Last spring, while perusing The Andy Warhol Diaries, Amnon Wolman thought about turning the voluminous name-dropping journals into an opera. “The materials cried out for a larger-than-life, operatic treatment,” says Wolman. “After all, Warhol was a master of exaggeration, always trying to achieve boredom and overexposure.” But he quickly dropped the idea. “I realized that it would have had to be very long, using tons of text,” he says. “I definitely didn’t want to do a Wagnerian opera.” Instead, the Northwestern University composer brainstormed with a bunch of his graduate students and hit on another approach: throwing a party. “Warhol spent most of his after-dark hours at parties schmoozing with other celebrities–seeing and being seen. So we thought it’d be fun and instructive to come up with the 90s equivalent of the 70s New York party scene.”
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Two of Wolman’s former students, Canton Becker and Matthew Moller, wrote a program that allows users to create melodies by choosing from an electronic menu. Wolman explains the process like this: “Pick from two or three commonly used bass patterns, then pick a particular chordal progression. After the sequence is determined, it’s then jazzed up with a synthesizer.” Wolman’s team then mixes the sound fragments with excerpts from interviews with Warhol. So far they’ve processed more than 80 submissions from around the world. An entry from Kyoto came with the message “expecting a massive groove.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
