''Clocker'', for clock, galvanic skin response sensor and digital delay system, is a minimalist electronic music piece by

Alvin Lucier Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Mi ...

conceived in 1978, though Lucier felt there did not exist an appropriate digital delay system till 1988: "With this new equipment, the sounds of the delayed clock now matched those of the original, creating clear copies and with them a more convincing illusion of time expanding and contracting. Later I added a bank of fixed delays which, as they splay out from the voltage controlled delay, create multiple reflections that almost convince the listener that the room is changing size."Lucier, 1993 What was played through the digital delay system, a Digitech RDS 7.6 with a continuously variable voltage control output, was the sounds of a clock, a Westclox Silver Bell Monogram, ticking, with the delay controlled by a galvanic skin response sensor (GSR). The GSR, by sending a small current through the body, reads minute differences in skin resistance which in turn is influenced by the performers thoughts and emotions: "I had wanted to make a work in which a performer could speed up and slow down time, stopping it, if possible, simply by thinking." The 1991 release was recorded in a stone room twenty foot square and thirty feet high. Six small loudspeakers where placed about the room aimed at various walls to create acoustic delays. Collins then routed the audio through different combinations of speakers according to a score written by Lucier, apparently for the occasion, in 1991. Lucier notes a synchronistic event, his reading of ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' by

Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomic ...

: "What I would like most in the world...is to make clocks run backward...No, with thought, by concentrating until I force time to move back....polydyptic theatre, in which about sixty little mirrors lining the inside of a large box transform a bough into a forest, a lead soldier into an army, a booklet into a library."

References

Notes {{reflist Sources *''Clocker'' (1994). Lovely Music, Ltd. LCD 1019. Recorded June 11, 1991 in North Gallery of the Center for Arts at Wesleyan University by

Nicolas Collins Nicolas Collins (born March 26, 1954 in New York City) is a composer of mostly electronic music, a sound artist and writer. He received his BA and MA from Wesleyan University, and his PhD from the University of East Anglia. Upon graduating from ...

External links

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

.com Compositions by Alvin Lucier Minimalistic compositions 1978 compositions