In the early 1960s, Poet & multimedia artist Gerd Stern & friends Michael Callahan & Steve Durkee founded USCO (an acronym for Us Company or the Company of Us). It became a burgeoning cooperative group of artists, poets, filmmakers, engineers, & composers who worked out of an old church in Garnerville, New York, north of NYC.

It is here that they emerged as probably the first producers of multimedia happenings, of immersive & oozing light shows, ephemeral performances that became all the rage during the height of hippie-LSD times. Part hippie, part beatnik, part Black Mountain, part Eastern mysticism, part fluxus, part political leftist, & part new music, they adhered to collective & inclusive artistic practices & preferred to work under the USCO name rather than as individual artists.

USCO utilized unique new uses for lighting, colors, projections, film, audio, & live performances to create multimedia & environmental art that included installations with slide projections, closed-circuit television, oscilloscopes, strobe lights, amplifiers, early IBM computers, live performances. This culminate most famously in the Expanded Cinema Festival & Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic Theater & the first multimedia disco called Murray the K’s World that incorporated immersive technology & ideas, allowing audiences – many of whom may have been tripping – to feel as if they were entering a new, immersive, sensory realm.

They’ve performed or exhibited at many great museums, universities & venues including the van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum, Tate Liverpool, Pompidou Center, MIT, & RISDI. The USCO Church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

I first met Gerd in the 20th Century. Born in Germany in 1928, he emigrated with his parents to the US as a refugee in 1936. Gerd & started crossing paths in New York City in the 1960s. We discovered common ground at a Phill Niblock loft concert in the 1990s. He asked me to write music & sound design for his play, “Lost Cabaret” or “Katandogastrophic,” produced for the 2003 New York Fringe Festival. I asked Gerd to create poetry for a 3D sound work Sky High. It is included in this iMMERSE! podcast.

Playlist mix by Wreck This Mess

When Then • USCO SkyHigh • USCO [Gerd Stern Poem, Charlie Morrow Music] Hubbub • USCO Insurrection Oratorio 1 • Charlie Morrow & Bread & Puppet Theatre Insurrection Oratorio 2 • Charlie Morrow & Bread & Puppet Theatre & various auditory intrusions

“I define immersive as the first time I realized that there was a bigger universe than my daily life.”

David First is a many-sided composer-musician having played in Dead Cheese, a hippie guitar band in his youth, performed with Cecil Taylor in Carnegie Hall, produced many records of minimalist drone music some of which were released on Phill Niblockʼs XI label, he’s played in rowdy bar bands, led the no-wavish band the Notekillers, which had a significant influence on Sonic Youth and he has even conducted a Mummerʼs String Band in various Philly parades. The Village Voice once described him as "a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young."

He’s performed at most of the avant garde’s hallowed halls including The Kitchen, Bang On A Can, Central Park Summerstage, The Knitting Factory, Tonic, the Deep Listening Institute, CBGBʼs as well as De Ijsbreker in Amsterdam and many festivals throughout Europe. Other projects include working with the sonification of the atmospheric phenomena known as the Schumann Resonances and human brainwaves and other esoteric projects such as The Western Enisphere, a drone and micro-pulse acoustic-electric ensemble.

Samples Playlist Wave Music III - 60 Clarinets & a Boat • Charlie Morrow Tape Letter to Michigan • David First Dead Cheese Twice Daily live @ Cheese Nation 1971 • David First Harmonic Dance • David First The Distant Softening Spirit Wave Pulse Tape Girder Interference Etude • Wreck, First & Morrow Live at AmbientChaos • David First Wave Music V - Conch Chorus and Bagpipe • Charlie Morrow Tell Tale • David First Etude 15 • David First Distant Signals • Charlie Morrow Pulse Piece • David First Blossom Dearie Snippet of her Air • Wreck Mix Spirit Voices • Charlie Morrow

Subjects touched upon: drones, bar bands, rock & roll bands, Lamonte Young, Dave’s Waves, Sunview Luncheonette Greenpoint, psychedelic revolution, poet Jerome Rothenberg, bending notes, Douglas Kahn, minimalist tendencies, free jazz, world music, Meteor Crater AZ, the heavens, the Kitchen, Phill Niblock, guitar, oscillators, signal generators, Muddy Waters, electronic music, Dennis Sandole, Hermann von Helmholtz, ancient voltaic cells, Harry Partch, Charles Ives, the minor third, blues, Gert Stern, new age, pseudo-science, Schumann resonances, improv, Discman, electrical engineer father, heterodyning, pursuit of magic, Canal Street ...

Robin Sip as a Dutch writer-producer-director and CEO of Mirage3DRobin is best known for productions like Mars 1001, Dinosaurs at Dusk, Origins of Life, Natural Selection & Dawn of the Space Age, which was the world’s first 3D fulldome film. Sip is also an award-winning pioneer of special venue 3D cinema & his Mirage3D is a leading fulldome-VR producer, having produced some 20 fulldome shows.

He began his professional life as a computer engineer, moved on to become a 3D modeler, & eventually, a writer-director. More recently, he has focused His is on the improvement of live action capture for domes, with the design of new camera rigs for films & fulldome-VR productions.

I met Robin over a decade ago in Denver, Colorado when his work was featured by Dan Neefus in the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Since then, we’ve collaborated on the creation of the Planetarium version of the feature documentary Moonwalk One on the anniversary of Apollo 11. It has my music & Sound by Robin.

Topics discussed: love of space flight, astronauts, Apollo 11 & 12, immersive practice & work flow, studied electro-computer engineering, Omniversum, tilted dome, digital projectors, space flight narratives, immersive educational films, fulldome cinema, planetariums, research, Darwin, soundtracks, dinosaurs...

Phill Niblock migrated to New York after completing a BA in economics at Indiana University, determined to pursue his passions: photography and film, often documenting jazz and modern dance performances. [Playlist below]

But, despite having no formal musical training, he soon found himself inspired by the New York music scene and immersed himself in experimental music, specifically loud sound, microtonal work, minimalism, and drones, producing works of often epic length. Fifty years later we can see how influential he has been in these genres with his copious output of records, videos and films and having won numerous awards along the way.

He has served as director of the Experimental Intermedia foundation for avant-garde music since 1985 and curates the record label XI. Niblock’s films includes a series called The Movement of People Working, which features workers at work in mostly rural setting worldwide.

Niblock has often collaborated with musicians, which include David First, Lee Renaldo, Thurston Moore, Susan Stenger, Al Margolis, and David Soldier as well as with me.

He just turned 90. He and I first connected in the 1970s when he attended Rhys Chatham’s presentation of my Spirit Voices in the Kitchen of the Broadway Central Hotel. He invited me to perform at his loft in Chinatown where he had just begin what has become a historic series. He came to my home sound studio on West End Avenue and West 77th Street for a session. I engineered and removed all the pauses from his solo cello work, making it a drone work. Phill's sunsets shone in our 1987 International TV Solstice. His Glittering Stream graced our Winter Solstice Celebration 2020.

Topics discussed by Morrow and Niblock: immersion, Lenny Tristan, Empress Dowager Cixi, China, rule of thirds, photography, high fidelity, history of hifi, speakers, dark room techniques, New York City water, performances, listening to records as immersion, tenement life, Mingus, Ellington, Monk, alcoholism, loops, file storage, loud sound, tech and gear, sound editing, reel to reel, archives, old trains, wire recorders ...

Vitiello, a New York native, is an internationally recognized sound artist and mainstay of the New York scene since his early days as a punk guitarist. He has been influenced by Nam June Paik, has collaborated with Scanner, Pauline Oliveros and Frances-Marie Utti. He is also an electronic musician and visual artist. And, according to Morrow, “an absolute Geiger Counter for places.”

In 1999 he did a residency at the World Trade Center managing to capture the Towers’s swaying in the wind and recorded the creaking and cracking of the building’s skeleton. He has produced countless recordings on various labels such as Sub Rosa and has had many solo exhibitions that combine sound, installations, photos and drawings at museums and galleries and has been part of many Group shows including Soundings: Contemporary Score at MOMA, the Whitney and the Sydney Biennale. Vitiello serves as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Kinetic Imaging department.

I met Stephen in the 1980s. We worked together on Nam Jun Paik’s Zapping for Swatch watch. Then on some of Paik’s soundtracks, including "Did George Sand Kill Chopin." Stephen curated the show, New Sounds New York, for the Kitchen in New York. It included the New York unveiling of my patended 3D soundcube with series of commissioned works including his most evocative, “Cinematic, With Crashing Roof,” one of 12 designed for the cube by an array of artists.

Samples Playlist Question Of Temperature • Balloon Farm Electrinocellia • MEM1 + Stephen Vitiello Train to the Plane • Charlie Morrow Brood IX • Stephen Vitiello Breath Chant • Charlie Morrow Bell Bell Horn Horn • Charlie Morrow Mental Radio • Stephen Vitiello Cascoplecia • MEM1 + Stephen Vitiello Genesis Song • Charlie Morrow Iron Oxide • Stephen Vitiello Thinking In, Thinking Out • Stephen Vitiello Trainslation • Steve Roden Spring Helsinki • Charlie Morrow Humming • Charlie Morrow

Pierre Brand began sound mixing and editing for film in 1994 and has made a name for himself on feature films such as Ghosted and Trial by Fire and on international documentaries of note such as Blue Note A story of Modern Jazz, Absolute Warhola, Wildnis Europa and The Hunt for Gaddafi's Billions.

He attended the Berklee College of Music and currently works out of his Primetime Studio in Hamburg He has collaborated with me on planetarium installations using MorrowSound software. We work together on the International Planetarium Society immersive sound committee, which has created a survey on sound practise in Planetariums.

Playlist iMMERSE! Podcast 26

excerpts of Charlie Morrow trax & examples of Pierre Brand’s sound mixing

The Fire Trial by Fire (Henry Jackman) • Pierre Brand Blue Note A Story of Modern Jazz • Pierre Brand Sweeter Times (Henry Jackman) • Pierre Brand ABSOLUT Warhola part3 • Pierre Brand You Can Trust Me Ghosted (Lorne Balfe) • Pierre Brand Chant with Watches • Charlie Morrow Under Suspicion (Henry Jackman) • Pierre Brand Amplified Piano • Charlie Morrow Elizabeth (Henry Jackman) • Pierre Brand Choral Bounce • Charlie Morrow Gendernauts • Monika Treut

This is a summer interlude, a special remixed iMMERSE! version of the summer of 2022 broadcast of the Wreck This Mess radio show: Wreck the Drowning World 1249 & serves as a reaction to the countless 2023 summer climate catastrophes that have hit far & wide – including the iMMERSE! & Charlie Morrow archive & headquarters in Vermont.

I’ve been researching flooding & other climate crisis extreme weather globally – & notice that governments, companies & individuals talk the talk, especially for the cameras where their self-aggrandizing lies sound genuine until out of view, companies are dumping harmful chemicals into the waterways & individuals are still buying Hummers, dumping their garbage on the streets under cover of night. They hold onto their entitled pleasure & comfort-driven habits as if there is no tomorrow.

Electronic music + rain + water & sea + Gavin Bryars “Titanic,” global flooding news + leftist analyses + audiobook citations from JG Ballard’s THE DROWNED WORLD to create a mesmerizing sonic pool of beguiling beauty upon which floats the nauseating & heart-wrenching news.

Excerpts :: Base inTRO2final • Charlie Morrow vs bart / Emptied spaces • def / 24H 48 Demo Water Morrow & Remes / Atlantis • nthng / Svalor • Purl / fld-001.2 rain • .foundation / Ten Years of Rainy Autumn • Raflum / Cool Watery Depths • Rod Modell / FEAR FLOOD • B/art / Relaxing ocean waves & beautiful misty beach • OnSite / Butterfly Remix • Halftribe vs Warmth / Falling Mountain • Mount Maxwell / Sea • Delia Derbyshire / Oceanima • Purl /Warm Rain & Sleepy Water • KeepSleep / Cool Cool Water Alt Mix • Beach Boys / Spring Helsinki • Charlie Morrow / Cool Cool Water • Slim Whitman / Swamp Island Remix • Echo Box vs Volunteer / WHALESONG • DF Tram / Something in the Water • Mt Eden Dubstep & Khadafi Dub / Hold Dearly • Fuubutsushi / Space 1.8 • Nala Sinephro • WATER • Beat Pharmacy vs Mutabaruka / Waves Coming In, Surf, Seashore • Charlie Morrow / Walking Waves • Miruga / Lights In Window • 110ml / Out of Source • Alphaxone / Drowned World • JG Ballard / Endless Imbalance • Addex / Mind Bypassed • Respira / Floating • Lauge / Floating World • Anne Lockwood / Cascade (The Deluge) • William Basinski / Water Drums • Union Jack + Baka Pygmies / Thirsty • Orb vs Lee Scratch Perry / On Second Thoughts • Halftribe / Wishing Well • Julianna Barwick / fld-001.1 • .foundation / Last Hymn Sinking of the Titanic • Gavin Bryars

LISTEN to the original expansive version: https://www.mixcloud.com/wreckthismess/wreck-the-drowning-world-1249/

Tim is a museum designer who transforms the static notion of a museum into something dynamic and engaging. He has worked for Ralph Appelbaum Associates, an award-winning international interpretive planning and exhibition design firm, for over 28 years. He is the director of RAA’s Berlin-based studio.

He has directed the interpretive planning and exhibition design for many major institutions, including the visitor center for Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center in Alaska, the First Nations Museum in Oklahoma, the Museums of Ethnology and Asian Art in Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the World Museum Vienna in Austria and is currently leading the design of the new Museum of the Viking Age in Olso Norway.

Subjects discussed: collaborations, immersive environments, Berlin, museum design, Holocaust Museum in Washington, fly fishing, Norway, Montana, Vienna, Cornell, outdoors, bringing museums to life ...