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Cathedral Arts Electric interviews William Duckworth August 27, 2004 William Duckworth and Nora Farrell AE What is Cathedral? How do you describe it? WD I have both long and short answers for that. The short answer is that it is an on-going, interactive, work of music and art designed specifically for the Web. Media artist Nora Farrell and I created it. AE And the long answer? WD The longer answer involves a description of the whole Cathedral Project, and its three primary components -- the website itself, which features a variety of interactive musical, artistic, and text-based experiences, all focused on 5 mystical moments in time; the PitchWeb, which is one of the virtual instruments designed for the site to allow listeners to play together online; and The Cathedral Band, a group of improvising musicians that gives periodic live performances from venues around the world, during which our global PitchWeb players frequently sit in. Cathedral AE How did you think of this project? When did it begin? WD Nora Farrell and I had our first talks about the project in Amsterdam in March 1996. We were there to explore a MIDI glove-controller being developed at STEIM, thinking we might use it in a multiple choir and orchestra piece I was working on, but we actually spent most of our time in the cafes talking about the Internet and what we might be able to do with it artistically. When we came back to New York we began working on Cathedral immediately, but it didn't actually go online until June 10, 1997. AE You're working in such a new medium on the Web, what's the artistic concept of Cathedral and how do you express it online? WD The Web presented me with a unique way to experiment with the concept of asynchronous time, something I'd long been interested in exploring. There are, after all, only a few ways that we can escape the limitations of time. Experiencing art, particularly online, is one of these ways. And with Cathedral, because there is no fixed beginning, middle or end, there is less of an emphasis on location and less of a need for everyone to coexist in the same physical space. As Cathedral slowly unfolds, there are, all along the way, a myriad of points in which players can influence the outcome, and events are allowed to inform other events as the piece continues to grow. Conceptually and thematically, I approached Cathedral as I would any large-scale work, expressing a series of overarching themes through music, text and images. It is the story of five mystical moments in time: The Building, The Bomb, The Pyramid, The Web, and The Dance. These refer to the building of Chartres Cathedral, the first detonation of the atomic bomb, the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the founding of the World Wide Web, and the inception of the Native American Ghost Dance religion. AE Why were those particular moments chosen? WD I chose these five moments because they represent events of some importance today, continuing to raise, as they do, issues of religion and spirituality, power and self-destruction, lost civilizations, the future of individuals and societies, and the natural and supernatural and, by extension, the fate of the indigenous people of the world. On the Cathedral website there are 32 electronic pieces designed, not as answers, but as points of reflection and contemplation of these five moments. These musical themes form the basis of the entire music of Cathedral, since they exist in several forms, extending from sound banks to orchestra pieces. Also, several areas on the site allow the audience to contribute directly to the piece and we allow the internet to help shape the piece and to become an active partner in the resulting work of art. In addition, we have a Chronicler (AJ Sabatini) who tells the continuing "story" of Cathedral. On the site, this is done through the various volumes of an animated and sonified hypernovel and the Chronicler's message board musings; in performance, the Chronicler is a talker and storyteller whose knowledge is transversal. AE I know Cathedral also started doing live webcasts rather early. When did they begin? WD We gave our first live webcast at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston in May 1998. Then in October of 1998 the PitchWeb was introduced at a webcast from The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, where it was played with the Relache Ensemble by me and by people in the audience on their laptops. We gave our first Cathedral Band performance over Groovetech Web Radio in Seattle in August 1999, when I played the PitchWeb, DJ Tamara played records, and Stuart Dempster played trombone, toys, and didgeridoo on Tamara's weekly 2-hour radio show. Between then and the 48-hour webcast, the band played a number of other venues, including Groovetech again in May 2000, Kiva in Phoenix in March 2001, Roulette in New York in April 2000, and Galapagos in Brooklyn in March 2001. Those really got us ready for the 48-hour webcast. AE What was the 48-hour webcast? How did it come about? WD When we first envisioned Cathedral in those early days in Amsterdam, Nora and I knew that we wanted to have a 48-hour festival of Internet music in 2001. The webcast, which took place over a weekend in late November/early December, was designed as a worldwide festival and celebration of Internet music. We streamed 34 concerts live from 5 continents; it is still the largest festival of Internet Music held to date. Every year since, we have focused our live activities around a single large scale project. We've mounted several international tours since the 48-hour webcast, and are now preparing the Worldwide Wireless PitchWeb Day for our Deep Time project, which expresses one day through the course of one year. AE Tell me a little more about the PitchWeb. What is it? How is it played? WD The PitchWeb is one of the virtual instruments developed for Cathedral. It is a web-based multi-user instrument with text chat capabilities. That means users can log on to the website and play either alone, or with other PitchWeb players around the world. You play the instrument by selecting and manipulating shapes -- diamonds, triangles, circles, and squares -- that are mapped to sound samples. We designed it to be usable by people of any musical ability. On one level it can make music from words and phrases that the user types in. On another, it can be played in real-time on the computer keyboard, which is the way that I normally play it on stage. During Cathedral Band performances, online PitchWeb players can play live with the band. AE How does a live performance by the Cathedral Band fit into this online scenario? WD We think of a live band performance as bringing the virtual aspects of Cathedral into physical space. Each band performance focuses on one of the five moments, expanding -- through the words of the Chronicler and the visual images of VJs -- its references and associations. These performances are all focal points around which we encourage our online audience to become active participants. Also, we sometimes play live through a doubled webcast with alternative bands such as Therefore and Aspects of Physics, each of us on our respective continents. Also, Arthur will often take submissions from users and blend them into the evening's narrative. AE What instrumentation do you normally use in the band? WD It can vary a bit from performance to performance, but the band always includes a DJ (usually DJ Tamara from Seattle), me on PitchWeb, PitchWeb players on the Internet (moderated by Nora), The Chronicler performing spoken word, additional musicians 2(both permanent members of the band and guest artists from the country we're in), and a visual component. The permanent band includes "Blue" Gene Tyranny on keyboards, Abel Domingues on guitar, and Stuart Dempster on trombone, toys, and didgeridoo, in addition to Arthur, Tamara, Nora, and me. AE But how do you form a coherent sound when you're in another country? In Japan, for instance, who were your musicians? And did the Chronicler speak English? WD In March 2002, our performances began using Shadows of the Chronicler -- people who would simultaneously interpret (but not exactly) the words of the Chronicler into other languages. So far, our Shadows have performed with us in Polish and Farsi (during a March 2003 webcast from NYU's Tisch School), and in Japanese (for our 2003 Tokyo performances). These Shadows can be thought of as the Chronicler's alter-egos, all co-existing in the same space, but not necessarily aware of each other's presence. As for the musicians, in Japan, we invited a number of local guest artists, including keyboard player Tomoko Yazawa, singer Chizura Mitsuhashi, toy percussionist Mika Yoshida, and MTV video artist VJ Masaru. In Australia, we were joined by a Hindustani singer, a Tibetan folk artist, the eclectic electro-instrumentalist Warren Burt, and began our long-term collaboration with the didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton. AE How does the band prepare for all this? What's an actual performance like? WD The Cathedral Band seems to spend three hours setting up for every hour it performs. And the majority of the setup time is often taken over with Internet concerns; that was certainly true in the late 1990's when four hours on the telephone with the server technicians trying to get the feed open wasn't all that uncommon. As for the performance itself, just think of a jazz combo made up of world instruments, backed by a DJ, a PitchWeb, a narrator, and an online PitchWeb band, and you'll have something of the idea. Furthermore, the year's worth of research material I collected before Cathedral went online was folded into a relational database we call the Echolog. It contains texts, charts, quotes, music, images, and links, as well as submissions from site visitors. To prepare for a Cathedral band concert, we determine a search criteria relative to the moment, and collect the material into a loose chart of coordinates. On stage, the overall shape of the concert, that is, the long-term rhythmic structure, is controlled by the DJ and me (on the PitchWeb). We both have the ability to greatly influence both the tempo and the musical style throughout the performance. What we're most concerned about, however, is how to shape the concert musically over the entire length of time. If we are able to do that in some kind of coherent, meaningful way, then the moment-to-moment musical details will unfold naturally. The other performers in the band, as well as any guest artists, improvise and create musical dialogues with each other. This, in turn, influences the material chosen by the DJ and me. And the cycle continues. There are so many on-the-spot decisions that allow each of us to alter the course of the music, and Arthur, as the Chronicler, floats over it all, reflecting on the 5 moments, and telling our ongoing story. AE And the actual sound of the band, can it be described? WD I think everyone involved feels that the Cathedral Band is world music in its most literal sense: breaking down the barriers between cultures and musics, mixing players and timbres in unpredictable ways, and knowing there is a universality in rhythm that transcends nationality or the specifics of instrumentation. For Nora and me, that's our working definition of the music of the future. ||| Copyright © 2004 Electronic Music Foundation, Ltd. Arts Electric is a registered trademark of Electronic Music Foundation, Ltd.