{"id":27,"date":"2019-01-30T04:18:17","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T09:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempsite.ostrowski.info\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2021-04-25T22:23:19","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T02:23:19","slug":"summerland-2018","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/?page_id=27","title":{"rendered":"Summerland (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Summer Land\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/300199042?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Summerland, for 24 computer-controlled telegraph sounders, exhibited at Consolidated Project Space, Newburgh, NY.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nSummerland\nis an installation for for an array of 24 antique telegraph sounders\narranged along two  tables, each approximately 14&#8242; in length.\nThese Morse code receivers, which mechanically produce  tapping\nsounds, were the dominant form of long-distance communication for\nmost of a century, requiring a skilled listener to translate the taps\n&#8212; sonic representations of dots and dashes &#8212; into language.\nThese devices are arguably\nthe first digital-to-analog converters, turning binary information\ninto an audio stream of rhythmically modulated clicks. It is  also,\nby its use of fluctuating voltages to create sound, the ancestor of\nthe audio speaker, the telephone, and most modern sound reproduction\ntechnology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nThis\nwork\nrecuperates\nthis most ancient of electric sound producers, using modern,\ncomputer-controlled forms of digital transmission to reanimate this\nprototypical apparatus, so\nit can\nspeak once again. This\nwork uses speech and text from two major figures in 19<sup>th<\/sup>-century\ncommunications as source material which drives the choir of sounders.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nOne\nof those voices is that of Samuel Morse himself, the inventor of the\nelectromagnetic telegraph, and excerpts from his writings and letters\nare translated into the dot-dash code that bears his name \u2013 a\ncipher once understood by many but now on the verge of extinction.\nThe\nother is that of the\nmedium Kate\nFox, whose experiences of ghostly &#8216;rappings&#8217; in her house\na few years after the invention of the telegraph\nled to the founding of Modern Spiritualism, and\nthe craze for communicating with the dead that lasted well into the\n20<sup>th<\/sup>\ncentury. The generative algorithms of Summerland\nuse\ntranscripts of Fox&#8217;s\ns\u00e9ances in an attempt to synthesize her voice, an\nobviously impossible task with\n19<sup>th<\/sup>-century\ntechnology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nInvisible\naction at a distance \u2013 what we now call telematics \u2013 has always\nbeen a hallmark of the supernatural. Once the telegraph appeared,\nmaking instantaneous long-distance communication (by tapping!)\npossible, it\ndid not seem unreasonable to many that a\n&#8216;spiritual\ntelegraph&#8217;,\nas it was often called, could\nuse\nother invisible forces to communicate with the world beyond. From\nits beginning, information technology has always been entangled with\nmyth and dreams of worldly transcendence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nThis\nconversation is created by a generative algorithm, which uses complex\ndecision-making structures  to fashion a never-repeating dialog, in\nwhich\nlayers of utterances, reproduced as taps and clicks, retain the\ncharacter of language while remaining forever out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\nIn\nthe context of contemporary magical thinking about media, <em>Summerland<\/em>\nlooks back at the archaeology of communications, a\ns\u00e9ance which seizes from the ether the dead voices of Morse and Fox,\nmaterializing\ntheir words\nin streams of clicks through a medium &#8212; the sounder &#8212; no longer\nable to articulate. Thus the promise, and ultimate failure, of\ncommunication with the past is built into the very attempt to make\nthe sounders speak. However, the psychic and electromagnetic forces\nwe can summon can still, in the act of materialization, evoke the\ndimly-seen ghost, the unnerving rap of unseen knuckles on the\nmedium\u2019s table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Summerland at the Albany Institute of History &amp; Art\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/504232250?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Summerland, exhibited at The Albany Institute of History and Art, 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I published an article about both the theory and technology behind <em>Summerland<\/em> in Leonardo Music Journal. Find a link to it <a href=\"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Summerland_article_leonardo.pdf\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\"><em>Summerland was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support provided by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.<\/em><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summerland is an installation for for an array of 24 antique telegraph sounders arranged along two tables, each approximately 14&#8242; in length. These Morse code receivers, which mechanically produce tapping sounds, were the dominant form of long-distance communication for most of a century, requiring a skilled listener to translate the taps &#8212; sonic representations of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/?page_id=27\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Summerland (2019)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions\/436"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ostrowski.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}