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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Mannam
Javier Alvarez
In his composition "Mannam", Javier Alvarez combines original sounds of the Korean instrument Kayagum with digitally processed sounds of the same instrument.
When I was commissioned to write a piece for Inok Paek in 1989 by Projects UK I hardly had any information on the kayagum other than that it was an ancient Korean zitherlike instrument. It took nearly one year of collaborative work with Inok and the composition of that first piece to start understanding Korean music a little bit more and appreciate in more detail the enormous expressive subtlety which this beautiful instrument is capable of.
For "Mannan", I set myself an hypothetical scenario: a kayagum player finds a Mexican folk harp on the top of a mountain; a Mexican harp player finds a kayagum in the middle of the savanna; they both learn to play their newly found instruments from scratch, with no further piece of information. Imagine how these players could adapt their new instruments to their own music, to their aesthetic and expressive needs. And if one ponders for awhile, one can come up with amusingly arbitrary combinations. Say, for example, a Korean hat dance or a Mexican court Mariachi, a Korean bull-fighting call or a Mexican ribbon-dance, and so on... As outlandish as these mixtures may seem, I, for one, find the possibility of creating hybrids tantalising. So, I finally decided to "glue" together comparable musical paradigms by means of a few rhythmic patterns common to Korean and Mexican popular music. This is a simple device which actsas a kind of dramatic pivot to blend, juxtapose or simply move from one imaginary situation to the other.
Most of the sounds I used for the computer part were taken from recordings of Inok playing the kayagum. These were then processed using the SYTER computer at the GRM studios in Paris. I reassembled, sampled and sequenced the material at the GMEB in Bourges and in my own studio in London. 'Mannan' was commissioned by the Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Bourges in 1990.
When I was commissioned to write a piece for Inok Paek in 1989 by Projects UK I hardly had any information on the kayagum other than that it was an ancient Korean zitherlike instrument. It took nearly one year of collaborative work with Inok and the composition of that first piece to start understanding Korean music a little bit more and appreciate in more detail the enormous expressive subtlety which this beautiful instrument is capable of.
For "Mannan", I set myself an hypothetical scenario: a kayagum player finds a Mexican folk harp on the top of a mountain; a Mexican harp player finds a kayagum in the middle of the savanna; they both learn to play their newly found instruments from scratch, with no further piece of information. Imagine how these players could adapt their new instruments to their own music, to their aesthetic and expressive needs. And if one ponders for awhile, one can come up with amusingly arbitrary combinations. Say, for example, a Korean hat dance or a Mexican court Mariachi, a Korean bull-fighting call or a Mexican ribbon-dance, and so on... As outlandish as these mixtures may seem, I, for one, find the possibility of creating hybrids tantalising. So, I finally decided to "glue" together comparable musical paradigms by means of a few rhythmic patterns common to Korean and Mexican popular music. This is a simple device which actsas a kind of dramatic pivot to blend, juxtapose or simply move from one imaginary situation to the other.
Most of the sounds I used for the computer part were taken from recordings of Inok playing the kayagum. These were then processed using the SYTER computer at the GRM studios in Paris. I reassembled, sampled and sequenced the material at the GMEB in Bourges and in my own studio in London. 'Mannan' was commissioned by the Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Bourges in 1990.
Javier Alvarez (MEX), born 1956, is currently a feelance composer in London and Mexico City. Following studies at the University of Wisconsin and, under a British Council grant, at the Royal College of Music in London, he taught composition at the Royal College and at the Guildhall School of Music. He is a member of several renowned ensembles and has won international prizes (Bourges 1985, 1987, 1989, ICEM Prize 1987, Prix Ars Electronica '88).