Gong Listrik (2003)

This piece was originally presented at the 8th Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia during July 2003. A Javanese iron gong is wired with contact mics and made to feedback via close proximity to a massive speakers cabinet, and/or a hand-held speaker driver. (Bronze gongs are way better, when i can afford it.) A Balinese bamboo flute (or PVC tube model'd on same) is wired with a small condensor mic and made to feedback via proximity to speakers and gong, sometimes with the help of a real-time Supercollider patch. A tender struggle develops in the interleaved network of resonance between technology and tradition, tourist and native, control and ecstatic fury, heart and mind.

another description: gong is placed face-down on the speaker cabinet and suspended so it resonates adequately. contact mics are applied and feedback is made by routing the mics to the speaker cabinet carefully. also the mics are routed to the speaker driver (bottom left on speaker cabinet) and the driver is manually moved around the cabinet and the gong to make sound. the mics are also routed to the PA, so that the internal sounds of the gong can be heard without having to create feedback. the flutes (not pictured) are held over the speaker cabinet and gong. the bamboo piece going across the top is a broken flute, used here to support the wires. off-screen there is a mixer, two amplifiers, and a laptop with low-pass filters to keep the speaker driver from burning up, also to control the feedback especially for acoustic signals (flutes).