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2005 Division III Projects
The Singing Tower - A Fresh Look at Local Flavor
- 'Shift' - an animated film
May graduate Dane Olson can tell you the precise moment he began his Division III: One afternoon during his third year at Hampshire he was “just playing around,” listening to a recording of Alvin Lucier’s “Music on a Long Thin Wire.” Intrigued, Olson taped a broken guitar neck to a railing outside his third-floor residence hall room and hung speaker wires weighted with 200 pounds of rocks toward the ground to see what sounds he could create. That spontaneous little experiment inspired a project he would immerse himself in over the next year and a half, culminating in the creation of a new—and very large—musical instrument and earning him a degree in physics and music.
In order to graduate, every Hampshire student must complete an in-depth, original, independent project, known as the Division III. The project takes at least the final year of study and is guided by a committee of faculty mentors recruited by the student. Students often blend academic disciplines in unexpected ways, working across traditional boundaries to explore new intellectual or creative territory.
For his Division III, Olson developed and built the Singing Tower, a 16-foot tall vertical cylinder encased with strings and pipes, with steel resonance chambers at the top and bottom. He plays the tower from inside the cylinder, climbing up and down its height on 12 wooden steps spaced vertically behind the strings, either using a bow or plucking the strings with his fingers. The strings stimulate 12 upper and 12 lower pipes, which resonate in sympathy and add depth to the texture of the sound, amplified by the resonance chambers. A serious guitarist who also plays piano and the fiddle, Olson continues to experiment with pitches produced by the vibrating length of each string based upon where he places his fingertips or one of a number of other tools he is trying out as he practices.
He debuted the tower at a public demonstration on campus shortly before his May graduation. He carefully chose the term “demonstration” over “concert,” he explained, because he had only had a few weeks since finishing construction to learn to play it. Because interest was so great among those on campus who saw the unusual, gigantic musical instrument, housed in the college’s recital hall, Olson agreed both to hold the demonstration and to play the Singing Tower on a couple of songs during the Div III concert of another Hampshire music student. “At this point, I can’t really claim to know how to play it,” he said. “I’ve been building it for two years and only playing it for a few weeks.” The best comparison made so far for the tower’s deep tones is the sound of a whale, with the length of the strings allowing for many more overtones and harmonics than a violin, although the sounds do clearly put it in the violin family.
Over his first three years at Hampshire, Olson studied in a range of fields, including acoustics, optics, cognitive science, music composition, music theory, and art. As he approached Division III, he knew he wanted to pull all those interests together, asking himself, “How can I fit all this into one broad topic?”
Every Division III begins with the questions that passionately interest the individual student. After his balcony experiment, Olson’s questions began flowing: What is music? How does a string vibrate? Ultimately, he framed his driving question as: “How can I understand science, life, music, and art in order to make something new?”
“Throughout my Hampshire education—and this is the beauty of Hampshire—it was important to me to try to approach science as art and vice versa. As far as I’m concerned, there is no difference between science and art,” said Olson. His Division II, three semesters of work in an academic concentration that is comparable to completing a major at a more traditional college, was titled “The Art of Music and the Science of Sound (The Sound of Music).”
Between “just playing around” and the debut of a new musical instrument, Olson put in many hours of hard work, both theoretical and practical. Still in playful mode, he first substituted empty paint cans for the rocks, trying different resonances to better control the sounds. He then came up with the idea of using oil drums as resonance chambers, and began thinking about ways to make a very large instrument aesthetically pleasing, “like the beauty of a violin, which is pleasing both in its sound and as a physical object.”
He drew on the knowledge and skills learned in earlier Hampshire courses to frame the theoretical aspects of his Div III, working with physics professor Fred Wirth and music professor Dan Warner. He also sought out Don Dupuis and Glenn Armitage in the college’s Lemelson Center, who taught him fabrication skills, including welding and woodworking, and gave advice on materials and techniques.
Olson’s work on the Singing Tower impressed his professors on many levels, with its musical potential, scientific precision, and aesthetic appeal. “This project is the perfect culmination of his studies,” said Wirth. “I have been impressed by his ability to cross boundaries and see the relevance of his scientific studies to his pursuit of an education in music. He was able to use much of his knowledge about wave motion from my course in optics and holography, as well as his work in mathematics and as a teaching assistant in musical acoustics. In the process he discovered within himself an innate talent for design and a clear aesthetic sense that have made his tower beautiful to the eye as well as to the ear. Since his studies have also encompassed music theory as well as calculus and computer science, he has placed himself in a strong position to make a difference in the rapidly evolving world of music today.”
Music professor Warner provided valuable perspective on how Olson’s creative efforts fit within a larger cultural context, in particular how they related to what has been done in music and composition and what could be done in new ways.
Olson considers the Singing Tower an improvisational instrument. “I or anyone else can step into it and breathe something new into it,” he said. He sees potential for adding visual appeal to performances, through lighting or dance as the musician climbs up and down the steps, perhaps with other performers on stage. He is pleased to have produced a new instrument rather than pursuing a more traditional musical project, such as writing a score. “It is there to manipulate and improvise. It becomes the score,” he said.
The tower was designed to collapse into manageable pieces for moving, with three people required to assemble and disassemble it. Following graduation, Olson carried it home with him to New Hampshire and, with his usual discipline and diligence, is continuing the work of mastering its musical potential. He is also in the process of patenting the Singing Tower. His future plans include graduate school in electro-acoustic music, and continued pursuit of the interest in creative metalworking that Hampshire's Lemelson Center helped him discover.
Cookbook Supports Local Farmers and Local Foods Movement
The Pioneer Valley has a new cookbook, the product of an academic project completed at Hampshire College last spring.
Local Delectables: Seasonal Recipes from the Pioneer Valley was written by a May 2005 graduate of Hampshire, Andrea Davis, as part of her senior thesis (called a Division III). The spiral-bound cookbook, designed to lay flat for the convenience of the cook, was published locally by Collective Copies. It can be purchased for $19.95 at Collective Copies in Amherst and Florence and at many bookstores throughout the Pioneer Valley.
Davis, who now lives in San Francisco where she is involved in the local foods movement, is pleased that her undergraduate work can benefit the local agricultural and culinary communities. “In addition to preserving and sharing recipes with local flavor, I also wanted to help support the local foods movement,” she said. “Proceeds from every book sold will go directly to CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture).”
Davis grew up in a rural area of Maryland, near Havre de Grace, and preserving the agricultural way of life has become a passion for her. As part of her studies at Hampshire, where she concentrated in natural science and sustainable agriculture, she learned hands-on skills on the Hampshire farm and as an apprentice on an organic family farm in North Carolina and a low-pesticide farm in Maine.
“Local foods seem like an answer to a lot of the problems that occur in rural communities related to their economies,” she said. “If people eat locally they will support the local economy.”
Every Hampshire Division III begins with the student framing a question. For Davis, that question was: Could you eat a diet comprised only of foods produced locally and yet meet all of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily allowance of vitamins and nutrients? Working with faculty mentors Jason M. Tor, an environmental microbiologist with an interest in soils and organic farming, and Elizabeth Conlisk, assistant professor of public health, Davis embarked on a yearlong scientific and historical quest. Hampshire’s farm manager Leslie Cox and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) manager Nancy Hanson also played valuable mentoring roles.
Davis spent hours poring over old cookbooks published by local community organizations, hospitals, schools, and individuals, using what she learned there as the basis for recipes that she adapted or created from scratch. A special computer program allowed her to analyze nutritional content. Entering data for one serving of each recipe, she devised a week’s worth of meals for each season that, when analyzed over a week, fully meet USDA guidelines. Because those guidelines vary according to age and sex, she selected the requirements for females between 19 and 30 years old, knowing that group has the greatest nutritional requirements. “I knew that if I could meet their nutritional needs, the diet would meet those of any adult,” she explained.
Davis tested the recipes, to ensure that flavor was good and all contents worked as planned. Her Hampshire friends happily volunteered to assist with taste tests. As needed, she altered and refined recipes as the project progressed.
The 112 recipes that made it into Local Delectables are arranged seasonally, with fresh ingredients and relying mainly on raw, unprocessed foods. They are limited to local crops or to crops that could be grown locally according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “hardiness” zone 5. Conspicuously absent are a number of common spices and flavors that are not suitable for the Pioneer Valley’s growth season, including black pepper, cinnamon, vanilla, and tropical plants. Davis learned to substitute flavors creatively; lacking vanilla, she whipped up a pound cake using dried lavender.
Professor Tor, who chaired the faculty committee working with Davis, said he appreciated both the quality of her research and the importance of her advocacy for the local foods movement: “I am proud to have worked with Andrea while she developed her research questions and matured as an advocate for change. Her willingness to tackle difficult problems head-on and seek practical solutions is an early indicator of her potential as an influential leader in promoting positive change that will benefit human and environmental health.”
Tor said Davis “developed a degree of sophistication in her thinking and confidence in her position that eating locally-produced food is more important than merely consuming organically-produced vegetables regardless of the source and transport distance. This is a strong position counter to that held by some rather influential writers.”
An Innovative Approach to Animation 
View Shift: http://www.joshmarvel.com/
Plymouth Film Festival: http://www.plyfilmfest.org/
Shift, an animated film by Hampshire College graduate Joshua Marvel, was accepted into the 2005 Plymouth Independent Film Festival. Marvel completed Shift for his Division III (senior project) at Hampshire.
In a series of slowly shifting scenes, the five-minute animated film depicts a burned-out husk, with barren, smoldering scenes evolving into a new form—a natural environment of trees and water and clouds—in a cycle of reclamation. Color values move fluidly from the subtle and minimalist to vibrant and sharp, creating the contrast essential to the underlying message of inevitable change over time. The overall message is one of optimism, but only within the context of inevitable cycles.
To make Shift, Marvel blended two very different approaches to image creation. First, he painted watercolor compositions that generate complex lighting and surface texture that would have been much more difficult to create on a computer. Then, he used the tools of 2- and 3-D computer graphics.
“Perspective shifts, mobile cameras, fluttering leaves, and the like couldn't be painted frame-by-frame with the fluidity and slow pacing Josh was seeking in his film,” explained Chris Perry, the Hampshire College computer graphics professor who chaired Marvel’s Division III faculty committee. “Josh exploited the strengths of both art forms to create a film that isn't exactly watercolor or animation; instead, it's an intriguing hybrid that's very compelling to watch.”
In Shift, Marvel animates environment and atmosphere, with the camera exploring different cycles through time in a natural setting in a way that gently forces the viewer to look carefully. Unlike most animation, which tends to move rapidly, he wanted to slow everything down so that the audience would focus on subtleties in emotion and color, filling up their senses. He made every decision in designing Shift with projection in a dark theater in mind, thinking not only about the computer animation skills he was developing but also thinking carefully through how to create animation that could be viewed “as a film.”
Although working in animation, Marvel is influenced by and consciously draws on the tradition of narrative documentaries. He describes Shift as being “in the tradition of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi and Ron Fricke’s Baraka.”
A bit of collaboration on the Hampshire campus was involved as well. Recognizing the importance of audio to an animated film with no characters or dialogue, Marvel drew on the talents of another Hampshire student, Evan Viera, for acoustic composition. Most of the images are original creations by Marvel, with two other Hampshire students—Daniel Gilbert and Brian Kendall—working with him on particular visual effects within the film.
Marvel completed some of his images with the use of Hampshire College’s cluster computing facility, which houses two high-performance Beowulf-style computer clusters. Using a work distribution system given to the college by Pixar Studios, he could send renderings to 46 different processors simultaneously, completing the process approximately 50 times faster, producing renderings in a matter of minutes rather than hours.
Other areas of academic interest for Marvel as a Hampshire student were philosophy and Medieval literature, which he concentrated on while studying abroad in New Zealand in 2003, so it is not surprising that his film’s content focuses on cycles through time. He finds himself constantly drawn back to the exploration of “something bigger than us and inevitable.”
Marvel has been seriously interested in animation since the eighth grade, finding it “the most interesting method” for expressing his creativity. “With animation I can go into strange and different places,” he said. “I’m interested in narrative, but not in an explicit and obvious and narrow way, more in way that is open to interpretation.”
The New Hampshire native interned last summer at Hatchling Studios in Portsmouth, N.H. He is currently entering Shift in a number of additional film festivals and exploring possibilities for professional employment in the competitive world of animated filmmaking.