There’s a chance that, back in 2010 when Animal Collective and their visual artist collaborator buddy Danny Perez (who also directed that Oddsac movie/visual album thing, as well as a few of their VH1 classic music videos) took over New York City’s Guggenheim Museum to present an installation called Transverse Temporal Gyrus, you weren’t as cool as you are now. I mean, who knows; back then, you might not have even thought that the idea of two three-hour performances in which discrete audio recorded by the four members of Animal Collective and fed into a high-tech computer program was randomly combined and panned in various directions around a 36-channel surround sound system that ran through 36 speakers set up on the Guggenheim’s ramp while Perez’s psychedelic images accosted the shit out of you was cool! Luckily, now’s your chance to un-think that.
In addition to releasing an exclusive 12-inch with audio from the installation for something called “Record Store Day” last weekend (never heard of it), they’ve also launched a nifty new interactive website in order to (A) “bring the unique and immersive ‘Transverse Temporal Gyrus’ experience to anyone with an internet connection,” and to (B) spare us from that Strawberry Jam time-lapse video bullshit that they had up on that site for a while. And just in time too, because I, for one, was starting to think that they weren’t an experimental band any more. “The website allows people an opportunity to experience ‘Transverse Temporal Gyrus’ in a unique way,” Perez says. “Just as the installation refashioned what a traditional performance and environment would be, the website reformats these materials again into something new. Video, audio, and images from that one evening provide a unique perspective to both people who were there and those that weren’t.” Sweet, I love it when websites reformat stuff!
And now, in the odd event that you’re still reading this right now and not on that website having a blast, I’ll keep explaining things about the website. It’s got a free downloadable audio player (for either Mac or PC) that will recreate the computer program designed for the installation over two stereo channels. Listeners will get a unique collage each time they listen and definitely certainly probably won’t wonder at all about the other 34 channels. Stephan Moore, who designed the program, can tell you more:
The sound score and installation for “Transverse Temporal Gyrus” was spontaneously re-created at each performance by rearranging dozens of recorded sounds and flying them around the Guggenheim Museum space according to a set of complex rules. A graphical representation of the entire automated decision-making process (the actual computer code written in MaxMSP) makes up the poster image that accompanies the 12inch release, and the complete software itself is now available to download as share-alike open-source. I wanted to share the software as much for its visual interest as for the procedural information in the code—I love the way MaxMSP looks. The TTG code was written very quickly over a three-day period, and much of the haste and fever of my marathon coding sessions has been preserved in the tangle of patch cords, idiosyncratic syntax, and quasi-organic piles of code objects. Hopefully, the opportunity to explore the underlying software through these various media, and the ability to reproduce a version of the original installation at home using the stereo player application, provides some perspective and insight into the full potential of the overall work. It’s been an honor and a lot of fun to work on this project, and I am very grateful to AC for inviting me to be involved.
Man, you’re still here??? Go to the damn Animal Collective website. Go on, shoo! Scat!
• Animal Collective: http://myanimalhome.net
• Danny Perez: http://diptriana.com
• Oddnoise: http://oddnoise.com
• Domino: http://www.dominorecordco.us
More about: Animal Collective
