Film Overview

EcoSono presents video performances of sound art works by Alaskan-born composer Matthew Burtner. The film includes the mysterious "Signal Ruins" I and II for piano, percussion, noise generators and computer sound performed by the composer with Aniseh Khan-Burtner, Juraj Kojs and video editing by Dustin Thompson. The disk also features the works "That which is bodiless is reflected in bodies" for Tibetan bowl and surround computer sound; and "Prismic Generations" for video and computer sound. Switzerland’s La Liberte calls the music “the mystical evocation of a magician of sonorous spaces.” and New York’s New Music Connoiseur says that Burtner presents completely new sound patterns and sonic ideas suggesting an entirely revised organization of tones unlike anything in our musical past.

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“There is a monolithic quality to Matthew Burtner's music, that is immediately visceral, yet an intricacy to his textures, that is discovered through deeper listening. Like a Rothko painting, with its uneven brush strokes and subtle shading, or maybe more to the point, an expansive landscape, with its undulating topography and shifting textures, his work produces an overall effect.
Charles Nichols, SEAMUS Journal
from “Metasaxophone Colossus” CD review

"There is weather in his compositions, as well as landscape: open,
brooding, sometimes ominous, often wintry....His compositions
have a way of insinuating themselves into your mind. Listen to them
enough and you begin to think and take in the world as he does. You
hear a gust of wind or the far-off sound of machinery and you think
that sounds like something from a Burtner composition."
- Dale Keiger, Johns Hopkins Magazine
from: Matthew Burtner: the Composer in Five Prose Movements

The musical sound art work SIGNAL RUINS for bowed and prepared piano, bass drums, noise generators and computer sound, is a musical performance piece informed by installation art, sculpture and ritual. In this piece, the instruments become expressive ritual objects existing on the threshold of sculptural sound. New modes of signal generation arise from conceiving these instruments as transformative filters, sound objects reinterpreted in performance. The performers navigate these instruments as if exploring an ancient wreckage, ruins that offer the hope of discovery. Signal Ruins deals with notions of time and aging. The instrumental generation of new forms from their own decay transforms temporal perspectives. An exterior time perspective dominates the first part of the work, while the second part explores interiors. This transformation is a fundamental characteristic of ritual, in which the perception of structured external actions are internalized into the spirit.

THAT WHICH IS BODILESS IS REFLECTED IN BODIES is a surround-sound composition for computer-generated music exploring virtual and real bodies and spaces through physical modeling synthesis and spatio-operational spectral synthesis (SOS). The title comes from the Oneirocritica (circa 200 AD) of Artemidorus, a compendium of dream interpretations. Artemidorus describes dreams as iconic spiritual representations. He puts forth the principle “That which is bodiless is reflected in bodies,” an idea addressing the signification of bodies through dreams, spirits and icons. This audio performance piece employs transformations between sound processes and spatialization algorithms. The listener is placed inside a physical model Tibetan prayer bowl with each speaker representing one resonant node of a circumscribing the rim of the bowl. In this way the listener is engulfed in a giant bowl that continually changes shapes and sizes. SOS synthesis techniques employ geometrical spatial sound structures exploring the psycho-perceptual threshold between perceived unity and multiplicity. The piece was composed for Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda Dome Room at the University of Virginia. At the premiere performance, speakers were placed around the upper level Rotunda balcony turning Jefferson's architecture into a giant singing bowl.

PRISMIC GENERATIONS employs a spectral-rhythmic system of sound and light. The prismic effects of light on ice inspired a musical system linking rhythmic and spectral mutation. Each partial of a justly tuned overtone series follows its own temporal identity which is linked to its pitch evolution. We hear timbral entities expressed as both pitches and rhythms, and as timbre changes, polyrhythm also changes. The spectral composition goes awry as the overtone series and corresponding rhythmic system are compressed and expanded. Fluid and mechanical time interact with sample-based imagery and computer-generated sound.

Matthew Burtner (www.burtner.net) creates performance works exploring noise-based musical systems, ecoacoustics, and (dis)embodiment theory. He composes for a wide range of musicians and ensembles, and for his own groups MICE and Metasax&DRUMthings
Burtner’s music and sound art has been described by The Wire as “some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I’ve heard,” and 21st Century Music writes "There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive." First prize winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition he has also received honors and awards from Bourges, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, Prix d’Ete, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Luigi Russolo, AMC, and Hultgren Biennial. Commissioners include Integrales, CrossSound, Quincena Festival (Spain), Musik-I-Nordland (Norway), Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Mark Markham, Peabody Trio, SpectriSonori, Augsburg Festival (Germany), Ascolto (Germany), and Ensemble Noise. His work has been recorded for DACO (Germany), The WIRE (U.K.), Centaur (USA), Innova (USA), MIT Press (USA), SMTG (USA), and Euridice (Norway).
Born in Alaska Burtner studied philosophy, composition, saxophone and computer music at St. Johns College, Tulane University, Iannis Xenakis's UPIC-Studios, the Peabody Institute/Johns Hopkins and Stanford University/CCRMA. In 2005 he was an Invited Researcher at IRCAM/Centre-George-Pompidou, Paris. He has been composer-in-residence at Musikene (Spain), Banff Centre (Canada), Simon Fraser University (Canada), the IUA/Phonos-Institute (Spain), and the Cite-International-des-Arts (France). (http://www.burtner.net).