iMMERSE! with Charlie Morrow

“I define immersive as the first time I realized that there was a bigger universe than my daily life.” 

David First is a many-sided composer-musician having played in Dead Cheese, a hippie guitar band in his youth, performed with Cecil Taylor in Carnegie Hall, produced many records of minimalist drone music some of which were released on Phill Niblockʼs XI label, he’s played in rowdy bar bands, led the no-wavish band the Notekillers, which had a significant influence on Sonic Youth and he has even conducted a Mummerʼs String Band in various Philly parades. The Village Voice once described him as "a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young."

He’s performed at most of the avant garde’s hallowed halls including The Kitchen, Bang On A Can, Central Park Summerstage, The Knitting Factory, Tonic, the Deep Listening Institute, CBGBʼs as well as De Ijsbreker in Amsterdam and many festivals throughout Europe. 

Samples Playlist

Subjects touched upon: drones, bar bands, rock & roll bands, Lamonte Young, Dave’s Waves, Sunview Luncheonette Greenpoint, psychedelic revolution, poet Jerome Rothenberg, bending notes, Douglas Kahn, minimalist tendencies, free jazz, world music, Meteor Crater AZ, the heavens, the Kitchen, Phill Niblock, guitar, oscillators, signal generators, Muddy Waters, electronic music, Dennis Sandole, Hermann von Helmholtz, ancient voltaic cells, Harry Partch, Charles Ives, the minor third, blues, Gert Stern, new age, pseudo-science, Schumann resonances, improv, Discman, electrical engineer father, heterodyning, pursuit of magic, Canal Street ... 

mix by b/art - Wreck This Mess

Robin Sip as a Dutch writer-producer-director and CEO of Mirage3DRobin is best known for productions like Mars 1001, Dinosaurs at Dusk, Origins of Life, Natural Selection & Dawn of the Space Age, which was the world’s first 3D fulldome film. Sip is also an award-winning pioneer of special venue 3D cinema & his Mirage3D is a leading fulldome-VR producer, having produced some 20 fulldome shows.

He began his professional life as a computer engineer, moved on to become a 3D modeler, & eventually, a writer-director. More recently, he has focused His is on the improvement of live action capture for domes, with the design of new camera rigs for films & fulldome-VR productions.

I met Robin over a decade ago in Denver, Colorado when his work was featured by Dan Neefus in the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Since then, we’ve collaborated on the creation of the Planetarium version of the feature documentary Moonwalk One on the anniversary of Apollo 11. It has my music & Sound by Robin.

Topics discussed: 

mix by b/art - Wreck This Mess

Phill Niblock migrated to New York after completing a BA in economics at Indiana University, determined to pursue his passions: photography and film, often documenting jazz and modern dance performances. [Playlist below]

But, despite having no formal musical training, he soon found himself inspired by the New York music scene and immersed himself in experimental music, specifically loud sound, microtonal work, minimalism, and drones, producing works of often epic length. Fifty years later we can see how influential he has been in these genres with his copious output of records, videos and films and having won numerous awards along the way. 

He has served as director of the Experimental Intermedia foundation for avant-garde music since 1985 and curates the record label XI. Niblock’s films includes a series called The Movement of People Working, which features workers at work in mostly rural setting worldwide.

Niblock has often collaborated with musicians, which include David First, Lee Renaldo, Thurston Moore, Susan Stenger, Al Margolis, and David Soldier as well as with me. 

He just turned 90. He and I first connected in the 1970s when he attended Rhys Chatham’s presentation of my Spirit Voices in the Kitchen of the Broadway Central Hotel. He invited me to perform at his loft in Chinatown where he had just begin what has become a historic series. He came to my home sound studio on West End Avenue and West 77th Street for a session. I engineered and removed all the pauses from his solo cello work, making it a drone work. Phill's sunsets shone in our 1987 International TV Solstice. His Glittering Stream graced our Winter Solstice Celebration 2020. 

Topics discussed by Morrow and Niblock: immersion, Lenny Tristan, Empress Dowager Cixi, China, rule of thirds, photography, high fidelity, history of hifi, speakers, dark room techniques, New York City water, performances, listening to records as immersion, tenement life, Mingus, Ellington, Monk, alcoholism, loops, file storage, loud sound, tech and gear, sound editing, reel to reel, archives, old trains, wire recorders ...

Vitiello, a New York native, is an internationally recognized sound artist and mainstay of the New York scene since his early days as a punk guitarist.  He has been influenced by Nam June Paik, has collaborated with Scanner, Pauline Oliveros and Frances-Marie Utti. He is also an electronic musician and visual artist. And, according to Morrow, “an absolute Geiger Counter for places.”

In 1999 he did a residency at the World Trade Center managing to capture the Towers’s swaying in the wind and recorded the creaking and cracking of the building’s skeleton. He has produced countless recordings on various labels such as Sub Rosa and has had many solo exhibitions that combine sound,  installations, photos and drawings at museums and galleries and has been part of many Group shows including Soundings: Contemporary Score at MOMA, the Whitney and the Sydney Biennale. Vitiello serves as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Kinetic Imaging department.

I met Stephen in the 1980s. We worked together on Nam Jun Paik’s Zapping for Swatch watch. Then on some of Paik’s soundtracks, including "Did George Sand Kill Chopin." Stephen curated the show,  New Sounds New York, for the Kitchen in New York. It included the New York unveiling of my patended 3D soundcube with series of commissioned works including his most evocative, “Cinematic, With Crashing Roof,” one of 12 designed for the cube by an array of artists.

Samples Playlist

Pierre Brand began sound mixing and editing for film in 1994 and has made a name for himself on feature films such as Ghosted and Trial by Fire and on international documentaries of note such as Blue Note A story of Modern Jazz, Absolute Warhola, Wildnis Europa and The Hunt for Gaddafi's Billions.

He attended the Berklee College of Music and currently works out of his Primetime Studio in Hamburg He has collaborated with me on planetarium installations using MorrowSound software. We work together on the International Planetarium Society immersive sound committee, which has created a survey on sound practise in Planetariums. 

Playlist iMMERSE! Podcast 26

excerpts of Charlie Morrow trax & examples of Pierre Brand’s sound mixing 

The Fire  Trial by Fire (Henry Jackman) • Pierre Brand

This is a summer interlude, a special remixed iMMERSE! version of the summer of 2022 broadcast of the Wreck This Mess radio show: Wreck the Drowning World 1249 & serves as a reaction to the countless 2023 summer climate catastrophes that have hit far & wide – including the iMMERSE! & Charlie Morrow archive & headquarters in Vermont.

I’ve been researching flooding & other climate crisis extreme weather globally – & notice that governments, companies & individuals talk the talk, especially for the cameras where their self-aggrandizing lies sound genuine until out of view, companies are dumping harmful chemicals into the waterways & individuals are  still buying Hummers, dumping their garbage on the streets under cover of night.  They hold onto their entitled pleasure & comfort-driven habits as if there is no tomorrow.

Electronic music + rain + water & sea + Gavin Bryars “Titanic,” global flooding news  + leftist analyses  + audiobook citations from JG Ballard’s THE DROWNED WORLD to create a mesmerizing sonic pool of beguiling beauty upon which floats the nauseating & heart-wrenching news.

Excerpts :: Base inTRO2final • Charlie Morrow vs bart / Emptied spaces • def / 24H 48 Demo Water  Morrow & Remes / Atlantis • nthng / Svalor • Purl / fld-001.2 rain • .foundation / Ten Years of Rainy Autumn • Raflum / Cool Watery Depths • Rod Modell / FEAR FLOOD • B/art / Relaxing ocean waves & beautiful misty beach • OnSite / Butterfly Remix • Halftribe vs Warmth / Falling Mountain • Mount Maxwell / Sea • Delia Derbyshire / Oceanima • Purl /Warm Rain & Sleepy Water • KeepSleep / Cool Cool Water Alt Mix • Beach Boys / Spring Helsinki • Charlie Morrow / Cool Cool Water • Slim Whitman / Swamp Island Remix • Echo Box vs Volunteer / WHALESONG • DF Tram / Something in the Water • Mt Eden Dubstep & Khadafi Dub /  Hold Dearly • Fuubutsushi / Space 1.8 • Nala Sinephro • WATER • Beat Pharmacy vs Mutabaruka / Waves Coming In, Surf, Seashore • Charlie Morrow / Walking Waves • Miruga / Lights In Window • 110ml / Out of Source • Alphaxone / Drowned World • JG Ballard / Endless Imbalance • Addex / Mind Bypassed • Respira / Floating • Lauge / Floating World • Anne Lockwood / Cascade (The Deluge) • William Basinski / Water Drums • Union Jack + Baka Pygmies / Thirsty • Orb vs Lee Scratch Perry / On Second Thoughts • Halftribe / Wishing Well • Julianna Barwick / fld-001.1 • .foundation / Last Hymn Sinking of the Titanic • Gavin Bryars

LISTEN to the original expansive version: https://www.mixcloud.com/wreckthismess/wreck-the-drowning-world-1249/

Tim is a museum designer who transforms the static notion of a museum into something dynamic and engaging. He has worked for Ralph Appelbaum Associates, an award-winning international interpretive planning and exhibition design firm, for over 28 years. He is the director of RAA’s Berlin-based studio.

He has directed the interpretive planning and exhibition design for many major institutions, including the visitor center for Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center in Alaska, the First Nations Museum in Oklahoma, the Museums of Ethnology and Asian Art in Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the World Museum Vienna in Austria and is currently leading the design of the new  Museum of the Viking Age in Olso Norway. 

Subjects discussed: collaborations, immersive environments, Berlin, museum design, Holocaust Museum in Washington, fly fishing, Norway, Montana, Vienna, Cornell, outdoors, bringing museums to life ...

Gideon D’Arcangelo is a man of many ambitions. His main interests include the integration of virtual and physical worlds, working toward the design integration of physical, media, systems, graphic & content to ultimately create holistic experiences. 

Playlist of audio samples

A Future Harvest • Charlie Morrow

Ville Pulkki’s fame reached the techno avant garde with the adoption of his ingenious VBAP (vector-base amplitude panning) a tool for creating spatial sound. When I met him in Helsinki, I was delighted to discover that behind the techie who developed VBAP, a charming jokester. Since then, I’ve enjoyed his warmth and his efficient organizing of the Acoustics Department at Aalto University, including the 2023 convention of the Audio Engineering Society of Europe. Maija-Leena Remes and I interviewed Ville in his lab where he was studying the acoustic layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. He also talked about his learning to dance at the age of 40 and performing on television for commercials and musical events, where the delight of performance must compete with his delight of invention.  

Ville Pulkki is a professor in the Department of Information and Communications Engineering  at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland who has worked in the field of spatial audio for over 25 years. He developed VBAP for his PhD. in 2001 and later, directional audio coding with his research group. He has also made contributions to the perception of spatial sound, laser-based measurement of room responses, and binaural auditory models. He received the Samuel L. Warner Memorial Medal Award from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and the AES Silver Medal Award. He enjoys being with his family, building his summer house, playing various musical instruments, and acting, dancing and singing in musical ensembles.

Playlist of samples:

Themes discussed: VBAP, perception of spatial sound, early immersive experiences in Finland, experiencing silence, bat sounds, ultrasonic super hearing, physics vs music, esoteric inventions, ambisonics, performing music live.