Video work to integrate with musical pieces and documentation of improvisational performances. Pieces are displayed in reverse chronological order.
(1978 & 2024) Tim Wolf: shehnai; super 8 film and video.
In 1978 while at CalArts, I created two separate pieces (film and music) that were barely seen or heard, and somehow incomplete. I remembered the film I shot of waves meeting the Malibu shore in my mind’s eye, but hadn’t seen the footage since experimenting with overlapping projections in slow motion on dance studio mirrors when the film was first processed. In 2024 I had the 7 minutes of Super 8 film stock digitized and after watching it for the first time in decades realized it matched the feeling of the untouched music piece.
That piece was a solo on the shehnai (North Indian oboe) titled “Rodless Pump Meditation,” part of an exploration of improvisation and mindfulness breathing meditation. It was influenced by the work of Terry Riley, Phil Niblock and Bismillah Khan, and the enthusiasm of a young man playing an instrument he had no real skill in or inclination to master. Despite that, working in the Art School’s media room, I had borrowed a Roland Space Echo and an additional tape deck from fellow students to add echoes and live layering. Setting two 4-track tape decks 54 inches apart and running the tape from one machine to the other I employed the classic analog tape delay technique to repeat what I played live 7 seconds after I played it with an additional two more repetitions.
The sound of the shehnai, even in the hands of a master, can sound a bit harsh and raspy, and in my hands often resembled a flock of geese. Despite this, I thought there was something compelling about the 17 minute recording I made. After digitizing a cassette copy I decided to spend some time remixing it in 2024. During that process I was visualizing the “Waves footage and set about combining the two.
The shehnai piece was always drone-oriented, with slow modulations and minimal development. The remix employs a combination of pitch-shifting and reverb to tone down the flock of geese and offer a wider spectrum of tonalities. Toward the end, gated step sequencing is used to pair with the visual introduction of a third layer of wider angle surf footage shot digitally in 2017 at Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve in California. It also plays off the jitter of the layered slow motion film.
The editing of the moving images expands on my early experiments with layering and projecting in slow motion, but now the Super 8 footage is layered on top of itself with a 7 second delay to match the original tape delay timing of the soundtrack.
The remix of “Rodless Pump Meditation” is available for download on Bandcamp.
(2024) Tim Wolf: likembe, sanza; video.
The motion of three rivers synced to the composition “Ripples,” a multi-track composition of repetitive melodic patterns played on likembe and sanza (thumb pianos), The five parts (tracks) of the piece are matched with five videos that undergo various transformations in response to the sonic processing of each track.
Fresh water sources: Big Sur River, Big Sur, California; Farmington River, East Granby, Connecticut; Hubbard River, Granville, Massachusetts.
“Ripples” is from the album of the same name, available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and for download on Bandcamp.
(2018) Tim Wolf: donso ngoni, sanza; video.
A sound poem that takes cues from visual movements on the surface and above a fluid landscape. Incidentally, the donso ngoni is strung with nylon fishing line—something I found coincidental with the appearance of a fishing boat. The video of the Atlantic Ocean was shot at Acadia National Park in Maine.
An HD version of the video can be viewed on YouTube. The audio is on Soundcloud and also available for purchase on Bandcamp.
(1979) Tim Wolf: alto sax, khaen, steel tube; Tom Taplin: camera; Robert Grasmere: sound.
After seeing a performance piece of mine at the California Institute of the Arts in early 1979, CalArts film student Tom Taplin asked me to collaborate on what he hoped would be a larger work around the idea of “pandemonium.” In the performance Tom had seen, I was playing saxophone while dancing on stilts. I extended on that performance with a variety of costumes and instrumentation.
Tom selected the historic, yet deteriorating, art deco entrance of the Pan Pacific Auditorium in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles as the location—one that became an integral part of this series of three short improvisations.
Tom kindly made a 3/4 inch video copy of the raw 16mm black & white footage for me at the time. Over three decades later I had the videotape digitized and finally made a basic edit of the film in 2018. I have no idea if Tom ever did anything else with this film.
Tragically, Tom died in an accident in 2015 that could be expressed by the word pandemonium. I hope this more youthful Pandemonium is a better expression of creative collaboration that Tom can be remembered by.
This video can also be viewed on YouTube.
(1978) Tim Wolf: alto sax; Elliot Porter: video.
In the summer of 1978, I went to work for my friend Elliot Porter who was the director of Montana Media, a video content producer in Western Montana. I was part of the crew. That summer, we travelled to Fort Worden State Park on the tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to tape readings and interviews with poets at the Centrum Writers’ Conference.
When we weren’t taping writers, we were on the lookout for opportunities to record unique projects, and I usually had my saxophone handy. One afternoon, I descended into a dark, 200 foot diameter underground cistern (today known as the Dan Harpole Cistern) to play my sax in an ethereal space with a 45-second reverberation time. It was a profound experience, but not one easily recorded to video.
Still keen to record, we walked a stone’s throw from the cistern to the old Fort Warden bunkers, and this is where the recording you are listening to took place.
It was recorded in two takes with a single shotgun microphone on 3/4 inch U-matic tape. A digital transfer was done in 2016. The quality of the audio and video show signs of magnetic tape deterioration. My thanks to Elliot for holding on to the tape all these years and sharing it with me.
The music, and the movement, is improvised.
This video can be viewed on YouTube.
(1978) Tim Wolf: copper pipe with tube kelp; Elliot Porter: video.
On the way to the Olympic Peninsula in the summer of 1978 (see description of Fort Warden Sax Solo on this page,) my friend Elliot Porter and I stopped at the Boeing surplus store outside Seattle where I picked up an array of scrap metal, including a length of copper pipe, to make into instruments.
During our time at Fort Worden, we headed to the beach where I found a piece of tube kelp washed up on the shore. I attached this to the end of the newly acquired copper pipe and with a saxophone mouthpiece improvised an homage to the great instrumental innovator and seeker, Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
This was recorded in a single take on 3/4 inch U-matic tape. A digital transfer was done in 2016. Again, thanks to Elliot for holding on to the tape all these years. And thanks to whomever provided the Japanese umbrella.
This video can also be viewed on YouTube.