Peter Happel Christian and Phillip Andrew Lewis | AA4

Peter Happel Christian and Phillip Andrew Lewis

AA4

Pittsburgh, USA: Clear as Day, 2019

12” vinyl record in cloth gatefold sleeve

Edition size unknown

In high school, a history teacher casually asked the class what instrument best replicated the human voice. A classmate ventured a guess: “The piano?”. “No,” the teacher replied, "the piano is the alphabet. The instrument that most resembles the human voice is the violin.” I can’t recall what point he was making about the violin, but the idea of the piano as the alphabet of music always stayed with me. I later learned that an early typewriter prototype from 1868 employed eleven piano keys [see below]. 

Renowned photographer Ansel Adams once aspired to be a pianist. His piano studies were central to his education, practicing for hours and hours, daily. During his teenage years at Yosemite National Park, Adams began writing letters to friends, family, other photographers, environmentalists, and politicians. Writing by hand was laborious and his penmanship difficult to read, so he quickly acquired a typewriter. 

According to biographer Andrea G. Stillman, Adams traveled with a portable model so that he could "correspond no matter where he might be: at his studios in San Francisco, Yosemite, or Carmel; in cities like New York, Chicago, or Washington; in remote spots like Whites’ Cabins outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, or on board a train in Wyoming or ship to Hawaii; or in any one of more than a dozen national parks as far apart as Maine and Alaska.”

The Centre for Creative Photography in Arizona- which Adams co-founded in 1975 - displays his “cute blue” field typewriter, which he reportedly took on all of his photoshoots. Tucked into the folder of the portable cover is a sheet of the artist's letterhead, onto which he has typed "I love this typewriter". 

The origin of Peter Happel Christian and Phillip Andrew Lewis’ beautifully produced AA4 is a found audio recording of a letter typed by Adams on the last day of the 1960s, the contents of which are unknown. 

An audio recording of typewriting by a photographer somehow evokes synesthesias while feeling rich in metaphor, even as one struggles to decode it. I can clearly conjure the thrill of their initial discovery. 

Happel Christian and Lewis promptly had the recording notated into sheet music - a score that features three different time signatures (Common, Waltz, and 5/4), three different tempos (52 bpm, 110, and 92) as well as a long pause. The pitches are at the discretion of the performer. 

They then commissioned artists and musicians (Lenka Clayton, Chris Duncan, Barbara Held, Michael Masaru Flora, Jonathan Kaiser, Tiffany Ng, Steve Roden, Greg Pond & Cesar Léal) to execute interpretations of this score.

The album opens with the sounds of Lenka Clayton (romantic and professional partner to Phillip) creating one of her brilliant typewriter drawings, a reproduction of which is included in the handsome portfolio. It also includes the original score, and a fold out essay by curator and critic Godfre Leung.

Lewis and Clayton are featured in an episode of Art21 which debuted this month.