Organism: In Turbulence
2024, Solo concert with a century-old pipe organ prepared robotically to sound turbulent patterning
keywords: vortext-shedding, edge-tone jumping, hemoltz resonance, acoustic microsound, metastable systems,, transductive resonance
A 1910 Casavant pipe organ is rescued from impending gentrification at a heritage site in Montréal and brought back to life as Organism, an experimental instrument and investigative platform for stochastic patterning via turbulent processes of formation. In this acoustic solo performance, Navid Navab improvises with Organism to explore ways in which its turbulent thresholds manifest unstable timbres and intricate sonic self-organization.
Organism destabilizes the socio-historical tonality of the organ to liberate and sound its hidden turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic restraint. The rescued pipes and their pneumatic architecture have been carefully modified to remove aerodynamic ‘edge-tone’ stabilizations that historically aimed to eliminate turbulent flow and its uncontrollable sound world.
During the concert, Organism’s slowly-shifting metastable states allow for the pipes’ energetic thresholds to transductively fall into and out of compatibility with one another, turning each pipe into a vortex-shedding, edge-tone jumping, theatre of spectra and tone. With no digital sounds, Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.
PUBLICATION & REVIEWS. selected
[video-interview] Art Act Days, AAD Talk “미디어 아트는 협업의 예술이다?…Navid Navab,” AAD Talk, 2024.09
[review] Ars Electronica, “A record: More than 112,000 visits to…,” Mario Schmidhumer, 2024.09
[essay-profile] Espace Art Actuel, “…Organism + Excitable Chaos,” Pia Baltazar, 2024.07
[review] La Devoir, “quand l’artiste révèle une altérité nouvelle,” Galadriel Avon, 2024.07
[review] Lien Multimedia, “Navid Navab traduit les données scientifiques en oeuvre d'art,” 2024.06
[video-profile], The Link Newspaper, “Organism, The Acoustic, Robotically Prepared Organ,” 2023.03
[review] KlasicaPlus, “ledové město pohybu”, MNM concert review, R. Spisarová, 2023.02
[review] Exlaime!, “...Boundaries of Music…”, 2022.02
Navab plunges us into the experience of sonic and material processes in which the boundaries of mechanical movements, generative algorithms and acoustic materials become blurred and intertwined, to the delight of our ears, eyes and imagination.
[...] Navab introduces numerous layers of agentivity between the performer’s gesture and the acoustic pipe: various generative algorithms, electromechanical devices or gestural interfaces are inserted into the instrumental chain. By making this parametric character of the organ proliferate, the artist also reverses its principle: whereas the traditional design of the organ aims to maximize control over the musical material, those many layers of added agentivity produce unpredictability, creativity and organicity […] During concerts, in addition to the live control of the generative algorithms and robotics through gestural interfaces, the artist once again overturns the principles of the organ, replacing its pipes during the performance or blowing directly into them, with an energy that is at once intense, joyous and bouncy [...]
This reversal of Western civilization’s obsession with control over nature is a recurring element in the discourse the artist develops around their work. They also summon up the notion of turbulence, which the whole history and tradition of organ building has worked to domesticate, to produce a controllable and measured sound, which the most influential composer in the history of Western music, Johann Sebastian Bach, characterized as “well-tempered.” However, Navab’s […] epistemology is no longer that of Descartes and Newton, of positive knowledge and all-powerful Reason, but that of The End of Certainty (1997), as physicist Ilya Prigogine titled his book — wherein he states that “classical science privileged order, stability, whereas at all levels of observation we now recognize the primordial role of fluctuations and instability.”
Espace Art Actuel, Pia Baltazar, 2024.07
Excerpts representing Mois Multi Festival and Elecktra Biennale concert review
[…] an organ whose original mechanisms have been deconstructed in order to make it follow in the footsteps of hypnotic robotics. The monumental object emits stochastic sonic textures, sometimes harmonious and sometimes mechanized. […] technology now has the power to make the reinvented organ blow noises never produced before.
Le Devoir, Galadriel Avon, 2024.07
Organism sent the audience into trance with its hypnotic sounds.
Mario Schmidhumer, Ars Electronica Review, 2024.09
Exhilarating and surprising. The joy of exploring these breathing resonant structures was accurately conveyed. Plus the horn blowing moments were raw emotive revelations. Sonic effect was so intense that for periods of time, I shut my eyes (as did others, not to avoid seeing but to taste better the contours of the sound)… a remarkable performance. Technically astute and emotionally visceral.
D. J. Johnson ELEKTRA Biennale Concert Review, 2024.06
...an evening filled with cutting-edge performances. The most original and facinating performance was on an invented logical-acoustic instrument operated by Navid Navab. The robotically prepared "organ", connected to a mobile electronic table, roared across the entire hall, and brought over half-hour of creative spectacle and engaged listening.
KlasicaPlus, R. Spisarová, Montreal New Music Festival concerts review, 2023.03
At La Nef, sculptor-musician Navid Navab played a century-old pipe organ; not as a keyboard, but with chaotic machines and microcontrollers. A playfully eccentric performance…
Future Festivals Fuild Guide, Mois Multi, Quebec City (CA), 2024.02
CONCERTS. selected
version 0.1 instrument_early-proof-of-concept
FIMAV: Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, QC, 2022.05
⋗ Ensemble Music, Commission by the No Hay Banda ensemble
version 0.5 alpha, 30 min, solo
GRMS + SMCQ present, La Grande Nuit, Montreal, 2023.02
Montreal / New Musics Festival (MNM), Montreal, 2023.03
Hexagram Gala, Agora Cours de Science, Montreal, 2023, 04
version 0.7-0.8 beta, ~45 min, solo
Mois Multi Festival, La Nef, Quebec City, 2024.02
ELEKTRA: 25th Anniversary, Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, 2024.06
Ars Electronica, Post City, Linz, 2024.09
Werktank, Leuven, 2024.11 (excerpt)
forthcoming, 1hr, solo
