Four Decades of Composing

"Some months before this conversation, I had put together a slow-scan videophone transmission with telecommunication analyst Eric Murphy as part of my 8-hour performance piece, As Oceans Curve. The performance involved linking many different artists at two sites, the Electronic Cafe in Los Angeles and Other Visions in Oakland, California. In a casual conversation, Murphy mentioned that a conference call could be set up to connect many cities at once. It seemed like a natural step to organize Pauline Oliveros' six-city celebration around a simple conference call using this standard telephone techonology. I suggested this solution to Oliveros and the project was born.

The final project - Four Decades of Composing and Community - ultimately involved 50 performing artists and approximately 20 sound and video technicians in six cities and three time zones. The six cities - Houston, Texas; La Jolla, San Francisco and Los Angeles, California; New York and Kinston, New York - represented the seminal locations in the composer's career. The sites were linked via common telephone lines, and the cost was equivalent to two 3-hour conference calls of six lines each (approximately [U.S.] $300 for all of the long distance charges)."

Source: Joe Catalano: Electronic Midwifery: A Videophone Celebration of Pauline Oliveros's "Four Decades of Composing and Community", Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 3, 1993 (1993), pp. 29-34. src

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