When I was asked to make a sound-postcard, I thought it could be a nice idea to use my actual address (Cava Alta 10) as the title for my work. Later on, this house -located in the old quarter "La Latina", in the heart of Madrid-, also provided the basic sound material and even the proportions, which determined the form (I) of the work, but without pretending to realize a soundscape of this house.

During some days in July (1996), we recorded some domestic sounds (a cat, a refrigerator,etc.), sounds produced by domestic activities (cooking, washing, etc), sounds from the vicinity (with microphones hanging out of the windows), and also some alien sounds, captured by radio and TV receivers, which the house promptly absorbed...
The second step consisted in processing the "concrete-sounds" -with the help of an Eventide H-3000-; and the addition of treated electric-guitar, mini-moog, and some toys. We arrived to about a half dozen of self-sufficient ambient/bases (tunes); some minimal & repetitive (featuring Justo Bagueste (I.P.D.) on Mini-Moog); some noisy and irregular; and some others are surreal rock grooves (inventions of Javier Colos, leader of the "art-rock" group MII Dolores Pequenos from Madrid).
The last step consisted in "assembler" different fragments from the previously elaborated "tunes" (using primitive technics of copy and paste), forming two final-pieces. In version A , (vertical), the individual parts are joint -mostly- in layers. In version B , (horizontal), the individual parts are joint in blocks (cutting tape -abruptly- with an old Revox, and adding reverb on the cuts), which lets the sources a little bit more recognizeable.
The landscape you can observe from the windows of Cava Alta 10 (Madrid) (mostly roofs), were simbolized on a grafic score, which determinated the final forms of Cava Alta 10, versions A & B; each one during 4 minutes. Both versions can also (with free syncronism) be reproduced simultaneously.

The formal structure of this work is inspired by the greek mythical river Er’dano flowing towards hell, name of a constellation whose pattern also inspired and gave structure to a former piece.
The percusive sounds guide the evolution of the formal idea while at the same time representing, with the diversity of their origin, the links and bridges connect between cultures.

Produced using the facilities of The Banff Centre for the Arts during an artist residency between October and December 1995.
Production Manager: Theresa Leonard     Engineer: John Rodd    Spanish speech: Norma Chargoy
Thanks to: Silvain Carette, Guillermo Diego, Felipe Ehrenberg, Dena Hawes, Ilgis Khanov, Manou, Lynne Marshall, Perttu Mentula, Arina & Zinaida Petrova, Remis, Mark Rudolph, Saulius, Seo, Jaan Toomik, Yura.

We throw stones or, better said, we let them fall sitting on the bench of the bridge: a pause on the way.We watch the waves go with the stream: we have contemplated, as well as the water has done, the nature on its splendour and goodness; we have lingered on the forest as we listened to the cuckoo and the nightingale, and the wind brought to us the echo of distant blows and foreign voices talking about magic and the soul. We enjoyed the world, friendship and love, but knowing that somewhere else the suffering is not scarce.The bells ring, lest we forget. We summon the storm. Rain. Lightning and thunder relieve us. The water follows its course and the waves vanish into the sea, someone sings a half forgotten song about beauty and we laugh, still lingered on the bridge, not knowing how the path follows on.
http://www-nmr.banffcentre.ab.ca/ (Zone of Swans)

Evolution consists in the creation of order islands, bigger each time by producing bigger and bigger oceans of disorder.
The aeroespacial enterprises, for example, launch intense campains to persuade the governments of the need to finance the launching of satellites, with a size similar to the island of Manhattan.
The amount of resources necessary to produce a gigantic satellite and launch it to space, where the set-up procedures cause more disorder than value. We are so attached to the present vision of the world, that any other way of organizing our thought would not be accepted.
This small resounding card, simulating thousands of postcards received and issued in this summons through a satellite, contributes to confer meaning to this project in the disorganizing process of which we are all a part of cynicism.

A brief message from a pleasurable body (mind-emotion-substance in an absorbing process). Several processed and sampled secuences, others in a pure state up the point of drowning in their own liquids, but they"r all essential being the voice, connection and subtle guide of sounding mirages. Voice-electronics-tape.

Information flux between terminals, where each contact is transcendental and will change the reached elements own identity.
Hermetic linking stream: from my hand to your face, unchaining an infectious violence wave: from your hand to your hand, extending a collective gratefulness euphoria. Slap or applause get contaminated in sequences, they behave as the corruptor kiss. A bridge, as a clamp on the floor, between two lands commissure, interprets, instantaneous and proportionally, ambitions and resistences from both horizons. A river scraches an space which occupies at the instant, contaminating its own essence by transmission, mutilating populations. The river as a structure, adopts the form of a homogeneous and constantly variable mass, unpredictable and firm. Element oriention for the group, gesture collectivization as an economic amplifier. The form river supports some dissidences: drops, rubbings and duckings. So, reproduction by contagion results a yielding evolutive strategy and it is chosen by illness, love, "media", music, religion...
Realized at LEA, Music Conservatory of Valencia.

This work is designed like a sound landscape of the Jucar river in Cuenca, a city in permanent communion with nature. My first interest is on one side, to show the river like a constant producer of different rythms and acoustic structures; on the other side to express descriptive value of the diverse sound lansdcapes which follow and desapear one another in that alternative balance.

In most of musical actions, human gesture has a great relevance. This is the reason why we have designed an instrument able to detect the gesture of a performer in scene to answer with some kind of chaotic actions. This instrument is called SESLA, acronym which stands for "Sistema de Excitacion Sonora por Rayos Laser" -Laser rays controled Sonic Trigger System-. The first version worked with laser rays, but we changed it to function with normal light in order to simplify its carriages and installation.
Now, SESLA is equipped with a set of photoelectric sensors able to detect the movement of a performer who acts as a conductor moving around them. The important thing is that gesture"s speed information is scanned by a computer which analyzes it to implement a set of deterministic finite automaton improving in some musical and visual.
SESLA produces sounds and images syncronically with the gestures of the performer and could be thought as a set of four improvising musicians leaded by a conductor who also improvises deperger and interactive piece, in which the listeners plays a multimedia application that relates music with words and art images. Sounds are produced by a sampler and images, usually projected on cloth screens adapted to the particular space of each performance, come from a set of six slides projectors and also from the computer video output. SESLA can also be installed as an interactive system which reacts to the audiences movements in some intermedia environement. This last use has been choosen in my contribution to Rivers & Bridges at the SGAE"s Manuel de Falla Hall.

We are playing with the subject of "Rivers and Briges" approaching it from various perspectives. The following are some of our initial points of reference:

• If "life is a struggle like a river that advances" (Pablo Neruda, Elementary Odes) we can consider memory as a bridge towards our past and intuition as a bridge towards our future and/or the imaginary. These metaphors can lead us to improvise.
• And what if we people were rivers (since, to a great extent, we are masses of water with a certain length, with, curves, history, environment, etc.) or even better, affuents of a larger river which is our community? Music could be a "bridge" joining several affluents and also several rivers. The same could be said of games: bridges between individuals and between peoples, between past as children (memory again), our present and the future we dream of, between humans and animals...
• The struggle of thousands of people who move every day from one place to another, in search of (alleged) better living conditions are also "a river that advances", a river that will find bridges, dams, polls, waterfalls...
• The empty spaces of the arches of a bridge through which the river flows remind us of the 11th chapter of the Tao Te Ching: thaks to that emptiness, to that nothingness, the bridge fulfills its very function; thus, ""that which is not" fulfills a funtion, whereas "that which is" awakens ambition.
• Both rivers and bridges play with the barriers of gravity, as if they were challenging them (the term "gravity" taken as: the attraction force that conforms the physiognomy of both animate beings; an undesirable health state; and as seriousness, solemnity).
• Whereas rivers are born in a "natural" way, bridges are built; they are artifacts, devices. We (Jane and Rafael) live by and depend upon the Aguas Blancas (White Waters) river in Sierra Nevada, Granada. This river supplies the water we drink and with which we bathe, it water the plants and trees with which we feed ourselves and has created the valley that surrounds us.

This work is designed like a sound landscape of the Jucar river in Cuenca, a city in permanent comunion with nature. My first interest is on one side, to show the river like a constant producer of different rithms and acoustic structures; on the other side to express descriptive value of the diverse sound lansdcape which follows and desapears one another in that alternative balance.

he isolated individual have to support in the loneliness of his or her walls, how political speaches filled up with pharisaic realities, pronounced pompously on the Media of comunication, rush into his or her life day after day, filling it up with the bitter flavour of public lie that is repeated unceasingly on an endless river. Politicians have forgotten the word UTOPIA, they just think of a small minded present, without imagination, in which the Masters of War and destruction will continue dominating. These men that control the world through the Media. A world that only would take us to destruction A world and Media that artists should INTERFERE.

Under the light of the moon I spread a bridge on the meerschaum, and I crossed it till that skyline of deep blue where everything is forgatten. Made on the Laboratory LEA of the Conservatorio Superior de Musica de Valencia and on the Studio of the author.

The author has decided not offering any trail about the contents of his work. So, we just would say that he has used for its realization the telephone list of different countries that take part on "Rivers & Bridges", and a strategy that consisted on letting without answer the logic question that came from the other side of the line, taping the results of that operation.

The river, as life and death stream, is the descense towards the ocean, where waters meet returning to undifferentiation. The bridge between sky and earth, place or passage and proof, is a trasition between two desires in conflict, we have to cross it, eluding the path wouldn"t resolve anything. This, ritual and religious, moral dimension, is extended in our actual mass-mediatic beliefs sistem, its stream drags us to ocean undifferentiation, where building bridges or crossing streams become a communicative chance. Realized at LEA, Music Conservatory of Valencia.

Kit is a set of several short fragments or sound objects, where each one sufers a type of process. Kit is a part of a la musical actions, human gesture has a great relevance. This is the reason why we have designed an instrument able to detect the gesture of a performer in scene to answer with some kind of chaotic actions.

This instrument is called SESLA, acronym which stands for"Sistema de Excitaci—n Sonora por Rayos Laser" -Laser rays controled Sonic Trigger System-. The first version worked with laser rays, but we changed it to fonction with normal light in order to simplify its carriages and installation.
Now, SESLA is equipped with a set of photoelectric sensors able to detect the movement of a performer who acts as a conductor moving around them. The important thing is that gestureâs speed information is scanned by a computer which analyzes it to implement a set of deterministic finite automaton improving in some musical and visual.
SESLA produces sounds and images sincronically with the gestures of the performer and could be thought as a set of four improvising musicians leaded by a conductor who also improvises deperger and interactive piece, in which the listeners plays a multimedia application that relates music with words and art images.