{"id":11991,"date":"2021-06-21T17:28:59","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T22:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=11991"},"modified":"2021-06-21T17:29:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T22:29:03","slug":"pluto-descending-a-staircase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/06\/21\/pluto-descending-a-staircase\/","title":{"rendered":"Pluto descending a staircase"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve created a new page<\/a> for my trilogy of piano recordings, made between 2006 and sometime in the mid-2010s, which made use of the Yamaha Clavinova’s capacity for altering the piano’s tuning system away from the “equal temperament” westerners (and now the world) have gotten used to, and toward some more interesting sonic terrain. As I write there, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While a piano always remains a piano \u2014 its keys are struck to resound in their fixed tonalities, unlike strings (bowed) or wind instruments (blown) which can be bent, pulled, elongated, and woven into tensile braids \u2014 the possibility of modifying the tonal relationships of a pianistic keyboard opens up a vast new world. Its harmonies become movable strata, with new rhythms and relationships introduced in their overtone structures. With its timbres become more adjustable as well, a piano can come to resemble something more like a tuneable gamelan orchestra.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The trilogy begins pensively, moves on to some avant-jazzy territory, and progresses to full-on La Monte Young<\/a> style “distemperament.” The back story to Distempered Landscapes<\/em>, the third in the trilogy, goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I performed with and composed music for the Avant-Garde Ukrainian Theatre (AUT) in the mid 1980s, we were invited to a party at a large, suburban house following a performance in Philadelphia. The family owned a piano, but the piano was completely out of tune \u2014 to the extent that it made harmonies I had never heard before. It was, to my ears, miraculously out of tune. I found a few note combinations that I was especially enchanted with, but the owner of the house, hearing my percussive, minimalist-style repetition of these \u201cdiscordant\u201d note clusters, came up to me and asked, \u201cDo you like what you\u2019re playing?\u201d Then, a little cautiously, he added, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t.\u201d So I stopped. \u201cDistempered Landscapes\u201d is my (long awaited) revenge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

More can be found at https:\/\/adrianivakhiv.bandcamp.com<\/a> (and on how it relates to ecophilosophy, here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve created a new page for my trilogy of piano recordings, made between 2006 and sometime in the mid-2010s, which made use of the Yamaha Clavinova’s capacity for altering the piano’s tuning system away from the “equal temperament” westerners (and now the world) have gotten used to, and toward some more interesting sonic terrain. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-37p","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1018,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/01\/19\/more-musical-colors\/","url_meta":{"origin":11991,"position":0},"title":"more musical colors","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"After writing about Jon Hassell's \"coffee coloured\" global music of the future, I was intrigued to find out that Timothy Morton, author of \"Ecology Without Nature,\" has been writing about the ecological implications (or something like it) of Just Intonation versus Equal Temperament. For those unaware of the fine details\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10206,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/12\/28\/musical-occasions\/","url_meta":{"origin":11991,"position":1},"title":"Musical occasions","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Music is an occasional topic on this blog (as shown in the Soundscape category). It was my first university discipline and love (when I was an undergrad at York's wonderfully eclectic Music Department), still figures in my scholarly work from time to time (as in my work on Cape Breton\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1181,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/18\/ways-to-shoot-starlings\/","url_meta":{"origin":11991,"position":2},"title":"ways to shoot starlings","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Shoot\" as in film, photograph, capture and display, but also fly with them, shoot the rapids of their movement, accompany them, become starling. These mesmerizing videos of moving masses of starlings, \"murmurations\" as they're called, like other YouTube animal videos, tell us as much about the phenomenon being watched as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/XH-groCeKbE\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13665,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2024\/06\/27\/symbiocene-talk-ai-other-things\/","url_meta":{"origin":11991,"position":3},"title":"Symbiocene talk, AI, & other things","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 27, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"This blog has been a bit quiet as I transition to my new position as Woodsworth Chair in Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University. I'll be sharing more about that soon. In the meantime, I can share links to a few recent talks. Last year's Free Cultural Spaces symposium \u201cTowards\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/cy1jOirmpTc\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10465,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/17\/comments-on-process-relational-meditation\/","url_meta":{"origin":11991,"position":4},"title":"Comments on process-relational meditation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 17, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Part Two of my book Shadowing the Anthropocene (open access to all) outlines a system of \"bodymindfulness\" practice rooted in the mindfulness meditation system of Shinzen Young, but extended triadically to account for the active nature of living. Here are a couple of comments on and tweaks to that system,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Process-relational thought"","block_context":{"text":"Process-relational thought","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/process-relational-thought\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/moment-of-nothingness-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7082,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/12\/01\/thinking-forests-animals\/","url_meta":{"origin":11991,"position":5},"title":"Thinking forests & animals","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's one of the participants at the AAA's ontology panel, McGill anthropologist Eduardo Kohn, applying ontological speculation -- including Peirce and biosemiotics -- to animals and forests: http:\/\/youtu.be\/mSdrdY6vmDo And here's a \"keynote conversation\" among Kohn, Donna Haraway, and Colin Dayan from the same meeting, the UC Berkeley's Funny Kinds of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/mSdrdY6vmDo\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11994,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11991\/revisions\/11994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}