LOOMPIANOLA
Innovation in Music II, Future Technology Press UK, 2017, pp.64-74Loompianola:
A Contemporary Hybrid Instrument
Esthir Lemi, Collin McRae, Reed Esslinger
School of Music, Theatre and Dance and Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan USA
1. Introduction
Loompianola is an ongoing project exploring the shared lineage of a loom, a piano and early computers. The goal of the first version of Loompanola was to examine the basic mechanics of a Countermarche loom, hammers of piano keys and to form a relationship grounded in the physics of string vibration. Modifying an existing loom and player piano provided a musical soundscape out of the compromised and amplified functions of each but also drew on the provenance of the individual objects. The Cranbrook Loom and Grinnell Brothers Player Piano each form a strong link to the ingenuity and industry of southeast Michigan.
The first iteration explored “hybridity” by constructing a soundscape with the loom and piano as pillars anchoring their respective ends of their shared strings. Loompianola exerts the notion that “play” and “work” may be in concert, in conversation, even conflated. As sculpture, the utilitarian levers and fulcrums are stretched and inflated, abstracting but not obscuring the depiction of a loom and a piano. Ten foot long treadles are pressed to raise heſty harnesses whose sinewy threads explode across the room before they bend and dive into the soundboard of a hundred year old music box. The dichotomy of play and work is as much in question as the independence of loom and piano: The strings conduct vibrations, communicating both the actions of weaver and musician. The distinction of actions causing sound versus textile production is blurred as the tapestry grows across the space; percussive surfaces are tucked into the weſt
along with colors and shapes that are then read as a graphic score for guest performers. Drawing on the tradition of chamber music, “a musical conversation among friends in the home”, Loompianola fosters dialogue between not only distinct objects but three artists of various backgrounds: Reed Esslinger, a performance artist and weaver; Collin McRae, an experimental musician and animator; and Esthir Lemi, a composer, musical theorist and new media artist. Like any organic conversation among friends, the language of Loompianola emerges organically from its operators.
2. History
Even though the Grinnell Brothers Piano factory was located in Holly, Michigan, the pianos are stamped with the word 'Detroit,' where they were distributed through 35 different stores. The company was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and eventually moved to Holly, a city named aſter the red berries that surround the area [1]. In 1955 the business was sold to WKC Inc. and in the mid-60s faced a serious decline, as the consumers' interest shiſted to electronic keyboards. This lack of need for traditional pianos put the company to bankruptcy in 1981 [2].
The Cranbrook Loom, as it is known in the industry, is a Countermarche loom of Scandinavian design that was developed by Swedish immigrants Marie and John P. Bexell. John P. Bexell, a woodworker, was initially employed to construct crates for the sculptures shipped in and out of what had become an academy of arts and science, but soon developed a loom according to his wife's specifications in order to weave the textiles to grace the new Cranbrook buildings [3].
There is plenty photographic material from Grinnell Brothers Music House in Bay City from the early years in the beginning of the 20th century depicting a view of Woodward Avenues showroom with employees, its brass instruments and guitars in glass display cases, the floral arrangements on counters, the balconies decorated with garlands. This reproduction of photograph from the Burton Historical Collection stamped on front: “The Manning Studio, 96 Broadway, Detroit” (handwritten on back “Grinnel Bros, new store, 1515 Woodward) is the remains and documentation that we have of the year 1908, in the first floor a ticket office on leſt and a tuning department were taking place. Then, general offices, cashiers, executive offices and bookkeeping band instruments and angled pianos. Grinnell built their first pianos in 1902, starting with traditional upright and baby pianos, 'introduced a line of spinet, console and apartment size baby grand pianos during the 1930's and 1940's and continued to flourish until the early 60's. In the 1990's the Grinnell name was revived in a limited number of pianos built by Samick International, a large Korean musical instrument manufacturing firm' [2].
The Cranbrook campus designed in 1925 [4]. The common thread that we have found between the two industries is Cranbrook essential role in promoting cross-fertilization between twentieth century industrial design and studio craſt and the way piano evolved while changes in technology that have evolved musical aesthetics. Looks like the Cranbrook expertise with weaving may have actually come over form Europe. In 1925 the Finnish-born architect Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950) was commissioned to design the campus for what would later be called the Cranbrook Educational Community including various educational institutions [5]. The patrons were newspaper magnate George Gough Booth and his wife Ellen Scripps Booth, well- known promoters of the American Arts and Craſts Movement. The Booths bought land outside Detroit city and lived there since 1908, forming their own estate and a village community. Bauhaus aesthetic approaches the United States under the influence of weaving technique:
'Swedish weavers who arrived in the United States in the early 20th century before World War I found hand weaving a dying art in the United States, but their own skills were valued. American textile mills produced inexpensive and vast quantities of fabrics, but there was also growing interest in reviving the lost arts and craſts of the Colonial and pioneer areas. Influence from the European Arts and Craſts movement and the Bauhaus design philosophy was growing in modern America. These factors created new opportunities for a revival of hand weaving'[6].
Transdisciplinarity originates in experimentation. It resembles an exploration of diverse techniques and modular schemata, recalling the shiſt "off-loom" of fiber artists (such as Lenore Tawney in the 1960s) where architecture and the human body entered the conversation with the medium [7]. The transcendence of form metaphorically and viscerally redefines the threads' function that can be seen at Figure 1 and one of the first sketches of Loompianola by R. Esslinger. Hand knotting techniques as well as enlargement of scale (beyond the limitations of the loom) empowered the threads with the ability to sculpt spatial contours and thus relationship with the viewer. Cranbrook influenced the global textile design [8]. A description of how Cranbrook influenced music follows.
3. The Music Loom
The goal of the hand-made interactive collaboration between the authors was to construct a haptic sound object utilizing the natural forms of percussion and strings endemic to both but based on the loom as a percussive, string instrument. Loompianola as a hybrid object, has taut strings pluck at each other's original function and meaning. When activated by performers, the loom's warp and a piano's array of strings create music that is altered as the tapestry accumulates. Sensory technology embedded in the object activates a synergy of sonic, laborious and playful movement. The knowledge of how a loom functions is crucial for this endeavour.
Although there is a monumental evolution of weaving technology contributing to the industrialisation of textile manufacture, the Cranbrook Loom maintains recognition as the finest Countermache loom available for hand weaving today. A Countermarche loom is a balanced system of rising and sinking shaſts which we augmented in height and length in order to accommodate the distance between the weaving mechanism and the accumulation of weſt starting 15 feet away at the soundboard of the piano. In a conventional Cranbrook loom there are two sets of lamms, an upper suspended lamm and a lower pivoting lamm. Each shaſt works independently, its operation not affecting that of the other shaſts. The front, rear, and knee beams of powder-coated tubular steel give the loom added rigidity, while affording a better protection for the warp. The solid octagonal warp and cloth beams are 16 1⁄2 '' in circumference. The Cranbrook can be expanded from four to six or eight shaſts at any time. The locking treadles are especially helpful for rug and tapestry weaving. Solid bronze ratchet gears, pawls, and beater hanger racks are featured on all Cranbrook Looms. The warp beam ratchet gear is released by a foot pedal. This evidence of solid structural design are already a valuable attribute when weaving a wide rug, but essential when spanning the length of the gallery.
The more we get to know this loom, the more we appreciate the Cranbrook's unique design and the advantages of Countermarche weaving. Our modifications, decidedly do not improve the productivity of the weaving process, however they allow the essential Countermarche mechanics to interface with the piano's soundboard. We extended the frame of the loom to increase the “shed” (depth of space between the raised and lowered warp threads) by 15''. We engineered additional weights to either instrument and planks spanning the floor between the piano and loom in order to maintain the high tension needed in order to establish playable strings at this distance. This not only makes treadling easier when using high tension, it allows more room inside the frame to throw the weſt across the width of the tapestry. This particular model of Cranbrook loom permits a 60'' woven surface and therefore commands a comparable “presence” as its’ conversation partner: the Grinnell Brothers Player Piano. This Scandinavian- style loom has mortise-and-tenon construction so any additions to the looms structure reflected this construction technique.
The goal of this hand-made interactive collaboration between the authors was to construct a haptic sound object utilising the natural forms of percussion and strings endemic to both and emerging their “dialog”, as depicted in Figure 2. The result was exhibited for 5 days at the Duderstadt Gallery at the University of Michigan. A description of the first draſt follows.
4. Loompianola's predecessors and first draſt technology
The installation's experimental performances resulted in further research of technology (jacquard punch cards, player piano scrolls, sensor technologies etc), the connection of music and visual art, as well as each object's connection to regional history. In 1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard demonstrated his updated version of a mechanical loom that simplified (and therefore sped up) the weaving process of such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelasse. Building on a series of earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728) and Jacques Vaucanson (1740), Jacquard's loom included a mechanism that controlled a “chain” of punched cards which in turn indicated the specific continuous sequence of heddles that needed to be liſted for each weſt, resulting in the “programmed” design [9]. Chains, like the much later paper tape allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not limited by the size of a card.
The mechanism that controlled this sequence of cards is known as the “Jacquard head” and, because it used replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations, is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware: a tabulating machine to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census; Charles Babbage's use of cards in storing programs in his Analytical engine; the IBM 1401 Solid State Data Processing Unit- the first fully transistorized computer- released October 1959- received its input program instructions from an IBM 1402 punch card reader, capable of reading 800 IBM punched-cards per minute. Punch card technology consequently resulted in numerous
applications in computing up until the mid 1980s [10]. The second edition of the Loompianola will consider controlling woven and sonic “pattern” through a form of punch-card technology. One option may be where the project becomes a self-feeding loop: a “score” of music translated onto a series of punch cards which then informs the loom how to weave, which in turn contributes to the soundscape which then gets inscribed into the following fabrication of cards. As punch card technology is an antiquated computing system, as could be argued the haptic knowledge of hand weaving or a piano's hammer and string vibrations, we aim to explore the nuances of this relationship: information, its interpretation, more information drawn from generation of new material, etc. Essentially the exchange is a looping dialogue, evidencing a relationship of direct cause and effect, while still producing vestiges of chance and convergence. Because the ability to change a pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry we are interested in the concepts of sequence, accumulation, “data” and the way in which each object instructs and obeys the instructions of the other machine. At what point do the two machines' functions merge to become one system? Is it a closed loop or do the occasional circumstances of chance create an evolving system?
For the first draſt of the Loompianola we set two different kind of sensors:
1. We used the Makey Makey Invention Kit by adding alligator clips to the strings connecting the loom with the piano and using a real time mixer on computer while amplifying varia sound filters. Makey Makey is technology at least 10 years in progress
by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum based on their research at the MIT Media Lab [11]. The circuit was designed in collaboration with Sparkfun. We used Makey Makey to amplify and filter different parts of the Loompianola, focusing on the loom and the common string part. The best results were achieved with the spindles (holding a bobbin of weſt thread) and the external string which also was performed with bowing and plucking, pizzicati techniques.
2. For the back of the piano we have used Eric Sheffield's Metal Mirror (2014). Metal Mirror can also been used as a musical instrument per se [12]. For the Loompianola's purpose we set the sensor on the downside part of piano's harp in order to exploit its resonant properties by adding a metallic delicate distortion effect when needed. Via real-time controller we had precise control of amplitude and subtle tuning adjustment over a set of pitches chosen in advance.
4. Recordings and performances
During Loompianola's demonstration at the gallery space we had the chance to research further the instrument via three performances and studio recordings. The first performance took place the 10th of May 2 2014 we examined mostly the Loompianola as a percussive instrument in a traditional form using also a bow for the two external strings of the loom. Additionally we added amplified pitch to the external string via Makey Makey. For the second performance the 14th of May we used the Loompianola as a duo with a solo violin (performed by the local legend “The Violin Monster”) accompanied by silent films and for the last performance we added the Metal Mirror. Collin mastered a cd selection of these recordings and for the next three months we focused on evaluating the results as music. The CD is on line entitled The May Album and for its cover we used Loompianola's Logo, depicted in Figure 3 [13]. This five track collection of approximately 25 minutes of music is a documentation of all creative work we did in the gallery and its results.
1. Meet the Loom, Meet the Strings 01:36
2. Improvisation No.1, Rhythm 01:49
3. Simon Alexander-Adams, Strands in Descent 05:14 4. Esthir Lemi, Eterna for Loompianola 13:08
5. Weaving is at Once 03:00
The first track entitled “Meet the Loom, Meet the Strings” manifests our first recordings and familiarization with the sounds produced. These first sounds being basically percussive lead the research to a future path in research in recording parameters. “Improvisation No.1” is an effort to create music with rhythmic potentials that can form access to a pop culture of dance experimental music in the 90's. Simon Alexander- Adams' “Strands in Descent” uses specific percussive noises as leitmotivs and builds an atmospheric 5 minute narration based in the treadle movement that makes the harness' chain make a creaky sound. This creaky sound transposed in two different accords creating a haunting loop that with additional filters and constant variations create a cubistic compositional model. “Eterna”, E. Lemi's work, is a cartography of the whole procedure (with the Metal Mirror added) whose score is based on the final tapestry created through the seven day's procedure of Loompianola's demonstration depicted in Figure 4. The fiſth track entitled “Weaving is at once” is a text read by Reed Esslinger (audio sampled and mastered by Collin McRae) concerning the aesthetics of weaving as a soloist in the process of Loompianola performance, since the weaver always remains a soloist.
6. Conclusions
This paper has been an exploration of parallel worlds of history and creativity. It has been created in hope of continuing to revive the history of mechanics and redesigning structures around musical creativity, namely inquiring into the relationships of automata, musical expression, embodied cognition, and play. Using the Loompianola as a collaborative instrument creates a venue for further research on perception, teamwork, and education, as well as discovery of musical improvisation in a new collaborative and playful manner.
7. Acknowledgments
Kathi Reister, Jack Esslinger, Violin Monster, Eric and Adam, Aprillianto “Lilik” Sundandyo, Patricia Anderson, Shawn O'Grady, Henry Pollack, Sile O'Modhrain.
8. References
[1] Holly Historical Society, Accessed April 2015 from www.hsmichigan.org/holly/
[2] Antique Piano Shop, Accessed March from http://antiquepianoshop.com/online-museum/grinnel/
[3] Patrick J. The legacy of the Cranbrook Loom, HANDWOVEN, September/ October 2002, pp. 64-66, (2002)
[4] Gile, M.A. and Marzolf M.T, Fascination with fiber: Michigan’s handweaving heritage, University of Michigan Press, (2006)
[5] Cranbrook Educational Community, Accessed May 2015 from http://www.cranbrook.edu
[6] Marzolf M.T., The Swedish presence in 20th-Century American weaving fascination with fiber: Michigan’s handweaving heritage, Textile Society of America Symposium, John P Bexell Co., The Handicrafter, Handweaver and Craftsman, Shuttle, Soubdke abd Dyepot and Handwoven, Heritage Woodcrafts, Proceedings Textile Society of America, University of Michigan Press, (2006)
[7] Constantine M. and Larsen J. L., Beyond craft: Art fabric, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (1973)
[8] Zollinger W. S., Advancing textile craft through innovation: The influence and legacy of Jack Lenor Larsen, Craft Research, Volume 5, Number 1, pp.97-109 (2014)
[9] Newton W., Newton’s London Journal of Arts and Sciences; A record of the progress of invention as applied to the arts. New Series Vol XXIII, pp.333-335 (1820)
[10] Essinger J., Jacquard’s web. How a hand-loom led to the birth of the information age, Oxford University Press, (2007)
[11] Shaw D. Beginner’s Mind Collective, Makey Makey: improvising tangible and nature-based user interfaces, TEI’12 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction, pp.367-370 (2012)
[12] Sheffield E. Metal Mirror, Accessed May 2015 from cycling74.com/project/metal-mirror/
[13] McRae C., The May Album, Accessed Feb 2015 from
http://loompianola.bandcamp.com/reseases