I Overview and Project History
Overview
Living Room Pieces is a generative sound installation and long-form music composition developed by composer Michael J. Schumacher. Based on a series of Room Pieces originally created for concert spaces and gallery settings, the installation has been designed here for use in the home. In this context, it serves to reframe and reimagine one’s sonic environment.
For the listener, Living Room Pieces encourages an increased awareness of one’s presence in space - architectural, communal and individual. The piece establishes a scenario of an unpredictable yet intentional exteriority and involves not only an inherent playfulness but also an irresistible compulsion to form meaningful relationships out of coincidences. It’s about the abstract nature of sound and how this becomes a “blank slate” onto which meaning can be written.
Compositionally, the expansive and eclectic sound palette of Living Room Pieces is organized, on a macro level, according to a seven day cycle. Each day of the week, therefore, consists of a discernibly unique sonic character. (The specifics of this structure are discussed in detail below.) Additionally, every time the
installation is plugged in, a new seven day sequence will be generated, bringing with it a refreshed patterning; the piece will never exist the same way twice. Also integral to the composition is the use of silence which comprises anywhere from 33-77% of a given day’s cycle. This silence functions as an open canvas for the occurrence of sound and, more practically, as a way of integrating the installation within its surroundings.
Project History
The first iteration of Living Room Pieces was in the Chelsea Hotel in 2005 for artist Antoine Laval. For the installation of the piece in his apartment there, twelve speakers were used, placed discreetly in the apartment’s three rooms and kitchen. Antoine lived with the piece running 24/7 for one year. The algorithms took into account the time of day, becoming quieter, but continuing to play, through the night.
Another manifestation was at EMPAC, the experimental music and performing arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. In this case the piece was installed in the building’s PA system, which consisted of about 30 speakers separated into zones, such as lobby, stairwell, restrooms, bar, etc. Again the piece ran 24/7 for one year.
Singuhr Gallery in Berlin presented a version in a hotel room through the summer of 2007; people could book time in the hotel and experience the work for a day or two.
This latest iteration is an effort to bring the installation into domestic spaces and to make it
accessible to a wider audience. An edition of 10, created in March 2021, and available through various distributors to the general public for loan or to purchase, is a selfcontained sound system using two speakers and a Raspberry Pi computer. As Schumacher describes it, "Inside this little device are 7000+ sound files; when, why and how they are played is determined in real time - one can listen for months and never hear the same sound repeat exactly. This speaks to the nature of sound - it’s ‘everywhere-ness’, the impossibility of ignoring it. A sound installation designed for the living space needs to be as varied and as unpredictable as life, yet also to maintain a structural integrity that transcends mere chance.”
In the last year, Living Room Pieces has been installed in 25 homes from New York to Los Angeles to Brussels. People keep it for a while and then pass it on to the next person. “I think this is an interesting idea on how to distribute a work,” says Schumacher, “especially if it happens organically, with one person offering it to the next. That way, each piece has its own history.”
To find new paths for his project, Schumacher partnered with some institutions in the US as well as in Europe, including Harvestworks in New York, QO2 in Brussels, Black Hole in LA and ESS in Chicago. The latter has recently announced that they will offer the piece on loan to their major donors. Additionally, Schumacher is collaborating with Brooklyn based record label Chaikin Records to further promote and distribute Living Room Pieces
II
Packing List and Set-Up Instructions
Packing List
1 Raspberry Pi computer
1 Raspberry Pi power supply
1 stereo RCA audio cable
ca. 30’ speaker cable
this booklet
Note: The computer must be plugged into an audio system to be audible. This is not a wireless - i.e. Bluetooth - system, it must be physically connected using the supplied RCA cable or an equivalent.
It is strongly recommended that a dedicated sound system be used for Living Room Pieces. This system should be on continuously so that listeners can experience the unique time scale of the composition. Additionally, though the Raspberry Pi utilizes two outputs, it is not, strictly speaking, “stereo”. A stereo speaker setup creates a virtual soundstage whereas Living Room Pieces treats the two outputs as independent sound sources. Because of this, the speakers should be placed as far apart from each other as possible, while still being mutually audible.
Some suggestions for sound systems
Each of the following models use the same design: one of the speakers as a built in stereo amplifi er, while the other is passive, connected to the fi rst by a simple speaker cable. This allows the user to place the Raspberry Pi close to the powered speaker, with both being plugged into an AC outlet.
The above example shows a pair of Micca PB42X speakers. The speaker on the right contains the built-in power amp; the two RCA plugs are visible. The user can use the supplied 30 foot speaker cable to connect the active (powered) speaker to the passive one.
Other makes and models with a similar design are: Kanto Yu
Mackie Cr5-X
Peachtree M24
Audioengine A5+
Each have somewhat different features and cost. We have found that the Kanto Yu is our favorite in terms of balancing cost, style and performance.
Setting up the system
Note: The piece will play for 12 hours from the time you plug in the computer, then be silent for 12 hours, repeating this cycle daily. Set up the system at your preferred start time.
1. Put the active speaker (the one with the built-in amp) and the Raspberry Pi computer near to each other, close to an AC outlet with 2 available sockets.
2. Put the other, passive speaker as far from the active speaker as possible, given the cable length and room dimensions. You can even put this speaker in a different room, though they should both be audible from any single perspective. If it’s in the same room, angle it 180° in relation to the active speaker - so they’re pointing in opposite directions.
3. Using the supplied speaker cable (feel free to use a different, longer speaker cable if necessary) connect the active speaker's speaker output to the input on the passive speaker. Match the colors so that red goes to red and black to black
4. Using the supplied “RCA” audio cable, connect the outputs of the Raspberry Pi to the "RCA input" on the active speaker.
5. Connect the supplied power cable to the active speaker and plug it into AC.
6. Turn on the active speaker:
Refer to the owners manual for your speakers for more complete instructions on how to turn on the speaker and choose the correct input.
Experiment with the volume setting, which, ideally, once set should remain the same whenever listening.
Living Room Pieces has a wide dynamic range; find an overall level that you’re comfortable with, but that allows even the quietest sounds to be audible above your room’s “noise floor”.
7. Connect the Raspberry Pi power supply to the computer (see the attached diagram) and plug it into AC. After about a minute you should hear the Living Room Pieces sound logo out of the speakers, confirming that the piece has started and audio is working. The piece will cycle each day between on and off states, 12 hours on and 12 off, daily. You have to plug in the computer about a minute or two before the desired start time of day, as it takes a while for the system to boot.
8. If you want to suspend listening to the piece, turn off the speakers, not the computer, which will continue to generate the 7 day cycle. To start listening again, simply turn the speakers back on.
Contact us via email: LivingRoomPieces@gmail.com, if you encounter any problems during installation.
The installation should run continuously, intermittently making sound during your preferred timeframe every day.
If the computer crashes (you don’t hear anything during normal hours for an unusually long time, > 3 hours), unplug the computer, wait about 10 seconds and replug it in (at the appropriate time of day). Wait for the sound logo to confirm it’s operational.
* A note on the placement of speakers:
Ideally, regarding the Living Room Pieces initial conception as a sound installation, the speakers should be placed quite far apart; they’re not meant to create a traditional stereo “sound stage”. Experimenting with speaker placement is encouraged: when placing the speakers around the room - including asymmetrical vertical and horizontal positions - listen carefully as to how the acoustics of the living space are activated by the sounds and where this is most effectively achieved. They should be far enough to be perceived as two different sources: when one speaker is in front and the other behind, it’s enough to get the emotional response that’s endemic to surround listening.
Visit the Living Room Pieces website at: www.livingroompieces.com for more information and links to recommended speaker models.
III Modes, Modules and Algorithms
The compositional structure of Living Room Pieces is organized according to a series of modes, modules and algorithms. The modes are the largest structural unit and exist in seven different types; each of the seven modes is comprised of a respective number of modules. The modules refer to small groupings of individual units of sound; each module consists of a set of designated techniques, strategies and sound sources used to craft the distinctive sonic language of Living Room Pieces; these modules are cataloged as a whole into eleven specific categories. The algorithms are carefully constructed processes, which govern the particular ‘performance’ of each sound and other structural factors.
Modes: The seven day cycle
A familiarity with the seven modes of Living Room Pieces is most useful for the listener in grasping the composition’s underlying form. They determine which modules (units of sound) will play on which days and how these modules will unfold throughout the course of a single day. These seven modes, or structures, are ordered into a seven day cycle which begins when the piece is instantiated (i.e. plugged in). So, if, for example, “Chords of Four” occurs on a Wednesday then it will
continue to do so until the computer is restarted (i.e. unplugged and plugged in again). In this way, a large scale structure will be perceivable over weeks and months.
The seven modes:
1. “Serial” - Twelve different sound modules (regardless of module category and excluding any from “Pieces/Solos”) are ordered sequentially to form a “row,” a pattern which is repeated throughout the course of the day. This mode is relatively active, with up to three modules playing within an hour; occasional overlaps of modules may occur. After a time, the listener should detect the repeating pattern. Algorithms provide further variation with each repetition.
2. “Sequence” - Creates an ordered row of the ten module categories (excluding “Pieces/Solos”) and plays a module from each, in order, as the day passes. Similar in some ways to “Serial” but the specific module from each category may be different each time. This mode is also relatively active.
3. “1 per day” - A single module is chosen and played throughout the day. This is the sparsest mode, an hour or more may go by without the sound being heard.
4. “The Rest/Rhythm 1st” - Two modes in one: “The Rest” chooses a module from any module category (except “Pieces/Solos”) and plays it for between 170 and 430 seconds. “Rhythm 1st” chooses a module from the category “Rhythmic Noise” and then adds up to two more modules, creating a mix of sounds, also playing for between 170 and 430 seconds.
5. “Music Solo/The Rest” - “The Rest” has already been discussed. “Music Solo” chooses a sound from the module category “Pieces/Solos”. This category has some of the longer-lasting sounds - full pieces - some lasting an hour or more.
6. “Noematta” - “Noematta” is a module category comprised of a library of 3001 short musical samples, defined as short, gestural, surprising, evocative, often ‘found’ (i.e. sampled from a published source). An algorithm decides how many of these short sounds will play within an hour, between 8 and 55, following the Fibonacci series (8, 13, 21, 34, 55), with a new schedule instantiated each hour. Every 11th sound played will trigger a module from one of the ten module categories (excluding “Pieces/Solos”).
7. “Chords of Four” - Soft, wafting chords of four notes each play intermittently throughout the day, separated by time intervals of 85, 115, 145, 155, 185 and 215 seconds. The chords are created by stacking three algorithmically generated intervals on top of a root note. Every 11th chord played will trigger a module from one of the ten module categories (excluding “Pieces/Solos”). This is an active mode, but the soft, mellow timbral quality of the chords also makes it the most “ambient”.
Modules and the Module Categories
The individual sounds of Living Room Pieces are all derived from a set of 301 “modules.” For a single module, a source sound is played back and altered in real time by algorithms controlling variations in volume, panning,
delay between channels, reverb type and amount, filtering, distortion effects, playback speed, playback order (skipping) and granulation. The source sounds come from synthesizers, recordings of acoustic instruments and voice, “found” sounds from films, TV, radio and the Internet, field recordings, foley-type recordings of objects and actions, and (more traditional, fixed) music compositions by Schumacher and other composers.
The 301 modules are classified according to eleven categories:
1. Spoken
2. Ambiences
3. Rhythmic Noise
4. Rhythmic Pitched
5. Static Noise
6. Static Pitched
7. Active Sustained Noise
8. Active Sustained Pitched
9. Intermittent Noise
10. Intermittent Pitched
11. Pieces/Solos
The names of each category refer to the sonic character of their respective sounds. These categories are also the primary means by which the different modes of the seven day cycle establish their individual sound material (excluding “Noematta” and “Chords of Four” which contain their own sound sources).
The algorithms that determine when and what modules will play take into account these categories as a parameter; this is in order to insure variety when multiple modules are playing at the same time.
Most modules, except “Pieces/Solos,” will last for between 170 and 430 seconds, or between about three and seven minutes. Silences, the space between sounding modules, may last an hour or more, but are generally between about ten and thirty minutes.
* A note on the “found sounds” of Living Room Pieces:
Many of the installation’s sounds are derived from everyday life. These are culled from Schumacher’s own field recordings which he’s been making for many years. Some favorite subjects have included elevators, refrigerators, radiators, fans, engines, footsteps, trains, and lamps. An object that holds a particular fascination for Schumacher is the door, which he sees not only as a physical barrier between two soundscapes (often the public and the private), but also as an activator of acoustics and, as such, quite challenging to reproduce. Also in Living Room Pieces are the sounds of traffic jams, airports, sporting events, crowds, people talking, running, laughing, clapping, dancing, working and, of course, making music.
“Each sound reminds me of a specific time and place,” says Schumacher, “but, in line with composer Pierre Schaeffer’s dictum of ‘reduced listening,’ they have been relentlessly transformed and made dynamic, non-representational, musical.”
Algorithms
The framework for the majority of timing decisionswhen to execute a particular event - is constructed upon algorithms. The algorithms designed for Living Room Pieces are all based on a set of six prime numbers - 17, 23, 29, 31, 37 and 43. A multiplier, for example, 1, 30, 100 or 17000, determines the duration of an event - the time until the next one. For example, at time 0, the beginning of a particular event, say the “calling up” of a module to play, the algorithm may choose the base number 23 and multiply it by 10,000, equaling 230,000 milliseconds or 230 seconds or 3 minutes and 50 seconds, which will be the length of time that module plays. The shortest events - skipping around a sound file, or changing the frequency of a filter, will use shorter multipliers such as 3, 10, 30 and 50, to get durations, for example, when using 17 as a base, of 51, 170, 510 and 850 milliseconds respectively. Intermediate durations can be derived using multipliers between 300 and 3000.
The point of this structure is that, because durations and timing events are based on primes, the rigidity and predictability of simple subdivisions such as 2 and 3, typical of musical forms, is avoided, yet the limitation on the number of potential durations, as well as their reiteration from the micro to the macro level, results in a basic cohesiveness, the regular occurrence of simultaneities, giving the piece a sense of compositional determinism despite its algorithmic basis.
IV On the Composer
Michael J. Schumacher is an award winning, Juilliard trained composer who has innovated in the area of spatial sound and algorithmic composition for more than thirty years. His work ranges from multichannel installations to music for contemporary dance to soundtracks for experimental films. His DVD Five Sound Installations published by XI Records, is another first - a set of computer-generated sound installations playable on a computer at home. His 2003 CD Room Pieces XI was chosen, by Wire magazine, as its “best of classical composition.”
Schumacher credits his work with computers and multichannel sound systems to a host of primary influences: the chance music of John Cage, the installations of La Monte Young, Morton Feldman’s long form pieces, the “concrète” approach to studiobased electronic music, Alvin Lucier’s and Maryanne Amacher’s radical confrontations with resonance and acoustics, the free improvisations of the AACM, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker, the allencompassing immersion of the dance club, and the film soundtracks of Jean-Luc Godard.
From his personal experiences with these influences, Schumacher’s insight was that the nature of processbased music - from serialism to minimalism and beyond
- demanded comparable social and architectural spaces to fully engage audiences. In this regard, the musical experience is holistic, with architectural and social spaces functioning to define the listener experience as much as sound does. The simple presence of a traditional performance stage completely alters one’s physical relation to a work, and, when the visual focus is forward and the rear a “protected” space, we intuitively expect to hear a story of some kind, a dramatic arc. These expectations are at odds with the structures of algorithmic, generative composition.
To realize this creative vision on the experiential nature of sound, Schumacher, in 1997, founded Studio Five Beekman, later renamed Diapason, a listening space devoted to multichannel immersive sound art. At the time it was one of only two public galleries in the world devoted exclusively to this kind of work.
Schumacher’s experiences creating music for gallery-type listening spaces led to thinking about the space where most people do most of their listening: the home. “What would a sound installation need to be like, to be, like a work of visual art, compatible with a continuous experience that blended with daily life?” And, hence, the path was paved leading to this special edition of Living Room Pieces for domestic spaces.
V Acknowledgments and Credits
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their help in bringing this work to fruition: my parents for their support; Ursula Scherrer and our son Karl for their support and inspiration; Antoine Laval for his continuing support and for living with the piece for an entire year at his Chelsea Hotel apartment; Phill Niblock (R.I.P.) for his support and inspiration; Liz and Kirk Radke for their devotion and support; Bruce Andrews, Tim Barnes, Anthony Burr, Jane Henry, Christopher McIntyre, Michael Moser and Jane Rigler for their sounds; Barry Chase for his generosity; Carol Parkinson of Harvestworks; George Bishop, Scott Sherk and Pat Badt for test-driving; Olivia Junell and ESS in Chicago; Micah Silver; Julia Eckhardt of Q-O2; Brian Chase for his tremendous help bringing the project to a wider public; Zorica Čolić for her love and support; Mario Mazzoli; Charlie Morrow; Baudouin Oosterlynck; Carsten Seiffarth; Charles Curtis and La Monte Young.
Credits
Living Room Pieces was originally created using
Max/MSP software on an Apple computer and was ported over to Pure Data on the Raspberry Pi in 2020. The Pd license is copied on the following pages.
All the sounds used in this piece, except for those that quote or reference compositions by other composers, are ©2000-2024 by Michael J. Schumacher. Any use of these sounds in any form other than playback within Living Room Pieces is strictly prohibited.
Box and booklet design by Zorica Čolić.
The algorithms that constitute Living Room Pieces are ©2005-2024 by Michael J. Schumacher.
Chaikin Records
www.chaikinrecords.com
Catalog number CKR 019
©℗ CKR 2024
sound system showing Raspberry Pi computer and powered speakers
Pure Data license:
This software is copyrighted by Miller Puckette and others. The following terms apply to all files associated with the software unless explicitly disclaimed in individual files.
The authors hereby grant permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and license this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that existing copyright notices are retained in all copies and that this notice is included verbatim in any distributions. No written agreement, license, or royalty fee is required for any of the authorized uses. Modifications to this software may be copyrighted by their authors and need not follow the licensing terms described here, provided that the new terms are clearly indicated on the first page of each file where they apply.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR DISTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, ITS DOCUMENTATION, OR ANY DERIVATIVES THEREOF, EVEN IF THE AUTHORS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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