hans w. koch: e.t. (l.a.

) for any number of laptops greater than 4 and equipped with built-in microphone and loudspeaker. the piece consists of these instructions and a pure data patch. a separate download of pure data from http://puredata.info may be necessary. the patch has been developed under pd-extended 0.42.5 but requires no external libraries. required cpu power is very moderate. the piece deals with the construction of an equidistant tuning system out of the continuum of all possible pitches. an equidistant tuning system describes the division of an octave into a number of intervals of the same size. in this piece, the number of divisions is equivalent to the number of participants. the bigger this number grows, the closer the resulting soundspectrum comes to a representation of white noise. each participant produces one pitch only but in 5 octaves, by creating a feedback between the built-in microphone and loudspeaker of his laptop, filtered thru a very steep bandpassfilter. setting up the patch: 0. turn on audio with the checkbox labelled ";pd dsp $1" 1. enter the number of participants into the numberbox labeled "harmonic steps". 2. each player is assigned a unique number in the range of the number of participants (from 1 to X). with these informations the program calculates the appropriate frequencys for the feedback-filter. enter your number as performer into "player number" 3. adjust the presets by typing an octave number (0-4), then adjusting filter q and volume v. with a normally opened lid of the laptop, no feedback should occur. closing the lid should start the feedback. decimal scrolling for the volume-numberbox is done with "shift + click". save the patch to save the presets. 4. for performance tick the checkbox "pd keyboard" to recall the presets with keys 1 - 5. pressing the spacebar will set the volume to 0.

performance according to the space, the performers can be distributed within the space or clustered in some area. or any combination thereof. ideally every laptop should have a fully loaded battery to allow movement during the performance. the piece is rendered "acoustically" from the laptops built-in speakers, no external amplification. the laptops are operated with two controls: the keyboard for the selection of the frequencies and the closing/opening of the lid to change the volume of the (feedback-)tone. the spacebar is a further option to silence a pitch. the performers may be seated on chairs with their laptops on their laps or standing, while holding the laptop like an accordion (as seen here: http://www.hans-w-koch.org/performances/bandoneonbook.html). in this position they can also move. a performance consists of the slow and careful exploration of a number of possible combinations in relation to the harmonic field of the given equal temperament and the position of the performers in space. all performers agree about a duration and start at the same time (within a window of a few seconds) in the low octave by fading in their respective pitch, until the "cluster" of all frequencies is established. from then on, each performer chooses his own course thru the different octaves, respecting that there should be a silence between to sounds, allowing for individual durations of each. by changing position in relation to the other performers and approximating to other laptops, different aspects of the soundspectrum can be emphasized. at the end of the agreed time span all performers should slowly gather in highest register, then fade out. hwk 10/11