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IlluminationComposed by Robert Rich
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This CD is published as a companion piece to Michael Somoroff’s installation Illumination I originally created for the famed Rothko Chapel, on the occasion of the installation’s move to The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT as the audio track to Somoroff’s Illumination, a multimedia installation at BravinLee Programs in Chelsea, N.Y.C. during the summer of 2007. Here's a nice review from www.electroambientspace.com: From the liner notes: Featuring seven musical poems, Illumination will take you on a journey beyond your senses. Push through the Curtain of reality amid a pure harmonic series of high frequency sounds to a world of inner reflection, Point, Line, Plane depicts cosmic clouds of primal resonance, the abstract and mathematical, Plato’s Cave, whispers in a multitude of tongues, sonic sign languages of the internal dialogue of pure consciousness, and finally Temple, the sound of a spiritual architectural space of No-thingness. Rich’s subtle musical interpretation of Illumination embraces the sacred rituals and spaces of all, capturing the universal essence of our post-modern culture. It is a meditation piece for the mind and the body.
A New Sacred Space: Michael Somoroff’s Illumination I To “see the light,” to emerge at last from the so-called “Dark Night”: this is what Michael Somoroff’s Illumination I embodies. Whether it be understood as the darkness and ignorance that prevail in the Platonic cave, or the painful “impotence, blankness, solitude” experienced by the soul “immersed in this dark fire of purification,” the point is the same: how to escape the intellectual and emotional suffering. In other words, Illumination I satisfies the need for transcendence, even if the spectator doesn’t know that he or she has the need. Illumination I articulates the pressing need for transcendenceall the more so these “descendental” daysand thus invites the spectator to satisfy the need through it. Seeing the light in and through Illumination I the spectator confirms that it is sacreda sacred space in which the spectator can experience his or her inner sacredness. Supposedly nothing is sacred in a secular worldwe are all profane in the “iron cage,” the term Max Weber used to describe society after it had been modernized by science and technology (an ironically enlightenment, as Weber suggests, for it made the world uniformly gray)--but some works of art still seem sacred, and demand a spiritual response. - Donald Kuspit, Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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2007 - Michael Somoroff's Illumination (Soundscape SP012, CD)
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