S e r e n d i p i t y
O r
I n P r a i s e O f S l e e p

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:26:25] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"Otacílio Melgaço gathers three distinct themes in this work. However (unexpectedly?) finds a surprising link between the supposed tripod.

1- Is There Such a Thing as a Planet Sound?

This all started when the Voyager 2 spacecraft swept past Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus in the early 90s. The tiny probe picked up electromagnetic disturbances and charged particle fluxes, not actual sound. (This, of course makes sense, because sound waves can't travel through the vacuum of space.) More specifically, charged particles (either bounding off the planets from the Sun, or produced by the planets themselves) travel in the space around the planets, usually kept in check by their large magnetospheres. Also, radio waves (again either reflected waves, or produced by processes on the planets themselves) can become trapped by the immense strength of a planet's magnetic field. It is these electromagnetic waves and charged particles that were measured by the probe. The data was then sent back to Earth for analysis.While none of the measurements themselves were sound waves, many of the electromagnetic wave and particle oscillation frequencies could be translated into sound. This may sound complicated, but you have devices that you use every day that do exactly the same thing.

You radio, for instance, takes the radio waves (which are simply long wavelength electromagnetic - light - waves) and converts them into sound. You've probably also heard the ´buzzing´ of electricity. What you are hearing is the charged particles bouncing around and interacting with their surrounds. The pitch of the buzz is related to the vibrational frequency of the particles. So all NASA had to do was to take these data points accumulated by the Voyager probe and convert them into sound waves.

Each planet does have their own unique ´song´. Since each planet will have different frequencies (because of having different amounts of charged particles flying around and because of the various magnetic field strengths in our solar system) each planet sound will be different. (John P. Millis, Ph.D)

2- Serendipity

An unsought, unintended, and/or unexpected, but fortunate, discovery and/or learning experience that happens by accident.

3 - Who Sleeps? Jonathan Crary's ´24/7´

Instead of focusing on labor, Crary takes sleep as a lens through which to consider economic and social transformations wrought by late 20th and early 21st century techno-global capitalism. Offering a genealogical account of the reformatting of time from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present, 24/7 is relentlessly negative: sleep is the last unleveraged form of human activity and it is violently threatened by a world in which the divisions between night and day, between rest and work, are disappearing due to mutations in the experience of time produced by unceasing digital networks, new metrics for productivity, and ever-expanding forms of control and surveillance. (Megan Heuer)

S e r e n d i p i t y
O r
I n P r a i s e O f S l e e p

Based on an interview I did with the composer and instrumentalist, I will try (in a compact way) offer interpretive sense of it. Obviously this is not a scientific postulate but something much more interesting: an artistic perspective - as it should be.

Melgaço takes off from the idea that Sleep is the last front that resists against the almost ubiquitous contemporary invasiveness mainly on tentacles onitechnological and ultra-capitalist.
Based on this assumption, for him Sleep would be the most fertile ground for Serendipity. Sleep and Dreaming.
Thus, O.M. seeks through music a means to offer representation to this hypothesis, and especially excite drowsiness as a fertile niche.
One possibility would be to conduct sound interventions building on electromagnetic wave and particle oscillation frequencies collected and translated by National Aeronautics and Space Administration/EUA.
The source: our solar system.
Surely there would not be more surprising and audible metaphor! Raising our dream fields to outer space and considering their sounds as conduits of serendipity!
Behold the newest Surprise (is there another definition?) perpetrated by Melgaço.
We're on the double countdown, so.
For Sleep (assimilated the theoretical stuff) and
Into Space (taking to the air from melgacian sound pieces based on, we literally could say, ´sidereal songs´).
Continuing the imaginative allegory - and we are grateful to O.M.:
No more Ground Control to Us!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

{An essential introduction. With the words, Dr. Tony Phillips (NASA);

- Scifi movies are sometimes criticized when explosions in the void make noise. As the old saying goes, ´in space, no one can hear you scream.´ Without air there is no sound.

But if that’s true, what was space physicist Don Gurnett talking about when he stated at a NASA press conference in Sept. 2013 that he had heard ´the sounds of interstellar space?´

It turns out that space can make music … if you know how to listen.

Gurnett is the James Van Allen professor of physics at the University of Iowa and the principal investigator for the Plasma Wave Science instrument on Voyager 1. At the press conference, he played some plasma wave data for the audience. The sounds, he explained, were solid evidence that Voyager 1 had left the heliosphere.

The heliosphere is a vast bubble of magnetism that surrounds the sun and planets. It is, essentially, the sun’s magnetic field inflated to enormous proportions by the solar wind. Inside the heliosphere is ´home.´ Outside lies interstellar space, the realm of the stars.

For decades, researchers have been on the edge of their seats, waiting for the Voyager probes to leave. Ironically, it took almost a year for NASA to realize the breakthrough had occurred. The reason is due to the slow cadence of transmissions from the distant spacecraft. Data stored on old-fashioned tape recorders are played back at three to six month intervals. Then it takes more time to process the readings.

Gurnett recalls the thrill of discovery when some months-old data from the Plasma Wave Instrument reached his desk in the summer of 2013. The distant tones were conclusive: ´Voyager 1 had made the crossing.´

Strictly speaking, the plasma wave instrument does not detect sound. Instead it senses waves of electrons in the ionized gas or ´plasma´ that Voyager travels through. No human ear could hear these plasma waves. Nevertheless, because they occur at audio frequencies, between a few hundred and a few thousand hertz, ´we can play the data through a loudspeaker and listen,´ says Gurnett. ´The pitch and frequency tell us about the density of gas surrounding the spacecraft.´

When Voyager 1 was inside the heliosphere, the tones were low, around 300 Hz, typical of plasma waves coursing through the rarified solar wind. Outside, the frequency jumped to a higher pitch, between 2 and 3 kHz, corresponding to denser gas in the interstellar medium. The transition music to Gurnett’s ears.

So far, Voyager 1 has recorded two outbursts of ´interstellar plasma music´--one in Oct-Nov. 2012 and a second in April-May 2013. Both were excited by bursts of solar activity.

“We need solar events to trigger plasma oscillations,” says Gurnett.

The key players are CMEs, hot clouds of gas that blast into space when solar magnetic fields erupt. A typical CME takes 2 or 3 days to reach Earth, and a full year or more to reach Voyager. When a CME passes through the plasma, it excites oscillations akin to fingers strumming the strings on a guitar. Voyager’s Plasma Wave Instrument listens … and learns.

“We’re in a totally unexplored region of space,” says Gurnett. “I expect some surprises out there.”

In particular, Gurnett is hoping for plasma waves not excited by solar storms. He speculates that shock fronts from outside the solar system could be rippling through the interstellar medium. If so, they would excite new plasma waves that Voyager 1 will encounter as it plunges ever deeper into the realm of the stars.

The next "sounds" from out there could be surprising indeed.}

"E c h o e s.

The next sounds are here!

And are even a pleasant surprise!

Create music and have as platform ´electromagnetic wave and particle oscillation frequencies translated into sound´.

An instrument for a planet or star or satellite. May be the cello, guitar, organ, flute, harp, tympani, etc. Incredibly ´being superimposed on´ the sun, the earth, the moon, etc.

Besides being a supernatural conception (ipsis litteris / verbatim), how Melgaço got a perfect combination throughout equalization, temperament, balance ... is an exquisite highlight! His compositions and instrumentations not overwhelm the basic sidereal waves. The interface that he elaborates is irreproachable!

It´s a surrealist work, based on a thought at least captivating. And there´s an interesting fact. Long ago, in the hope that intelligent life forms could access, the music of Bach was the first ´to be sent into space´. Nothing more appropriate.
Now, is Melgaço sonically making Art having as ´plainsong´ - forgive my poetic license - the ´music coming from the sky´. Or - forgive my poetic license again - from heaven? When I hear this portentous masterpiece, I assert: both. Nothing really more appropriate.

Post Scriptum - Beyond the sky.

Persevering figurative speech, if I think of ´heaven´, would I consider - here - the Melgaço´s music ´heavenly´ or, in other words, ´angelic´?

´Jeder Engel ist schrecklich!´ The Duino Elegies. Rainer Maria Rilke. ´Every angel is terrifying´. And here and now - in the most expansive, liberating, challenging sense.

From Rilke to Luis Buñuel Portolés. ´El ángel exterminador!´ Is O.M. a contemporaneous ´exterminating Angel´? And now and here - in the most challenging, liberating, expansive sense.

Who, if I s-l-e-p-t, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?
Who, if I d-r-e-a-m-e-d, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?

Interstellar space apart, maybe we already have the answer." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Serendipity means a "fortunate happenstance" or "pleasant surprise". It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to a friend Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”.

II - The Solar System comprises the Sun and the objects that orbit it, whether they orbit it directly or by orbiting other objects that orbit it directly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets that form the planetary system around it, while the remainder are significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs) such as comets and asteroids.

The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, also called the terrestrial planets, are primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets, called the gas giants, are substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are composed largely of substances with relatively high melting points (compared with hydrogen and helium), called ices, such as water, ammonia and methane, and are often referred to separately as "ice giants". All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic plane.

III - Discovered in 1930, Pluto was originally classified as the ninth planet from the Sun. Its status as a major planet fell into question following further study of it and the outer Solar System over the ensuing 75 years. Starting in 1977 with the discovery of the minor planet 2060 Chiron, numerous icy objects similar to Pluto with eccentric orbits were found. The most notable of these was the scattered disc object Eris, discovered in 2005, which is 27% more massive than Pluto. The understanding that Pluto is only one of several large icy bodies in the outer Solar System prompted the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define formally in 2006 what it means to be a "planet". This definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a member of the new "dwarf planet" category (and specifically as a plutoid). Astronomers who oppose this decision hold that Pluto should have remained classified as a planet, and that other dwarf planets and even moons should be added to the roster of planets along with Pluto.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
Wikipedia was the main source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.