Wallace is a custom-software driven sound installation piece designed to pair with one of Angela Bulloch’s drawing machines. The drawing machine draws in response to amplitude changes. Wallace “performs” two types of samples of my voice.

The first sample type Wallace plays with is a sustained vocal drone. Each time the software plays the drone sample, it selects a different starting point, determines a different duration, creates a different envelope (amplitude contour), and transposes (changes the key) a different amount. It then determines a different amount of silence before playing the drone again. The drone’s ever changing quality, evokes in me something analogous to watching and hearing waves break on a beach. I created Wallace while still in shock about and reflecting on the March 11, 2011, tsunami that devastated Northern Japan. One of the cities most effected by the tsunami was Sendai, where I lived for three years during my youth.

The second type of Wallace sample is culled from my Sendai-dialect response to a YouTube rant by a UCLA student – “fu to te ru ba ka na a me ri ka jin no bu su da be.” Wallace’s parameters for the second type of sample are fewer than for the drone. After determining a duration of silence, Wallace selects and plays one of the above Sendai syllables. The aphasiatic performance of these syllables adds to the subtle commentary on racism in America, as does the title of the piece, which at once refers to the UCLA ranter as well as to one of America’s most famous anti-civil rights leaders from the ‘60s.

The Sendai syllables are on the one hand aphasiatic and on the other like little shocks against the ambient drone.

MORE PROGRAM NOTES