iMMERSE! with Charlie Morrow

Stephen Vitiello - A Space Without Distraction 27

Vitiello, a New York native, is an internationally recognized sound artist and mainstay of the New York scene since his early days as a punk guitarist.  He has been influenced by Nam June Paik, has collaborated with Scanner, Pauline Oliveros and Frances-Marie Utti. He is also an electronic musician and visual artist. And, according to Morrow, “an absolute Geiger Counter for places.”
In 1999 he did a residency at the World Trade Center managing to capture the Towers’s swaying in the wind and recorded the creaking and cracking of the building’s skeleton. He has produced countless recordings on various labels such as Sub Rosa and has had many solo exhibitions that combine sound,  installations, photos and drawings at museums and galleries and has been part of many Group shows including Soundings: Contemporary Score at MOMA, the Whitney and the Sydney Biennale. Vitiello serves as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Kinetic Imaging department.
I met Stephen in the 1980s. We worked together on Nam Jun Paik’s Zapping for Swatch watch. Then on some of Paik’s soundtracks, including "Did George Sand Kill Chopin." Stephen curated the show,  New Sounds New York, for the Kitchen in New York. It included the New York unveiling of my patended 3D soundcube with series of commissioned works including his most evocative, “Cinematic, With Crashing Roof,” one of 12 designed for the cube by an array of artists.
Samples Playlist Question Of Temperature • Balloon Farm Electrinocellia • MEM1 + Stephen Vitiello Train to the Plane • Charlie Morrow Brood IX • Stephen Vitiello Breath Chant • Charlie Morrow Bell Bell Horn Horn • Charlie Morrow Mental Radio • Stephen Vitiello Cascoplecia • MEM1 + Stephen Vitiello Genesis Song • Charlie Morrow Iron Oxide • Stephen Vitiello Thinking In, Thinking Out • Stephen Vitiello Trainslation • Steve Roden Spring Helsinki • Charlie Morrow Humming • Charlie Morrow 

Pierre Brand - Cinematic Soundtrack Immersion 26

Pierre Brand began sound mixing and editing for film in 1994 and has made a name for himself on feature films such as Ghosted and Trial by Fire and on international documentaries of note such as Blue Note A story of Modern Jazz, Absolute Warhola, Wildnis Europa and The Hunt for Gaddafi's Billions.
He attended the Berklee College of Music and currently works out of his Primetime Studio in Hamburg He has collaborated with me on planetarium installations using MorrowSound software. We work together on the International Planetarium Society immersive sound committee, which has created a survey on sound practise in Planetariums. 
Playlist iMMERSE! Podcast 26
excerpts of Charlie Morrow trax & examples of Pierre Brand’s sound mixing 
The Fire  Trial by Fire (Henry Jackman) • Pierre BrandBlue Note A Story of Modern Jazz • Pierre BrandSweeter Times (Henry Jackman) • Pierre BrandABSOLUT Warhola part3 • Pierre BrandYou Can Trust Me Ghosted (Lorne Balfe) • Pierre BrandChant with Watches • Charlie MorrowUnder Suspicion (Henry Jackman) • Pierre BrandAmplified Piano • Charlie MorrowElizabeth (Henry Jackman) • Pierre BrandChoral Bounce • Charlie MorrowGendernauts • Monika Treut

Wreck The Drowning World 1249 [iMMERSE! REmix] 25

This is a summer interlude, a special remixed iMMERSE! version of the summer of 2022 broadcast of the Wreck This Mess radio show: Wreck the Drowning World 1249 & serves as a reaction to the countless 2023 summer climate catastrophes that have hit far & wide – including the iMMERSE! & Charlie Morrow archive & headquarters in Vermont.
I’ve been researching flooding & other climate crisis extreme weather globally – & notice that governments, companies & individuals talk the talk, especially for the cameras where their self-aggrandizing lies sound genuine until out of view, companies are dumping harmful chemicals into the waterways & individuals are  still buying Hummers, dumping their garbage on the streets under cover of night.  They hold onto their entitled pleasure & comfort-driven habits as if there is no tomorrow.
Electronic music + rain + water & sea + Gavin Bryars “Titanic,” global flooding news  + leftist analyses  + audiobook citations from JG Ballard’s THE DROWNED WORLD to create a mesmerizing sonic pool of beguiling beauty upon which floats the nauseating & heart-wrenching news.
Excerpts :: Base inTRO2final • Charlie Morrow vs bart / Emptied spaces • def / 24H 48 Demo Water  Morrow & Remes / Atlantis • nthng / Svalor • Purl / fld-001.2 rain • .foundation / Ten Years of Rainy Autumn • Raflum / Cool Watery Depths • Rod Modell / FEAR FLOOD • B/art / Relaxing ocean waves & beautiful misty beach • OnSite / Butterfly Remix • Halftribe vs Warmth / Falling Mountain • Mount Maxwell / Sea • Delia Derbyshire / Oceanima • Purl /Warm Rain & Sleepy Water • KeepSleep / Cool Cool Water Alt Mix • Beach Boys / Spring Helsinki • Charlie Morrow / Cool Cool Water • Slim Whitman / Swamp Island Remix • Echo Box vs Volunteer / WHALESONG • DF Tram / Something in the Water • Mt Eden Dubstep & Khadafi Dub /  Hold Dearly • Fuubutsushi / Space 1.8 • Nala Sinephro • WATER • Beat Pharmacy vs Mutabaruka / Waves Coming In, Surf, Seashore • Charlie Morrow / Walking Waves • Miruga / Lights In Window • 110ml / Out of Source • Alphaxone / Drowned World • JG Ballard / Endless Imbalance • Addex / Mind Bypassed • Respira / Floating • Lauge / Floating World • Anne Lockwood / Cascade (The Deluge) • William Basinski / Water Drums • Union Jack + Baka Pygmies / Thirsty • Orb vs Lee Scratch Perry / On Second Thoughts • Halftribe / Wishing Well • Julianna Barwick / fld-001.1 • .foundation / Last Hymn Sinking of the Titanic • Gavin Bryars
LISTEN to the original expansive version: https://www.mixcloud.com/wreckthismess/wreck-the-drowning-world-1249/

Tim Ventimiglia - The Museum as Immersive Event 24

Tim is a museum designer who transforms the static notion of a museum into something dynamic and engaging. He has worked for Ralph Appelbaum Associates, an award-winning international interpretive planning and exhibition design firm, for over 28 years. He is the director of RAA’s Berlin-based studio.
He has directed the interpretive planning and exhibition design for many major institutions, including the visitor center for Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center in Alaska, the First Nations Museum in Oklahoma, the Museums of Ethnology and Asian Art in Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the World Museum Vienna in Austria and is currently leading the design of the new  Museum of the Viking Age in Olso Norway. 
Subjects discussed: collaborations, immersive environments, Berlin, museum design, Holocaust Museum in Washington, fly fishing, Norway, Montana, Vienna, Cornell, outdoors, bringing museums to life ...

Michael Gerzon re-broadcast 0a

Gideon D’Arcangelo - Designing Immersive Experiences 23

Gideon D’Arcangelo is a man of many ambitions. His main interests include the integration of virtual and physical worlds, working toward the design integration of physical, media, systems, graphic & content to ultimately create holistic experiences. 
He joined Arup’s New York office in 2019 where he is a Principal and serves as the Americas Digital Services Portfolio Leader  and a designer of interactive and immersive environments.He has been the VP of Strategy and Communications at ESI Design. He has worked on the Hall of Human Life at the Boston Museum of Science, and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s web platform the Reuters Sign at Three Times Square, and the on-island and on-line ancestor search at Ellis Island Ellis Island Heritage experience. Another focus has been the intersection of new technology and musical experience. He is currently a contributing producer for WNYC’s Studio 360. From 2005-2008, he produced the series Listening In on “Weekend America.” In the 1990s, he worked with ethnomusicologist-folklorist Alan Lomax on the Global Jukebox, an illustrated database of world song and dance styles. I met Gideon when he was a youngster, living in upstate New York in the 1970s where his family was based. His father, painter Allan D’Arcangelo – briefly as well-known as Andy Warhol - and mom Sylvia were close friends of my mentor and artistic collaborator, poet Jerome Rothenberg and his anthropologist wife, Diane. Gideon and I were more in touch after his time at University of Chicago and continue through to the present. His interweaving of creative and social threads, his easy and evergrowing technological learning is a driver of this constellation. Aside from the magic Gideon has brought to his own designs he has kept his father's extraordinary art legacy alive. 
Playlist of audio samples
A Future Harvest • Charlie MorrowEin Feuer Aus Licht Und Liebe • Die Welttraumforscher vs Klangwart Hamanamah • KlangwartWater & Ocean • Charlie MorrowSalmiana • Marc SloanInsurrection Oratorio 1 • Charlie Morrow & Bread & Puppet TheatreO Yeh Charlie Echomix • Charlie Morrow & b/artLeave With You • 2XMThalys bells + lobby & elevator & hotel ambience + mall muzak + distant trains + crickets + radio signals

Ville Pulkki & His Pursuit of SuperHearing 22

Ville Pulkki’s fame reached the techno avant garde with the adoption of his ingenious VBAP (vector-base amplitude panning) a tool for creating spatial sound. When I met him in Helsinki, I was delighted to discover that behind the techie who developed VBAP, a charming jokester. Since then, I’ve enjoyed his warmth and his efficient organizing of the Acoustics Department at Aalto University, including the 2023 convention of the Audio Engineering Society of Europe. Maija-Leena Remes and I interviewed Ville in his lab where he was studying the acoustic layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. He also talked about his learning to dance at the age of 40 and performing on television for commercials and musical events, where the delight of performance must compete with his delight of invention.  
Ville Pulkki is a professor in the Department of Information and Communications Engineering  at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland who has worked in the field of spatial audio for over 25 years. He developed VBAP for his PhD. in 2001 and later, directional audio coding with his research group. He has also made contributions to the perception of spatial sound, laser-based measurement of room responses, and binaural auditory models. He received the Samuel L. Warner Memorial Medal Award from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and the AES Silver Medal Award. He enjoys being with his family, building his summer house, playing various musical instruments, and acting, dancing and singing in musical ensembles.
Playlist of samples:Score The World contest STW2618 • Ville PulkkiSongs of Flowers and Stones • Charlie MorrowChorale bounce 1 • Charlie MorrowSoundflake orchestral version • Ville PulkkiMusical fractal Kuusi Soundflake instrumental • Ville PulkkiTous les Matins du Monde (Marin Marais) • Jordi SavallElla (1960) • Charlie MorrowUltrasonic spatial superhearing • Ville PulkkiA Future Harvest • Charlie MorrowScruTiny in the Great Round • Charlie MorrowDaydream musical composition • Ville PulkkiBinary sequences Six variations for orchestra • Ville PulkkiWave Music III - 60 Clarinets and a Boat • Charlie Morrow Sun Chant (1975) • Charlie MorrowBat Sounds
Themes discussed: VBAP, perception of spatial sound, early immersive experiences in Finland, experiencing silence, bat sounds, ultrasonic super hearing, physics vs music, esoteric inventions, ambisonics, performing music live. 

Micky Remann & His Operahouse Filled With Water 21

Micky Remann is a German media artist and producer of media events. He invented the “Liquid Sound” concept and its installation in various locations with exceptional waters such Bad Orb & Bad Sulza in Germany. They involve participants floating in body temperature salt water where they participate in immersive experiences that includes underwater sounds, music, lights and surround video. 
Remann also developed the popular international FullDome Festival at the Zeiss Planetarium in Berlin. It features innovative productions, music and entertainment in the genre of 360-degree, audio-visual media and immersive fulldome theatre performances. He is also a some-time singer, a songwriter, and an author. I met Kicky in Bad Sulza where I could enjoy the underwater sound system. In this podcast Remann discusses his explorations of whale & dolphin languages and his more recent exploits expanding the Liquid Sound concept.
Playlist of samples:Underwater bubble soundsAquasonic • Between MusicPhoning Annea • Charlie Morrow & Annea LockwoodConcert for Fish • Charlie MorrowLive at Liquid Sound • BalsamfieberComet, Fire, Water • Charlie MorrowLiquid Sound Festival 2014 exc • Thomas Kagermann Liquid Sound Festival 2014 exc • Jim NollmanWater, Ocean • Charlie Morrow
Subjects discussed: immersion concerts, salt water flotation, pre-birth experiences, fulldome experiences, first immersive experience at age 3 when he almost drowned in a pond, his sister saw him in a dream-like state and yelled to his mother who ran to save him, mermaids, underwater crystal palaces, temple for underwater listening, communicated with whales of the Pacific Northwest coast with music, environmental opera & symphony, reincarnations as an Orca Whale, body temperature and salt water while simulating the musical experience of whales, underwater concerts, thermos / bad / spas, DJ nights, full moon concerts, Liquid Sound Festival ...

Bread & Puppet & Peace with Peter Schumann 20

Today’s iMMERSE podcast is even more unusual than many of the others. I interviewed Elke and Peter Schumann in February of 2020 in their Glover, Vermont home along with Jay Walbert, the archivist for my Archive in nearby Barton, Vermont.
The octagenarian Schumanns immigrated from Germany to New York in 1961 and have led the Bread and Puppet Theater since 1963. 
In this podcast, they share their history and artistic politics and bread. As Peter says here: We went around and gave them pieces of bread to eat and found they were a better audience when they were chewing – we liked them better…"
In the beginning of our chat, Peter turns to Elke and says, "When I don’t remember something, you will".
"I will" she says. This happy conversation is ever so dear to me because Elke passed away on August 1, 2021.
I first met Peter in New York in the 1970s through public events maker, Karin Bacon. I first came to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont in 1968 to work with Fluxus artists Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles.
In the years that followed, I bought some land from them and built a house there in the 1990, the house where I now live and am recording this introduction. Since 1990, my relationship with Bread and Puppet and the Schumann in the neighboring town of Glover continued to grow. 
The Bread and Puppet Theater engages people, after filling them with hand-milled sourdough bread. They work environmentally and for many decades now, they've been making amazing use of the landscape, natural light changes and natural acoustics.  Puppets from tiny to gigantic, signs, banners and hand-made art have always animated their events. Their roadside museum is filled with decades worth of their fanciful performance objects from their local, national and international pageants. 
The tradition of handing-out bread always guarantees good spirits and an enthusiastic audience ready to be entertained by the humor, irony, politics, pageantry and their deep concerns for humanity. But let’s just let them tell their own story.
Topics covered in podcastJohn Cage, Merce Cunningham, Claes Oldenberg, anti-Vietnam war protests, Judson Church, Living Theatre, Red Grooms, Stefan Brecht, Tompkins Square Park, Lower Eastside, Daily street muggings of the Bread & Puppet performers, street performances, Grace Paley, volunteerism, Burning Man, War Resisters League, Strike for Peace, Vermont, Barton, Glover, Northeast Kingdom, Socialist pageants, searching for clay, puppet historian, John Bell, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Earth People Park, Burke, pianist Karl Schwartz, Sheffield, baking rye bread, summer Bread & Puppet performances in Vermont, homemade clay bread oven, May Day, Pageant Park, Crystal Lake, Peter Schumann’s sculptures, the Bread & Puppet Museum, Sheffield River clay wall, The Charlie Morrow Archive ...
Samples playlist:Insurrection Oratorio • Charlie Morrow / Strange Circus • Lee Volfoni / Carnival Of Souls • Verne Langdons / Wonder Bread Commercial 1950s / Bread and Puppet Theater 2021 • Tetsuro Hoshii / Brother Bread Sister Puppet • Grace Paley / Grosse Fuge • Charlie Morrow / Fellini’s Circus • Daniele Benati / Kiddie Land • Prelude to a Nightmare

Chris Wangro - Park & Circus as Real Immersion 19

iMMERSE! 19 Charley Morrow interviews Chris Wangro 
Today we talk with my long-time friend & co-conspirator in public events, Chris Wangro. We met through the New City Department of Parks, where he just had been hired as events coordinator. My colleagues and I at the New Wilderness Foundation were producing a summer solstice celebration in New York's Central Park. Chris had, at the time, the early 1980s, just returned from working in Europe with experimental rock band Henry Cow. We have continued to make things happen to the present-day.
Chris Wangro started out as the ringmaster of a one-man circus and rose to become the tzar of Special Events for the City of New York in the 1980s.
These days, he works as a Sought-After Public Space Strategist who pursues the improved design of public space, employing placemaking, community-building strategies that are enhanced by his PASSION FOR BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER IN JOYFUL, DYNAMIC, AND UNEXPECTED WAYS — all across the globe. He has produced countless prestigious events for audiences from intimate to massive including festivals, cultural programs, presidential summits, NASCAR rallies,  papal visits, Dolly Parton conerts, pachyderm parades and art festivities worldwide. The event we produced was broadcast internationally. 
Topics discussed: immersion, VR vs real immersion, the park as ultimate immersive experience, the circus as a tangible immersive experience, solstice events in Central Park, PT Barnum, concert hall vs informal space performance, immersive experiences are as old as mankind, what makes a good circus, magic tricks, experimental & political performance, live events & festivals, feeling the space, Olmstead, improv, homemade musical instruments, independent & noncorporate events.
Interview Transcript to Follow