Star Seed

A Stella Music Box (courtesy the Marr Sound Archives) playing a star-field disk (created by Daniel Warneke), time-stretching technology, cosmo-minded newEar musicians and an Hathorian priestess make cosmic music. With Jay Mandeville, Daniel Warneke, Rhondda Francis, Chuck Haddix, and Dwight Frizzell.

“I am the voice of awakening in the eternal night.”‐Gnostic Hymn

Our sun rings like a bell, pulsing (with a dominant upper harmonics) every 4 minutes 48 seconds—hence its bell‐like sonority known to helioseismologists. When sound artist and designer Daniel Warneke played the metal disc he created by mapping the northern hemisphere’s stars to its surface, a 19th century music box twinkled out a star song. Warneke’s piece, “Stella’s Starlight,” utilizes the bell‐like sonorities of the aptly named “Stella” music box from the Marr Sound Archives. Stella’s metal reeds are plucked in sync to the disc’s star field rotation, setting the high ringing overtones in motion once the music box is wound tight and the clutch released.

Warneke’s music box revelation, “Stella’s Starlight,” was the basis for “Star Seed’s” mix of
Machine-made sound, digital processing and human performance. With Warneke’s blessing, Frizzell time-stretched a recording of the tune 11 times, transforming the transient twinkles into long, singing tones and increasing the piece to nearly 16 minutes. Frizzell and his collaborateurs created the instrumental score, matching and extending the star-field tones, while Rhondda Francis selected ancient names of deities associated with the sounding stars for vocal evocation.

Star music is a pervasive practice in traditional music around the world, including the South American Bororo and African Dogon people. New star music inspirations include Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s “Equatorial Stars” and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Sternklang” and “Tierkreis.”

Stella Star Map Disc (“Stella’s Starlight”) by Daniel Warneke.
Additional music composed/adapted by Thomas Aber & Dwight Frizzell (with Patrick Conway)
Voicings written/adapted by Rhondda Francis
Sound mixage and video by Dwight Frizzell
Concert Sound design by Dan Warneke
Stella music box courtesy of Chuck Haddix, Marr Sound Archives
Sound assistance: Michael Nanna
Performed Oct. 11, 2011 at Epperson Auditorium, Kansas City Art Institute at ArtSounds
Wounded Galaxies Festival of Experimental Media, Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 2015


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