turn over new leaf and sit on it

I am now at I-Park in East Haddam, Connecticut as I type. Isn't it ironic? (No, it isn't.) I've been in super busy mode for the past month, occupying myself with turning my time into money, moving, traveling, and worrying about relationships with other people.

I might make posts in the future that are retroactively about those times, but it will suffice for now to talk about now.

I-Park immediately has led me to remember my appreciation of spaces and what they do for people. The design of this space trumps just about everywhere else I've been in recent memory. I remember A Pattern Language and wish I had it with me. What I've noted so far:

• The sheer quantity of space in this huge house housing six artists and the surrounding land: abundance! Space for everything makes me think I'll have time for everything. A separate private standalone music studio.
• Art everywhere and everyhow: hangings on walls, landscaped paths with pointless electric candles, behemoth (8-ft.) wind chimes, sculpted benches, wacky jack-o-lanterns,
• Every room has a color and a name.
• Interior design slickness, especially with regard to light. As I walk around in the middle of the night, pools of light on the floor and behind sculptures put me at ease. Bright lights, low lights, and fun dimmer switches.

This last feature strikes me especially; I've been living at La Casa, where we turn off any light we're not immediately "using". The spaces I use have little variety of light, I admit responsibly.

At any rate, I will be writing here my self-assignments and self-descriptions and helpful observations I make while here for a month, and I may do so more frequently than before. Basically, I have a month to make what I want. I was accepted as a composer have been given the use of a music studio. I still have to work out a lot of technological kinks, but I have a pretty flexible and multi-faceted original proposal, which I will detail here. I made a list of components or inputs to composition, in which I am interested:

musical priorities

• neo-xenharmonic, with an emphasis on 31-tones per octave
• scale exploration, trans-scale transitions
• the art of elegant glissandi
• an exploration of hocket / interpoint (where two performers are needed to do the work of one)
• composed rehearsals (a PWE trope)
• miniature, portable pieces for miniature, portable instruments
• rounds

portable and polyfunctional, for many modes of performance

• pedagogical (a method book)
• solo (udderbot tour, microtonal tour)
• multiples of one instrument (realizable live or with pre-recorded augmentation)
• ensembles (with open form)
• studio (for CD release etc.)

instruments I will use

• udderbots
• voice
• kalimba
• flute
• jar-top castanets (tee hee!)
• VoiceTweaker microtonal auto-tuner and gender-bender
• ChucK for making chiptune sounds
• Supercollider

instruments I will not use but will also compose for

• cello
• trombone

ideas I begin with

• false statements, etc.
• cross section of a muddle
• muddles of symmetry, dialetics, time, second-order
• Jason Godesky's Thirty Theses
• self-description

additional assignments

• attempt to switch to a polyphasic sleep schedule
• write a script for my three siblings to perform at family Thanksgiving dinner that answers "What on earth has Jacob been doing?"