2012: Benjamin Ethan Tinker

Benjamin Ethan Tinker: ARP 2600/tape
Shani Aviram: kalimba
Tim Black: percussion
Lydia Martín: percussion
Daniel Steffey: percussion

Initially sourced from a sound collage of electronic processed sound, I used this structure as a way to arrive with a sense of the timbral qualities I am after, and an overall structure for the piece Seems An Eternity. A deep, encompassing low-end sound bath with orbiting, brighter high-end sounds all resonate & co-exist. Evoking a desert night sky, the grounding bass of our terrestrial surface gives way to a velvety deepness in which tiny explosions, brilliant and slow motion, dance about. Metal and skin percussion are explored in this cannon, where an arrangement for 3 percussion trios explore the same composition but with three sets of different batteries.

Battery 1: thunder sheet bowed and beaten, kalimba with a pickup processed and amplified via Arp 2600 synth, glockenspiel
Battery 2: large, low quica played slowly & “unstably”, finger cymbals & triangle
Battery 3: 1 tympani stroked w/rubber mallet, small tam tam & bell tree

By having a cannon the aural space recreates a panorama effect of the continuing dome of the cosmos across the horizon.

Benjamin Tinker (New York, 1969) is a multidisciplinary artist and electronic musician who has lived in San Francisco since 1996. He chooses to work primarily with analog synthesizers with which he composes electroacoustic music, and performs regularly with the improv ensemble White Pee, and his own project That Hideous Strength. In addition, he curates and writes about experimental music. He has received a BFA in sculpture from SUNY Purchase and a MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College with a decade of commercial audio engineering in between.

Artist (photo by Photographer)