2008 Woodie Awards
Mclean Mix brings call of the wild
Melissa Marshall
Issue date: 3/16/06 Section: Arts
This past Thursday or Friday, students could wander into the upper level of Johnson and immerse themselves in an interactive rainforest. Anyone could play a bicycle wheel using a violin bow to create astonishingly realistic bird and amphibian noises between their eleven and one o'clock classes, or fool around on the Jungle Keyboard before checking out the Free Friday Film. You know, the usual.
This less-than-kosher form of entertainment was brought to Middlebury through a joint effort of the Music and Film and Media departments as a part of their New Media Series. The series attempts to expose students to artists who innovatively manipulate technology in their works.
Viewers walked through the darkened room, which was illuminated mostly by the slide projections of different rainforests and filled with student-generated sounds. Some murmurings were so realistic that I found myself searching the ceiling for a real, live howler monkey.
However, the McClean Mix, a duo compromised of husband and wife Barton and Priscilla McClean was not always in the business of such artificially-rendered biomes. They were, and still consider themselves, classical music composers; however, they wanted to get their listeners more engaged. "We wanted to get the audience involved in performing with us. We think that everybody should get the chance to perform, not just musicians," said Priscilla McClean.
The seeds for the idea of a tropical rainforest that can fit in a room were planted in 1988, when the McCleans traveled through the Puerto Rican rainforest.
"We were just so amazed by all the incredible sounds around us and thought, the musical process in the rainforest is basically the same as [that] in the studio," said McClean. They began developing their ideas, and created the initial project within a yer.
The rainforest that students experienced last week consisted of an audiotape and five performing stations. Two featured processing microphones - one had a bicycle wheel with steel spokes that could be played with a violin bow or a mallet, and two other stations had synthesizers - one that was a sampler that played real rainforest sounds, and a digital synthesizer for invented ones. Slides, which faded and dissolved like artwork, consisted of pictures taken by the McCleans of seven different rainforests.
This less-than-kosher form of entertainment was brought to Middlebury through a joint effort of the Music and Film and Media departments as a part of their New Media Series. The series attempts to expose students to artists who innovatively manipulate technology in their works.
Viewers walked through the darkened room, which was illuminated mostly by the slide projections of different rainforests and filled with student-generated sounds. Some murmurings were so realistic that I found myself searching the ceiling for a real, live howler monkey.
However, the McClean Mix, a duo compromised of husband and wife Barton and Priscilla McClean was not always in the business of such artificially-rendered biomes. They were, and still consider themselves, classical music composers; however, they wanted to get their listeners more engaged. "We wanted to get the audience involved in performing with us. We think that everybody should get the chance to perform, not just musicians," said Priscilla McClean.
The seeds for the idea of a tropical rainforest that can fit in a room were planted in 1988, when the McCleans traveled through the Puerto Rican rainforest.
"We were just so amazed by all the incredible sounds around us and thought, the musical process in the rainforest is basically the same as [that] in the studio," said McClean. They began developing their ideas, and created the initial project within a yer.
The rainforest that students experienced last week consisted of an audiotape and five performing stations. Two featured processing microphones - one had a bicycle wheel with steel spokes that could be played with a violin bow or a mallet, and two other stations had synthesizers - one that was a sampler that played real rainforest sounds, and a digital synthesizer for invented ones. Slides, which faded and dissolved like artwork, consisted of pictures taken by the McCleans of seven different rainforests.