About this template
Observer: Peter Barvoets
Location: Vermont Date: April 3, 1996
Fuji 1600 ISO print film. 105mm at f2.8. 3 minutes.
Type 3 double arm barn door. Limiting mag , 7+. Taken during eclipse of moon.
This piece is a (compressed) impression of a comet following its orbital path. As its slowly drifts towards the sun, sparkling puffs of dust and luminescent gas jet from its surface. As the comet gets closer to the sun, the activity increases, and as the comet swings back out into space, things slowly settle back down. The growth and movement in this piece is very slow.
I got to see both the comet Hyakutake, with its 30 degress of arc twin-tail, and also a total eclipse of the moon on April 3rd, 1996, my 39th birthday as it turned out. It was about the most amazing astronomical display I will ever see, barring a trip into space myself.
Musically, the piece strives to avoid rythym, although there are pulses. Set pitch configurations are subjected to both calculated and random bends. I would do things like send the output of the modulation wheel to the pitch bend controller etc. by means of recoding the control numbers in the sequencer. I didn't take good notes, but I remember being head down in the synth for quite a while, trying to find the perfectly abiguous ambiguity, about which I was not ambivalent.
This piece was done on a now ancient Yamaha SY99 that I still use.
Try this one with your headphones on!