process and materials

and tools specific

A CONVERSATION WITH
ALBERTO GAITÁN
Interview by Grace Cavalieri
Photos by Tom Wolff

Alberto Gaitán was first interviewed by Grace Cavalieri on

NPR’s Latin file (produced by Paz Cohen) in 1995. Alberto
is a artist/composer/programmer. His acclaimed net-aware,
cybernetic, Remembrancer (2007), explored the nature of
memory and the concequences of transcribing it. His writing
credits include The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun,
Wired, the Whole Earth Millennial Catalog and Kunstforum (a
tweaky German art rag). He was a core member of public-art
collaborative group Art Attack International and has worked
collaboratively with many artists over the last 25 years. He will
be collaborating with his wife, Victoria F. Gaitán, on a piece for
Arlington Arts Center’s August 12 - September 27, 2008, group
show on art and politics, curated by Rex Weil. The following
interview was conducted during February 2008.

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Open
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Grace Cavalieri: How do you describe your music like treacle especially as it inches towards sentimentality,
overall? at which point it repulses me. Cleanth Brooks correctly
referred to those types of aesthetics as inspired by
Alberto Gaitan: I try hard not to describe my music. bastard muses.
If someone held a gun to my head I’d describe it
overall as process-and-materials-and-tools-specific. GC:What things do you pay attention to in the everyday
world?
GC: How has your music changed in the last 15 years?
AG: Systems... Patterns... ...the big picture mostly;
AG: As I did then, I still owe a lot to John Cage in
details where critical.
my approaches. But, I’m doing more in situ sound
installation-based music than performance-based. I’m
GC:If you sit on the center of your bed and look around that
using materials, space and processes to derive timbre
room, describe what you see
and trajectory rather than composing them entirely from
demiurge.
AG: I see four paintings by my wife, Victoria, a 7-ft, three-
panel photograph by Chan Chao,two chests of drawers,
GC: What music do you listen to?
a television set, various recording and playback devices
for video, a laptop, and lot of nick knacks from years
AG: I don’t have a set diet in that respect but I don’t
of foraging including fragments of past installations,
listen to much major label music anymore. I listen to
anthropological items from Thailand, Peru, and Ghana,
and buy independent music, including new and re-issued
stuffed animals, two plastic lobsters, a couple of handmade
rock, folk, jazz, electronic, experimental, classical, and
cards, and various festoons and ephemera.
world music as well as music in our household collection.
GC: Open the refrigerator and tell us what is there
GC: What have you found out about yourself through your
music?
AG: Lots! Soy milk, cow milk, OJ, bread, vegetables,
miso, various sauces and condiments, tempeh, turkey,
AG:Through music I have reinforced my view of
cheese, guava paste, jam, peanut butter, some fish, a
existence as a continuum. I have found out that I dislike
baked chicken...
endings even if I precipitate their arrival; ...that the
music I like to realize is but a temporary parsing of
GC: Look out the closest window and share what you see
continuous phenomena. ...that a life is like a stylus
hitting vinyl for a while and then being lifted—not the
AG: A seven-story-high bare oak breaks up an eastward
transducer but the transform, that we areeach a piece
view of the Washington Monument,Arlington’s low
playing in consonance with or in dissonance with others’,
rises in the foreground give way to the taller buildings
and that any one person’s “song” sounds different to
of Rosslyn. Looking south, I see Arlington’s gateway
them than to each unique observer at any given moment.
corridor. In the distance, I see planes as they approach
National Airport and, beyond that, a water tower on the
GC: How does music change sorrow?
hills of Washington Highlands.
AG: For me, music amplifies the physical experience of
GC: What kind of place did you live in when you were 5
sorrow, especially music that’s easy to listen to because
years old. ? Who lived there with you? What was your
of its predictability or its lyrical beauty. Good music of
favorite space in that house?
this type I find rare. Much of the rest is either banal or
Per fu m e: Th e
ry of a Murderer.Sto-
AG: At age 5, the middle child of—then—three children,
I lived for a bit in Colombia and then moved to Peru.
My principal memories of that year are of Lima, a city
with perpetual Spring-like weather where we lived in the
Colombian embassy residence. I don’t remember having
a favorite room in the house but enjoyed the kitchen,
where our daschund slept and where the cook always
had something cooking. Our garden was also lovely and I
remember dahlias, geraniums and other flowers of many
colors. The courtyard in the center of the house was where
the laundry was hung, where deliveries were made, and
where I vividly recall watching as our butler (yes, we had
a staff of 5 that came with the house) killed and plucked a
hen we probably had for dinner that night.
GC:When you traveled to America, what is a strong sensual
moment? Through the senses, whatfragrance comes to
mind? Sight? Sound?
AG: We had already been here, in DC, for about a year
at age one. But, we didn’t come to the USA for good
until years later, when I was 14. We travelled a lot and
I remember being in a turboprop aircraft and noticing
that I could pick out any pitch and even harmony from
its rich sound. I still spend time while flying—and while
in the presence of loud machinery—picking out music
of symphonic proportions from the noise’s harmonics.
In comparison with other countries we had lived in, the
USA had an antiseptic smell to it, and a quietness both
seemingly amplified on the winter night when we arrived
at Dulles. I’ve always been strongly impressed by sensory
information. My first memory is at age two and is of
fields of red and yellow wild flowers dashing past our
station wagon window. My older brother is lying to my
left, the car’s noises are comforting and my father drives
as my mother hands each of us a bottle of warm anise
water. ...a beautiful and comforting memory.
GC: How is the child who is to be a musician different from
the child who is not?
AG: I have no idea. As a child I never sought out to be
a musician. I was told at an early age that I was The
Musician. Our nanny, who travelled with us for years,
always called me her little musician but I was unaware
of why, specifically. We all have an excellent ear, as do
both my parents, but I took to an instrument more than
the others. Probably because my poor sister was made to
practice her piano and I was left to my own devices with
my guitar. Then again, I was strongly motivated by pop
music back then, and my sister probably didn’t have as
many role models in rock nor were any of her friends
interested in boy-like activities such as bands, one of
which I formed in 6th grade. I had to teach everyone but
the drummer their parts.
GC: What do you hope your music will summon in the
listener?
AG: I bring no expectations of reaction to what I do. I
just try to remain honest. For the most part—and there
are exceptions—I don’t believe that any but the most
dreary and didactic art nails down a specific message.
Part of art is that it’s like a seed that blooms in you.
Wimpy art grows flimsy shoots while Art germinates and
keep growing every time you revisit it in space-time and/
or in your mind.
GC: What things will you never stop loving?
AG: Learning and trying new ways to approach old
problems. I have a voracious appetite for information
and a sometimes destructive bent for experimentation
borne of a distrust for authority.
GC: Is there a judge or censor inside you that must
overcome to create ? If so describe,
AG: I have a tendency to resist Romantic impulses in
favor of harsher forms of idealism. In music I have tried to
suppress the strong lyrical impulse I carry with me. Also,
there are some possible works which might leave me too
exposed and I sometimes balk at working on them until I
understand exactly what they’re trying to express. More
commonly, there’s an inertia that prevents me from creating
on demand. I’ve been lucky enough not to have to be put in
that position often since I never sought out to make a living
on my sound work solely in a commercial setting.
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GC: Have you ever found yourself in an unexpected place in
your music?
AG: All the time. I’ve used procedural approaches to
create sound-art for a while. These always result in
surprises because none or very little of the sonic content
is precomposed. I often begin with a space, a collection of
instruments or materials, and available energy sources.
These form the place where the germ of the piece
gestates.
GC: What was the last film you saw?
AG: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
GC: What film uses music best as a narrative?
AG: I try to stay away from minting top-ten lists. Some
films whose soundtracks I have admired in relation
to narrative are Traffic, for it’s extreme respect and
deference to the visual and screenplay narratives, and
Requiem for a Dream, for its obsessive insistence on
presence as a marker of the anti-hero’s headlong path to
destruction.
GC:How is technology like music? How is math like art?
AG:Music is a technology—like Language is a
technology. So then is Art. They all articulate different
facets of our realities and their greater exponents can
move us from ours. Math is embedded in everything and
can be extracted art-like by talented mathematicians.
Just as there exist banal statements by some practitioners
in arts & letters, the same holds true in Mathematics.
GC: Do you believe in Heaven? What kind of energy
transfer do you imagine that is?
AG: I wish I did. It would make things a lot easier in
some ways. But when I look at all I’d have to lose to shut
out the part of me that questions the need for—or even
the possibility of—an afterlife, never mind a Heaven
or a Hell or a hereafter as taught to us in the latter
Abrahamic traditions, I don’t want to. I cannot believe
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blindly something that defies even cursory examination.
I accept I do not have the answer and am content with
knowing that whatever The Truth is—an absolute I’m
also dubious about—it’s probably something a lot more
wonderful than Sunday school’s version of heaven and
likely not very personal. My assumption is that the energy
transfer at death obeys the Laws of Thermodynamics and
by extension, the laws of history; the former as measured
in entropy—heat loss—and the latter in the cultural
enthalpy—or negentropy—of one’s life.
GC:What do you like to figure out.. that is difficult?
AG:Why ideas hatched with seeming ecumenical regard
oftentimes end up hurting nonetheless.
GC: Pretend you chose to come through your mother and
father, what qualities in them did you seek for your life’s
journey
AG: Some measure of temperance without sacrificing
passion.
GC: If I give you 10 words, give me a reaction or feeling
Moon fence star apron hope witch bread white dance
shoe
AG:Silence possibility womb armor fire teacher bed loss
time weapon
GC:Who do you forgive?
AG: Everything and everyone. I forgive easily; maybe
because I realize I can hurt others but can learn from my
mistakes and shouldn’t be forever condemned because of
them.
GC: What do you need patience for?
AG:The physical world.
GC: How do you find rest?
AG: Depending on the kind of rest I need, by reading/
learning or watching time-based media, being with loved
ones, and spending time in nature.
GC: In music how does disharmony change to become
harmony? Can we do that in life?
AG: In music disharmony or dissonance is a physical
phenomenon characterized by acoustic interference
phenomena. Consonance is characterized by phenomena
that result in sympathetic resonances. If I learned
anything about music in the 20th century, it was that
they both have their place in sonic aesthetics and I like
them both even if dissonance is difficult and reportedly
causes strong negative reactions in some audiences.
Psychoacoustically,they have different effects in different
cultures. If I had to compare these phenomena to life, I
can see parallels. Going with the flow will avoid social
disharmony but we likely won’t change much. At what
point does change cause strife? Should we work towards
evolutionary rather than revolutionary change? Are
powerful new ideas always disruptive? These are some
of the questions that emerge in my mind when thinking
about this.
GC: Were you raised within a religion? What do you still
believe from that?
AG:I was raised Catholic and I try to live by the Golden
Rule. Otherwise, I don’t belong to any church. I believe
in open-source religion.
GC: What do you regret having done in life?
AG: Inadvertently hurting those I love by choices I have
made.
GC: Tell me what these names mean to you or call up in
you:
Anna Nicole Smith
The fatted calf.
Picasso
Satyr.
Pablo Neruda
Condor.
GC: What do you want from your music?
AG:To get it out of me.
Grace Cavalieri is a poet and a playwright. She produces/
hosts “The Poet and the Poem from the Library of
Congress.” Her latest book is ANNA NICOLE: Poems,
(A Menendez Publication, 2008, Amazon.com) www.
gracecavalieri.com