TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE

King of Time

1992
Sam Auinger Bruce Odland
Explores different types of time: car time, metal time, water time, people time, linear and non-linear time. It communicates in the international language of sound. Recordings of the crumbling infrastructure of modern cities become a rhythmic alphabet spelling out the dance of metal time. Reiterative syllables of water strain at the strings of a demon harp interface, singing a song of water and stone time. Time tumbles like a fractal tree, backwards and forwards, through an electro-acoustical alphabet of sound removed from the impact of its function. King of Time is based on Russian futurist Velimir Khlebnikov's sound language of the future. Commissioned by New American Radio.