Hiway 70
Bill Alves
About this work:
A number of years ago, I had the privilege of working with computer animation pioneer John Whitney, and we had planned visual and music composition software that would put into practice his ideas on the complementarity of sound and vision. Unfortunately, he died in 1995, just as I had found the funds to begin to realize this vision. Hiway 70 is the first piece I've done which makes use of this computer animation software, and in the work I've tried to create a vision inspired by long night drives on lonely Texas highways. The soundtrack was realized in Csound and utilizes computer modifications of traffic sounds, as well as electric guitars and other sources. I also exploited this computer music language's tuning capability to realize "free style" just intonation, that is, where the tuning of each note is determined by immediate context, not a fixed set of pitches. Many of the images of the video were used as a visual analogue to the harmonic relationships of just intonation, a relationship also inspired by Whitney.
Year composed: 1997
Duration: 00:11:00
Ensemble type: Electronic Instruments and Sound Sources:Prerecorded Sound
Instrumentation: