Name: Aaron "Taylor" Kuffner
Hometown: Poughkeepsie, NY
Job description: Composer, musician, builder, media artist
Bio: Co-creator of Gamelatron, which was featured at St. Cecilia’s Sequence of Waves sound show; founder of 23 Windows Collective community arts studio in 2001; co-founder of fine art collective Emma, with William Etundi and Ryan O’Connor; resident DJ for events by TheDanger and Winkel & Balktick, as well as other parties; performs with the experimental music groups, Zero Gravity Thinkers and The Akashic Currency Bureau
Upcoming projects: Gamelatron will be featured at Burning Man’s Temple this year; participating artist for Swoon’s Dithyrambalina project in New Orleans
Select links: Gamelatron at Galapagos video (and more videos); “An Architect of Sound: Taylor Kuffner performs the Gamelatron for Brooklyn’s Mutek Showcase” (Gradient); official site
Describe your current state of mind.
I’m a mental juggler. My friend, Deb, likes to call it randori, which is an Akito term. Like coming at you from all sides.
It’s not like my current state of mind is fragmented, but it’s supporting a lot of ideas and thoughts simultaneously.
Tell me about how the Gamelatron came about. What’s the difference between gamelan and Gamelatron?
Gamelan is a native art form that started mainly in Jakarta or in Central Java. It’s from a Hindu tradition and it’s hard to date. It’s from a thousand years or so. And what it features is a bronze xylophone or bronze, hanging gongs, and sometimes different string instruments and drums and things like that. Sometimes five notes, sometimes seven notes in what we consider an octave. It has a lot of social and spiritual significances. During the Hindu periods [the gamelan] accompanied all of the different kinds of passages and ceremonies, and also theatric shadow puppets. A lot of energy in divining god energy, as conduit, as you play really polyrhythmic, fast counterpoint-styled melodies. In a nutshell, that’s what gamelan is.
I lived in Indonesia for three or four years and I studied that music in a university there. And there’s lots of variety for the same way that we talk about an orchestra, where there are different symphony orchestras or arrangements, things. So if one gong maker made this instrument there’s no reason to think that an identical-ish instrument would have the same tuning, and therefore cannot be interchangeable. Typically, when you make the [instrument], you make the instruments in that orchestra at the same time from the same stock of metal, and they evolve together.
When I came back to the States, I brought a set of instruments that I have been trying to learn with me. And shortly after that I won a residency with the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots Workshop. Also known as LEMUR, headed by this guy Eric Singer. He and his team build robotic musical instruments and have artists and composers come in and write music for their robotic instruments. So I was giving that a shot back in January 2008. And to be honest I didn’t love the way the instruments sounded. So what I started doing was augmenting the kind of robots they had, and tried to get them to try the instruments that I brought back with me - the gamelan instruments. And went pretty well. Well enough that Eric and I decided that we should make custom-made robots specially for these instruments. And that’s what I did in 2008. That was what I will consider the Baby Gamelatron. And eventually Eric went on to work with this great jazz musician, Pat Metheny. And he built the Orchestrion, which was partly inspired by the Gamelatron. I also helped Pat here and there He’s a big deal: 17 Grammys. I mean he’s not a household name because he did it all in jazz.
Eric winded up moving to Pittsburgh and I wound up in New York with the beta Gamelatron, not sure exactly what to do with it. But I started building into a deeper, conceptual art project, writing more music for it. Even if I’m a composer and a builder and a kinetic sculptor, I’m a conceptual artist. [I] started developing this myth around [the Gamelatron] and why it exists, talking about how it extends the legacy of gamelan long after humans are gone. That there is something resonating [from] these bronze keys. [That] our evolution was fostered by being in the presence of this radiance, and that the future beings far off in our progeny [will look] back the same way that we look back on cavemen, and try to figure out what these people were.
In a way, this became a warning to some degree of how we’re fusing with technology. How part of our spiritual selves are becoming intertwined with subsystems and also talking about how some of the things we assign humans to do are transcendant of us. SoI started building more Gamelatrons. I’m on my third one now and I broke the beta one up into pieces and started fleshing them out. You’d play clubs and one-hour concerts, but what I found was that because it’s a robot [it] can play for days without stopping. And because it’s a robot it can fit architecturally into a space in a way that humans can’t.
Having the ability to have that up for days on end means that someone doesn’t need to come to a concert in which they have a certain kind of attention span for a set amount of time. But rather they can come and go as they like. They can choose to be there for five minutes or five hours. And it creates a different kind of dialogue with the body, with the consciousness or subconsciousness. I’ve really pushed myself to be really installational with these instruments because it’s utilizing these instruments as robots in a more graceful way. Instead of just replacing humans on stage. It facilitates the ringing of the gongs in a way that humans couldn’t do it. Are you going to post a human on a shelf in a corner of a room and have them [play] for 100 hours straight? No. And you wouldn’t want to do that because it would personify the experience as well. In the way if someone was playing the gamelan, you focus on the human. You focus in on their technique.
But the Gamelatron offers the opportunity for the gong to be a gong without the distraction of the human ego attached to it.
What’s the longest duration that the Gamelatron has run without stopping?
In Portugal, it ran for over 192 hours without stopping. We’re going to break that.
What other languages do you speak?
I speak Indonesian pretty fluently. It’s a little bit gray when you read and write because the formalness of reading and writing is different when you’re speaking. There are different ways to speak formally and informally to people and write to people. I’ll mess that up. Not a lot of words come up that I don’t know. Indonesian is an easy language though, too. It’s everyone’s second language in the country except for people in Jakarta. Because they have their local languages. Which a lot of time don’t resemble Indonesian at all. So they need Indonesian to understand politics and newspapers, or watch TV, or sing along with pop songs. I realized this that older people don’t Indonesian that well. And I was talking to them thinking to myself, “Gosh, you know, maybe it’s me...” Then a friend in Jakarta would say, “No! Their Indonesian sucks.” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” They don’t go to school to learn Indonesian.
What’s your idea of happiness?
That’s a big pie in the sky. My idea of happiness is when you free yourself from sangsara, from suffering. And I see them as polar opposites, happiness and suffering.
[Happiness] comes in small nuggets each day.
What’s your greatest fear?
I don’t get afraid very much. I’m one of those get-up-and-do-something-in-front-of-thousands-of-people [people]. There’s something strange inside of me. It’s a dangerous thing. It’ll probably be my downfall if I fall, really. But I really think everything’s workable. And sometimes that kind of confidence gets me in trouble.
Does it?
Yeah, because I will go into a situation that I should have not gotten into because it might be workable. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to be there. Everything from love relationships to adventures in far-off wildernesses.
That plays into people who have a fear of heights. I have an unhealthy lack of fear with heights. Do you get what I mean? It’s like I will be in a place and not be afraid. And that doesn’t mean that I’m doing handstands and shit on the top of the Williamsburg bridge, [but] I’m not really afraid of that and you should be. Whereas other people are like, “I’m going to fall,” and that kind of thing.
So maybe it’s good to have someone there who’s afraid for you?
No, not really. Not in my crowd.
How strong are your political views?
I think that I’ve gone from being politically motivated to being a more compassionate person. Unfortunately, there was some apathy in there where it’s hard to be an activist for a really long time. You start feeling like you’re a cog in the wheel and it sucks. And you’re part of it in a way - the opposition part that fails. I think that politically I’m not as motivated on a line-by-line issue. It’s hard to even talk this way, [but] it’s like you keep one foot in reality and you keep one foot out. It’s a big fucking game. And politics is this giant, waste-of-time, mental game that keeps hamsters on their wheels.
What’s romantic to you?
That one’s too easy. I see it everywhere. What’s not romantic? I dated this woman and [had] a very romantic relationship. She got really sick, like vomiting everywhere and horrible diarrhea, and her body was just falling apart. And making it worse was her concerns about how I was viewing her, if I could ever see her in a romantic light after this. And I remember thinking to myself how amazingly romantic it was to be there watching her body be purged, and not even be able to do anything about it. It was a strange thing that romance came into my head. It made me realize, “No, this is me seeing you as you are. And there’s nothing more beautiful than that.” I idealize things too much. But in doing so it makes it so that everything is so fucking romantic.
What’s tragic?
Tragic? Just too optimistic for that. I’m here. If you got a hit by a car on your way home it would be tragic. But I still see things as being workable. That I’m going to die, you’re going to die, things are going to come and go in and out of existence. That we are in, a lot of ways, exercising the mind stream and creating unique opportunities for that mind stream to evolve.
Hometown: Poughkeepsie, NY
Job description: Composer, musician, builder, media artist
Bio: Co-creator of Gamelatron, which was featured at St. Cecilia’s Sequence of Waves sound show; founder of 23 Windows Collective community arts studio in 2001; co-founder of fine art collective Emma, with William Etundi and Ryan O’Connor; resident DJ for events by TheDanger and Winkel & Balktick, as well as other parties; performs with the experimental music groups, Zero Gravity Thinkers and The Akashic Currency Bureau
Upcoming projects: Gamelatron will be featured at Burning Man’s Temple this year; participating artist for Swoon’s Dithyrambalina project in New Orleans
Select links: Gamelatron at Galapagos video (and more videos); “An Architect of Sound: Taylor Kuffner performs the Gamelatron for Brooklyn’s Mutek Showcase” (Gradient); official site
Describe your current state of mind.
I’m a mental juggler. My friend, Deb, likes to call it randori, which is an Akito term. Like coming at you from all sides.
It’s not like my current state of mind is fragmented, but it’s supporting a lot of ideas and thoughts simultaneously.
Tell me about how the Gamelatron came about. What’s the difference between gamelan and Gamelatron?
Gamelan is a native art form that started mainly in Jakarta or in Central Java. It’s from a Hindu tradition and it’s hard to date. It’s from a thousand years or so. And what it features is a bronze xylophone or bronze, hanging gongs, and sometimes different string instruments and drums and things like that. Sometimes five notes, sometimes seven notes in what we consider an octave. It has a lot of social and spiritual significances. During the Hindu periods [the gamelan] accompanied all of the different kinds of passages and ceremonies, and also theatric shadow puppets. A lot of energy in divining god energy, as conduit, as you play really polyrhythmic, fast counterpoint-styled melodies. In a nutshell, that’s what gamelan is.
I lived in Indonesia for three or four years and I studied that music in a university there. And there’s lots of variety for the same way that we talk about an orchestra, where there are different symphony orchestras or arrangements, things. So if one gong maker made this instrument there’s no reason to think that an identical-ish instrument would have the same tuning, and therefore cannot be interchangeable. Typically, when you make the [instrument], you make the instruments in that orchestra at the same time from the same stock of metal, and they evolve together.
When I came back to the States, I brought a set of instruments that I have been trying to learn with me. And shortly after that I won a residency with the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots Workshop. Also known as LEMUR, headed by this guy Eric Singer. He and his team build robotic musical instruments and have artists and composers come in and write music for their robotic instruments. So I was giving that a shot back in January 2008. And to be honest I didn’t love the way the instruments sounded. So what I started doing was augmenting the kind of robots they had, and tried to get them to try the instruments that I brought back with me - the gamelan instruments. And went pretty well. Well enough that Eric and I decided that we should make custom-made robots specially for these instruments. And that’s what I did in 2008. That was what I will consider the Baby Gamelatron. And eventually Eric went on to work with this great jazz musician, Pat Metheny. And he built the Orchestrion, which was partly inspired by the Gamelatron. I also helped Pat here and there He’s a big deal: 17 Grammys. I mean he’s not a household name because he did it all in jazz.
Eric winded up moving to Pittsburgh and I wound up in New York with the beta Gamelatron, not sure exactly what to do with it. But I started building into a deeper, conceptual art project, writing more music for it. Even if I’m a composer and a builder and a kinetic sculptor, I’m a conceptual artist. [I] started developing this myth around [the Gamelatron] and why it exists, talking about how it extends the legacy of gamelan long after humans are gone. That there is something resonating [from] these bronze keys. [That] our evolution was fostered by being in the presence of this radiance, and that the future beings far off in our progeny [will look] back the same way that we look back on cavemen, and try to figure out what these people were.
In a way, this became a warning to some degree of how we’re fusing with technology. How part of our spiritual selves are becoming intertwined with subsystems and also talking about how some of the things we assign humans to do are transcendant of us. SoI started building more Gamelatrons. I’m on my third one now and I broke the beta one up into pieces and started fleshing them out. You’d play clubs and one-hour concerts, but what I found was that because it’s a robot [it] can play for days without stopping. And because it’s a robot it can fit architecturally into a space in a way that humans can’t.
Having the ability to have that up for days on end means that someone doesn’t need to come to a concert in which they have a certain kind of attention span for a set amount of time. But rather they can come and go as they like. They can choose to be there for five minutes or five hours. And it creates a different kind of dialogue with the body, with the consciousness or subconsciousness. I’ve really pushed myself to be really installational with these instruments because it’s utilizing these instruments as robots in a more graceful way. Instead of just replacing humans on stage. It facilitates the ringing of the gongs in a way that humans couldn’t do it. Are you going to post a human on a shelf in a corner of a room and have them [play] for 100 hours straight? No. And you wouldn’t want to do that because it would personify the experience as well. In the way if someone was playing the gamelan, you focus on the human. You focus in on their technique.
But the Gamelatron offers the opportunity for the gong to be a gong without the distraction of the human ego attached to it.
What’s the longest duration that the Gamelatron has run without stopping?
In Portugal, it ran for over 192 hours without stopping. We’re going to break that.
What other languages do you speak?
I speak Indonesian pretty fluently. It’s a little bit gray when you read and write because the formalness of reading and writing is different when you’re speaking. There are different ways to speak formally and informally to people and write to people. I’ll mess that up. Not a lot of words come up that I don’t know. Indonesian is an easy language though, too. It’s everyone’s second language in the country except for people in Jakarta. Because they have their local languages. Which a lot of time don’t resemble Indonesian at all. So they need Indonesian to understand politics and newspapers, or watch TV, or sing along with pop songs. I realized this that older people don’t Indonesian that well. And I was talking to them thinking to myself, “Gosh, you know, maybe it’s me...” Then a friend in Jakarta would say, “No! Their Indonesian sucks.” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” They don’t go to school to learn Indonesian.
What’s your idea of happiness?
That’s a big pie in the sky. My idea of happiness is when you free yourself from sangsara, from suffering. And I see them as polar opposites, happiness and suffering.
[Happiness] comes in small nuggets each day.
What’s your greatest fear?
I don’t get afraid very much. I’m one of those get-up-and-do-something-in-front-of-thousands-of-people [people]. There’s something strange inside of me. It’s a dangerous thing. It’ll probably be my downfall if I fall, really. But I really think everything’s workable. And sometimes that kind of confidence gets me in trouble.
Does it?
Yeah, because I will go into a situation that I should have not gotten into because it might be workable. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to be there. Everything from love relationships to adventures in far-off wildernesses.
That plays into people who have a fear of heights. I have an unhealthy lack of fear with heights. Do you get what I mean? It’s like I will be in a place and not be afraid. And that doesn’t mean that I’m doing handstands and shit on the top of the Williamsburg bridge, [but] I’m not really afraid of that and you should be. Whereas other people are like, “I’m going to fall,” and that kind of thing.
So maybe it’s good to have someone there who’s afraid for you?
No, not really. Not in my crowd.
How strong are your political views?
I think that I’ve gone from being politically motivated to being a more compassionate person. Unfortunately, there was some apathy in there where it’s hard to be an activist for a really long time. You start feeling like you’re a cog in the wheel and it sucks. And you’re part of it in a way - the opposition part that fails. I think that politically I’m not as motivated on a line-by-line issue. It’s hard to even talk this way, [but] it’s like you keep one foot in reality and you keep one foot out. It’s a big fucking game. And politics is this giant, waste-of-time, mental game that keeps hamsters on their wheels.
What’s romantic to you?
That one’s too easy. I see it everywhere. What’s not romantic? I dated this woman and [had] a very romantic relationship. She got really sick, like vomiting everywhere and horrible diarrhea, and her body was just falling apart. And making it worse was her concerns about how I was viewing her, if I could ever see her in a romantic light after this. And I remember thinking to myself how amazingly romantic it was to be there watching her body be purged, and not even be able to do anything about it. It was a strange thing that romance came into my head. It made me realize, “No, this is me seeing you as you are. And there’s nothing more beautiful than that.” I idealize things too much. But in doing so it makes it so that everything is so fucking romantic.
What’s tragic?
Tragic? Just too optimistic for that. I’m here. If you got a hit by a car on your way home it would be tragic. But I still see things as being workable. That I’m going to die, you’re going to die, things are going to come and go in and out of existence. That we are in, a lot of ways, exercising the mind stream and creating unique opportunities for that mind stream to evolve.
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