Press Release
Wayne Siegel: Everyone Talks about the Weather
A 12-hour concert for robot-controlled pipe organ and weather satellite
Sunday, September 8th, 11:00 AM – 11:00 PM
Symphony Hall, The Concert Hall Aarhus, Denmark
On September 8th, 2013 an unusual concert will take place in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. Between 11:00 AM and 11:00 PM the weather in Northern Europe will literally take control of the huge pipe organ in the Aarhus Symphony Hall!
The pipe organ recently constructed and installed in the hall was built by Klais Orgelbau in Bonn and contains over 3,000 pipes. Wayne Siegel, American-born composer and professor of electronic music at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, has “hacked” the Klais organ’s computer system, allowing an external computer to control this enormous instrument without the intervention of a human performer. Siegel then designed a computer program that uses generative music algorithms to “compose” organ music: a kind of composer robot. The compositional rules are set by Siegel, but the generative algorithms allow the computer to continuously and endlessly generate and transform the work without human intervention. Data from the European weather satellite, Meteosat-10, is fed directly into the computer and used to control the algorithms. Essentially, the weather is conducting the music while the computer is composing it. Siegel has collaborated on this unusual project with both the organ builder, Klais Orgelbau in Bonn and with the Danish weather service DMI in Copenhagen.
Everyone Talks about the Weather is a site-specific installation with no beginning or end. The audience is invited to enter and leave the hall at any time between 11:00 AM and 11:00 PM to experience how the composition (and the weather) develop in the course of 12 hours. At 11:00 PM on on the closing day of the Aarhus Festival, Wayne Siegel will shut down the computer and the organ in accordance with the festival theme: “Signs of Life – in a New Reality”
A short audio example from Everyone Talks about the Weather recorded in the Aarhus Symphony Hall with the Klais organ can be heard for a limited time at the following unpublished soundcloud site:
https://soundcloud.com/xxwsxx/weather02
For further information contact:
Wayne Siegel
Professor of Electronic Music
DIEM
Royal Academy of Music Aarhus
Skovgaardsgade 2C
DK-8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
www.waynesiegel.dk
ws@musikkons.dk
Phone: +45 2872 0253
Wayne Siegel: Everyone Talks about the Weather
A 12-hour concert for robot-controlled pipe organ
Sunday, September 8th, 11:00 AM – 11:00 PM
Symphony Hall, The Concert Hall Aarhus
The doors remain open, come and go as you please
The work will be played without intermission. Admission is free.