagrams which all make their initial appearances in
syne with their corresponding hexagrams in HELIXONG. Once
each hexagram has been entered, it undergoes a mutation
process (described by Diana ffarington Hook in her book
'I CHING and Mankind') by which it stepwise changes into
its yin/yang opposite, and then continues the transforma-
tion process until it reaches the original. As in
HELIXONG, there is an incessant interplay between the
emerging strands of never-repeating life-forming events.
se RHpig BAWe Xho Back
a sonic celestial voyage from here and now
to the end of the universe
and
from the beginning of time
a sonic cosmological journey to here and now
Conceived and composed* by UDO KASEMETS
with technical collaboration by CHRIS DEVONSHIRE
sound input by
ADELE ARMIN (RAAD violin)
CHRIS DEVONSHIRE (electro-acoustics)
SUSAN LAYARD (voice)
MARC SABAT (ZETA violin)
RICHARD SACKS (percussion)
Producer, liner notes digitally recorded and mixed at
and cover design: Udo Kasemets Charles Street Video
in Toronto, Canada
€D design: Rossignol + Associates
Digital mastering: Scott Murley
Laquer Channel
SUN (ARTIFACT
MUS;
0 ug
* 1990 - 1993Moon ‘Venus.
Mercury dviars dupiter
Saturn Dranus Neptune Pluto
TIMERS
@Cen a CMA @ CM a Agi A bee etme
‘B Gem « Boo a FsAle Aur @ Gem 6 cen 8: cet ¢: Oph
T Dea a Gru @ Ari G:And a CrB ce Lyr § Vol 1 Cen ¢ Teo
Z UMa & Aur a And @: ya 8 UML t Gem & Pex 'r Leo w TrA @ UMa f CMa
@ Tau @ Eri o cet A Car ao: Cas: Ho UMa-€ Sox-8 Tau a Car 4 eracr: And
@ Cru @ Vir a Soe 8 Grieg Paver Ord: Lsco € Carn Sco 7 Vel B Cry
I Car a Per @ Sco: OFE B Cen é CMa a UMA B Ord Boek
of Udo Kasemets
Oya
Ori € Ori @ Cyg k ‘Ori # oma 2 pup M45 444 MOS HT NGA:
M48 M&7M6 M25 M20 M67 M41 Me NS? M35 M21°M76 M36 MAT
M38 M23 M37 M46 Mi M18 Mie MS2 M29 MiO3 MIL: Ma oMa2
M107 M28 Mio M19 M55 Mi4¢ MI3.M69 M5°M3 M80 M15.
M30 M56 M68 M2 M54 M79 M53 72° M70 Ma MAL
M33 M81 M82 M83 M64 M63 M94 -NIO2 MS2 374
Ml0@ M95 M106 M77 M93 M8B M100 M49. M56
NG¢ 205 NGC 221 NGC 6822 NGC 185
NGC 147 NGC 5128 3c 405
30.244 3C 273 3c 48
aC 447 40.196
OW: 47a
SITYSUCASp STIYO YATMhi duane
up quark strange
Be BC
down quark
quark charmed quark beauty
quark truth quark photon lepton
neutrino electron muon hadron meson
pion kaon eta baryon omega cascade sigma
lambda neutron proton r ve vu -ve -vu e
HQ -0=L.-L aen-
ze E- -E+ -=° -Z- n -n p -p atom H He Li
m+ 1° m- K+ K® -K° =K-
N O F Ne Na Mg Al Si PS Cl Ar K
-e+
Ca Sc Ti V CroMn
Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr Rb Sr ¥ Zr Nb Mo Te Ru Rh Pd Ag
thymine
Gln Gly
Tyr val
UGC UGG
CUA ccU
CAU CAC
Gcu ccc
GGA GAU
AUC AUG
ACG ACA
AGG AGA
AAC AAG
AAA
Sjeuesey opn jo
guanine
His Ile
uuu uuc
UGA UAU
ccc CcG
CAG CAA
GCG GCA
GAC GAG
AUA ACU
AGU AGC
AAU
mL
ca In sn sb Ti I XeCs Ba La Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd
Tm yb Lu Hf Ta W Re OsIr Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At
Ac Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Mv No Lw adenine
cytosine Asp Glu Ala Arg Asn Cys
Leu Lys Met Phe Pro Ser Thr Trp
UUG UUA UCU Ucc UCG UCA UGU
UAC UAG UAA CUU CUC CcUG
CCA CGU CGC CGG CGA
GUU GUC GUG GUA
GGU GGC GGG
GAA AUU
Acc
n Ae
Tbh Dy Ho Er
Rn Fr Ra
| 925 longfelow Ave
Mississauga
Ontorie, Canada
LSH 2x9
wit
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0
tol
with chris devonshire