Communiqué
Dec 28, 2021, 10:55 AM
"This piece works with a complicated moment in the history of space music, electronic music, and political music.
"Part of the design of China’s first satellite, Dongfanghong 1, was to make music using the satellite’s telemetric system. Specifically, it was designed to play the world the Maoist anthem “The East is Red," from which it took its name. An oral history of the project relates that during ground tests the song was out of tune. Care needed to be taken musically - the advice was to “add harmonic waves” - and technically, with insulation that would prevent pitch modulation in orbit due to changes in temperature or electromagnetic interference.
"During the broadcast, the satellite sounds transition suddenly from cadenced song to chaotic telemetry. The radio announcers explain repeatedly that the first forty seconds are the music, and the next 20 seconds are telemetric data. But the result is a mixed broadcast that splices together different orders of communication, encoded verbally, musically, and as data signal. That moment of transition also breaks the revolutionary song down and creates an unexpected gesture toward a different type of music—suggestive of something like what Theodore Adorno called a dialectical music, or the image of emancipation he found in atonal music.
"The first part of the piece samples the musical portion of the satellite transmission. The second part is a remix of the ground rebroadcast, with its framing and explanations of the data/music/text. The third part slows down and follows the data signal, with its mostly atonal sequence of notes."
"Part of the design of China’s first satellite, Dongfanghong 1, was to make music using the satellite’s telemetric system. Specifically, it was designed to play the world the Maoist anthem “The East is Red," from which it took its name. An oral history of the project relates that during ground tests the song was out of tune. Care needed to be taken musically - the advice was to “add harmonic waves” - and technically, with insulation that would prevent pitch modulation in orbit due to changes in temperature or electromagnetic interference.
"During the broadcast, the satellite sounds transition suddenly from cadenced song to chaotic telemetry. The radio announcers explain repeatedly that the first forty seconds are the music, and the next 20 seconds are telemetric data. But the result is a mixed broadcast that splices together different orders of communication, encoded verbally, musically, and as data signal. That moment of transition also breaks the revolutionary song down and creates an unexpected gesture toward a different type of music—suggestive of something like what Theodore Adorno called a dialectical music, or the image of emancipation he found in atonal music.
"The first part of the piece samples the musical portion of the satellite transmission. The second part is a remix of the ground rebroadcast, with its framing and explanations of the data/music/text. The third part slows down and follows the data signal, with its mostly atonal sequence of notes."
Composition by John Savarese.
Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave