SHIFTAGE

Iris Garrelfs and Douglas Benford from the Sprawl investigate 4x4
a 6-channel sound installation at CCA Glasgow
26th October - 8th November 2001

Four diverse musicians/collectives - free improviser Evan Parker, Joe Wilson and Liam Howe from pop group Sneaker Pimps, Canadian experimental guitarist Tim Brady and electronic label owners Iris Garrelfs and Douglas Benford from Sprawl, have each been commissioned by CCA to produce a 4 minute sound work.
The finished pieces will be launched on the opening night of the CCA and will run for two weeks in incidental locations around the building. The work will also be available from Zwemmer at CCA on a limited edition CD, which also contains the winning piece of the 4x4 open competition.

"Being completely fascinated by the architecture, seeing both the old and new structure merged, we decided to base our installation piece on the building itself, originally conceived by Greek Thompson. We took on the brief role of 'sound architects' ourselves.
A search in Glasgow's Mitchell library unearthed some beautiful images and as Iris also is a photographer, this seemed an appropriate place to start. But how to make pictures into music? Computer based music offers many possibilities. By scanning these representations - their visual information (the shadows, light and proportions) - a package of data was created. This was then translated into the raw information of a soundfile. These chunks of audio were the sole materials used to construct the piece. We employed Macs (running Metasynth, Pro-tools, Peak and SoundMaker), an Akai sampler and a number of older miscellaneous peripherals. The resulting sounds are what our 4x4 is based on. Our sonic building blocks have been treated, cut to shape just as the architect incorporates materials into a building. The installation features constituent sounds, randomly emitting from the 3 speaker pairs, the CD containing a structured stereo version."