This picture, which also appears within the jacket of Morton Subotnick's Mode Records release, Electronic Works, Vol. 1 was taken in 1976 at The California Institute of the Arts iin Valencia, CA in their second of three Buchla Studios, B-304.
Pictured from left to right: Susan Harvey (now of Princeton University), Darrel Johansen (who went on to become Tcherepnin's busniess partner at Serge), Jill Fraser (now writing both commercial and film music), Mort Subotnick and...ever-ready with patch chord in hand: me.
Also part of this team, but not pictured was film composer Gary Chang.
The second photo is of B-304 in about 1979.
A young person's tour of B-304:
The instrument in the background is the first prototype of the Buchla 500, which was developed by Don while he was still associated with Cal Arts. You can clearly see the frame of an Interdata 7/16 micro computer (16 bit, 32KB ram/ and NO HARD DRIVE!) behind the back of my head and the small video monitor within the main cabinet of the Buchla itself behind Mort's head. Off his left shoulder, barely visable, is the QWERTY keyboard and above the monitor lie about 20 inches of I/O ports that directed signals from the computer to the Buchla.m, which consisted of 200 series modules.
Just above Jill Fraser's head, sitting on top of the side cabinet is a mysterious black-faced module which has been the target of some attention from Buchla devotee's who have seen other pictures of this room. Call the mystery a hoax, as it's nothing more than a clock (as in 2 o'clock) and a noisy one at that.
You may also notice a 64 key black and white keyboard taking up the bottom row of the Buchla's main cabinet. This was used only for firing events to the computer. It has no capability for analog voltage or triggers in the traditional sense. For that we used the touchplate keyboard which can be seen directly above on the second row.
Sitting on top of the main cabinet, out of site in this photo were two (horrible) stereo Dolby B's which most of us never bothered to use. Off agianst the back wall are two Ampex 1/2 track, four channel A-440s and next to that by Susan - two stereo halftrack Revox's which we used primarily for mix down and (much to the tech's chagrin) tape loops as the erase heads were so easily accessable.
This photo was taken about the time of the Mort composed Sky of Cloudless Sulfur, about six months before it's Nonesuch release. Jill, Susan, Darrel, Gary and I were assembled to work with Mort on his NEA-funded multi-media project entitled The Game Room. My specific task for this project., along with Gary was to compose the electronic musical events, cataloged as either peaceful or violent. Jill and Susan did the Buchla computer programming for the control of the events and Darrel solved the technical mysteries along with Ray Wisling to integratie the game board itself, the sound events, the lighting and film interludes. Quite an undetaking in 1976 based on technology available at the time (but back then popcorn was also considered a miracle).
A short desciption of The Game Room by Gary Chang follows:
"There was a bare light bulb above the game board, which illuminated the table. It utilized a game board (chess board) that was wired with contacts (weighted game pieces sat on button-actuated leaf switches). When a piece was moved, it sent a signal to the computer from the square on the board that would trigger a particular event amongst a matrix of events that were preprogrammed, which included gestures in quad sound and lighting (Buchla voltage controlled dimmers!). We used strobes and colored lights that were actuated by the same control modules that were being used to control the sound. A hole was drilled between B304 and B305 to feed the wiring through from the studio to Mort's room, so there was only 4 speakers, lights and the game board, illuminated by the single light bulb in the room, with no fans or anything to give away what was going to happen!"
Mort Subotnick's original description of The Game Room concept suggests a slightly different process that the one eventually realized at Cal Arts:
"Free time, free access space aproximately 20' by 20', where one to eight people may enter and take positions on the game board floor to activate the visual environment in specific ways. The participants or players, after learning from random process of activating distinct energies, may then choose particular themes and try to manipulate the total mechanism in their desired direction by interacting with other players. The themes are indicated by colored lights on a central, , ceiling hung sculpture which divides the room into four parts. By using a patch board, they can change the themes that are possible in each of four areas. No images will happen until a person places himself in a particular area; therefore a miniature society is created through their manipulation of the center module and their position on the game board floor. Each group of players at any point in time will then produce its own particular combination of images and consequently its unique total visual environment."
