A week ago, I'd never heard of Godfried-Willem Raes. Then Peter sent me an email telling me he'd discovered an amazing Belgian composer, performance artist, programming-language writer and instrument pioneer. A man whose friends call him God. I asked him to make sure that he wasn't a hoax (he isn't), and I'm very proud to hand you over for the first part of a week of special reports:
Five Reasons why Godfried is a MT Hero:
1: He was thrown out of Ghent Royal Conservatory in 1971 for being ‘antimusical’ because of his experiments in electronic music. He is now professor of experimental music composition there.
2: In 1968 he founded the Logos Foundation, which explores new musical interfaces, including “wireless gesture control, microwave radar, acceleration sensors, pyrodetectors, lightsensors, myoelectric devices, brainwaves, EEG and ECG”.
3: He’s created his own computer language for music composition, GMT which he uses to drive an orchestra of robot instruments (of which more later).
4: He wrote a symphony for bicycles
5: He has a fantastic beard, smokes a pipe, and is usually nude during performances (unless he's wearing a silver jumpsuit).
MORE GODFRIED IN PART 2: THE INVISIBLE INSTRUMENTLabels: Godfried-Willem Raes
: 3:59 pm