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Theremin Radio Interference

by Gordon Monahan

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Jim Flannery
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themuseumofviralmemory
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about

This piece came about due to an unavoidable technical problem I had performing at the Music Gallery in Toronto in 2008. One piece on the concert was for Theremin. As I plugged in my Theremin for sound check, I heard a radio station being picked up by the instrument. When performing in Toronto it is common to pick up “unwanted signals” from the CN Tower, which is an audio phenomenon called radio frequency interference. After spending about one hour trying unsuccessfully to get rid of the “unwanted” radio interference, I decided to accept it and work with it as part of the piece.

In order to recreate this phenomenon in other concert spaces, I created a Max/MSP patch to receive audio from a local radio station and have the Theremin control the signal, thus achieving the same result as had occurred at the original performance. In this recording, you can hear a local radio station at the beginning and end of the piece, in the middle of the piece it’s still there but is drowned out by the Theremin sound, which is multiplied in multiple delays.

credits

released April 1, 2009
Recording of live performance by Gordon Monahan playing Theremin and radio, at Hermes' Ear Festival, Brno House of Art, Brno, Czech Republic, 2009. Curated by Jozef Czeres.

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Gordon Monahan Meaford, Ontario

Gordon Monahan's works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to media installation & sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, & live performance. ... more

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