Sound out of Paper

The technology of synthesizing sound from light called Graphical (Drawn)
Sound technique which was invented in
Soviet Russia in 1929 as a consequence of the newly invented sound-on-film
technology. At exactly the same time
similar efforts were being undertaken in Germany by Rudolf Pfenninger in
Munich and, somewhat later, by Oscar
Fischinger in Berlin.
This invention came at least twenty years too early while the World War II
was already at the threshold. As a result by
late 1930-s the work in this domain effectively came to a halt. Although
there were several short articles published
in USA by V.Solev (1935), most publications about research and
developments
in the USSR were in Russian. At the
same time the most important documents were never published at all and
were
circulating in manuscript form.
Fortunately many unique archives survived and are collected now at the
Theremin Center in Moscow. Over two hours
of synthesized music produced in 1930s twenty years before the foundation
of electronic music were discovered
recently at the Russian State Film Archive. Many of those materials which
were never shown before are included in
our presentation.

http://asmir.theremin.ru/gsound1.htm

starting at 21:00 on Thursday May 21, 2009
Location: NK, Elsenstr. 52 2HH, 2Etage
Entrance: Free