Abstract
This paper and accompanying film examine organ history and its perceptions, technological innovation, and cultural reconciliation through fieldwork surrounding the Global Hyperorgan project, a telematic network connecting pipe organs and instruments across countries for real-time collaborative performance by the TCP/IP Quartet in Berlin and Amsterdam. Exploring the intersections of ethnographic filmmaking, it foregrounds the role of audiovisual ethnography in capturing not only performance but also the social lives of instruments, the dynamics of collaboration, multi-spatiality and multi-temporality. Through slow travel empirical research and adaptive modes of representation, this paper argues that the hyperorgan reveals new opportunities for inclusive, multicultural, and multigenre collaboration and reimagining the social life of one of music’s oldest instruments.
Introduction
My decision to create an ethnographic film along with this written dissertation was initially influenced by my previous experience and work within the medium of video and audio before I began my studies in ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths University. Since then, I have learned that audiovisual documentation to support ethnographic studies is key to understanding and disseminating ethnomusicology. Steven Feld talks in depth about the benefits of audiovisual capture to support data, methodologies and analysis. He summarises that ‘doing ethnomusicology with film is part and parcel of doing better ethnomusicology’ (Feld 1976:315).
Armed with the manifesto of doing ‘better ethnomusicology’ with visual media, the subject of my major project came from my desire for empirical research, my own affordances for reduced carbon footprint travel and an opportunity to receive Turing funding through Goldsmiths for a cultural placement abroad. My previous projects with musicians during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect live simultaneous performances between countries led me to reconnect with musician and professor of music, Stefan Östersjö, based at Luleå University in Sweden. I had heard of a project he was working on involving connecting pipe organs together from different countries. I made contact with Stefan during the winter of 2023, and he offered me a placement with Luleå University. The dates for my potential funded travel from the end of May 2024 until the end of June coincided with Stefan’s pipe organ project and a live performance connecting an organ in Berlin with an organ in Amsterdam. He wanted me to document the simultaneous performances in both countries. Excited and intrigued by this project, I dug into his research known as The Global Hyperorgan.
The Global Hyperorgan project is defined as ‘an intercontinental, creative space for acoustic musicking. Existing pipe organs around the world are networked for real-time, geographically-distant performance, with performers collaborating musically through the voices of the pipes in each location’ (Harlow et al 2021). The hyperorgan movement, first coined by Randall Harlow in 2011, aimed to push organ pipe boundaries with new ways of interfacing. It combines the traditional acoustic qualities of the pipe organ with advanced features of MIDI computer control, electronic sound generation, and real-time modulation that allow for more nuanced dynamic control, tone manipulation, and layering of sounds than traditional pipe organs, creating complex textures and exploring non-traditional musical forms (Harlow 2024:55).
Under the direction of Randall Harlow, the Global Hypereorgan project is led by four researchers, Stefan Östersjö, hyper-guitar; Mattias Petersson, live coding; Robert Ek, hyper-clarinet; and Federico Visi, Sophtar and gestural controllers, who make up the TCP/Indeterminate Place Quartet (TCP/IP Quartet).
Previously, the quartet had first performed together in 2021, integrating electric guitar, clarinet, gestural controllers, and live coding software with a Wurlitzer organ in Stockholm and networked with the Utopa Baroque Organ in Amsterdam and the Woehl Studio Acusticum organ in Piteå, Sweden. The organ pipes, both locally and remotely situated, were thus engaged as voices in a novel form of collaborative musical dialogue. The interlacing of three organs’ sonorities, together with the diffusion of projected sounds from Amsterdam and Piteå, became an artistic means of exploring geographic distance and co-temporal presence, further underscored by the potent symbolism of the quartet positioned around a former nuclear pile.
For the 2024 performance, I was required to meet the quartet at the Kapelle der Versöhnung (Chapel of Reconciliation) in Berlin at the beginning of June to film rehearsals. Stefan and Mattias would leave for Amsterdam to set up with the Utopa hyperorgan at the Orgelpark, and I would follow on my motorcycle to capture the rehearsals leading up to the live performance on the 6th June. Coincidentally, a filmmaker friend of mine who grew up in my hometown and had lived and worked in Berlin since the early 80s was available to capture the live performance in the Chapel of Reconciliation on the 6th June. A compelling reason for me to be present at the Orgelpark was that the annual organ conference would take place on my arrival, with discussions on the future of pipe organs by pioneers of the hyperorgan. My plans were beginning to take shape.
On 15th March 2024, I received an email from the Turing funding team to say that my bid was successful. They had received many strong applications, but felt that my opportunity and application were very strong. This gave me further impetus to work within the short preparation timeframe before leaving for a month touring Europe by motorcycle, loaded up with film and sound kit, and camping gear. My vintage BMW R65 wasn’t ideal for over 4,000 reliable miles and tight deadlines, so I decided to sell my classic Dodge campervan and buy a 2021 KTM 390 motorcycle that would take me around Europe without the worry of breaking down. I have always been keen to keep my carbon footprint low, and I have always struggled neurologically with public transport. I have ridden motorbikes since the age of 16, and it’s my preferred way of travel. I calculated the impact of my carbon footprint for my intended route through Europe, comparing motorcycle travel with air travel. The carbon cost of my seat by aircraft was 668 kg CO₂e versus 411 kg CO₂e by my motorcycle. Train travel was the clear winner with only 146 kg CO₂e, but because of my personal difficulty with public transport and the higher cost involved, I chose the bike.
There was a third reason for overlanding by motorcycle rather than air or rail travel. I am an advocate for the slow travel or tourism movement. The slow tourism movement promotes a respect for local cultures, historical contexts, and environmental settings, while simultaneously foregrounding social responsibility through the recognition of diversity and the cultivation of meaningful interactions between tourists, host communities, and other visitors (Kresic et al 2022:330). Through gradual immersion from one country to another, it would allow me to acclimatise, absorb, meditate, make friends and grow my cultural network that would also enhance my fieldwork.
Ethnographic shared intent, methods and narrative styles
From a foundation of respect, integrity, and trust an ethnographic film can explore any subject with almost any methodology. The stylistic, narrative, and structural possibilities are equally open and only limited by the filmmaker’s intention and imagination (Wolffram 2020:195).
Shared intent
My starting point for the pre-production of my film came from a basis of trust and integrity, based on my previous working relationship and friendship with Stefan. Stefan gave me free rein to explore and document the TCP/IP Quartet’s experimental nature and the unfolding of the Global Hyperorgan project in this chapter and the concept behind the choice of venues and organs in Berlin and Amsterdam. Despite this free rein, I still needed to ask myself questions such as: Will my film be of benefit to my interlocutors? What positive and negative effects could there be on those who choose to be part of the film, and also those who might be indirectly affected? I needed to make sure my portrayal of the quartet was ethnographic, based on respect and integrity, and not to portray someone else’s view or my own. Wolffram makes it clear that to establish authenticity with our audience, there is a commitment to present our work sympathetically, accurately, and truthfully. (Wolffram 2020:201)
The nature of ethnography and ethnographic film/video is that it is intimate; it is work that relies on connection, communication, and relationships long before cameras begin capturing action in the field (Merryman 2020:128).
This process of authenticity began with my research at home on the quartet’s choice of organs in Berlin and Amsterdam, their location and site history. Pipe organs spanning centuries and events surrounding their life have the ability to live in the subconscious of many throughout their history, particularly if there is a direct connection with the instrument, such as the titular organist and their local audiences. Bates refers to this as the ‘social life of musical instruments’. He argues how easy it is to conceive how instruments can have agency to facilitate, prevent, or mediate social interaction. The force, mysticism, and draw of instruments are inseparable from the complex networks of relations in which they are situated, relations between humans and objects, among humans themselves, and among objects in interaction with one another. An instrument placed in different sociohistorical contexts may become implicated in distinct forms of relationality. They are enmeshed in diverse forms of social interaction, while equally, performers and listeners frequently cultivate uniquely intimate affective bonds with them (Bates 2012:364, 374).
The organ at the Chapel of Reconciliation in Berlin has a somewhat different connection and temporality with its community. The chapel was built in 1999 on the former site of the Church of Reconciliation, a church with a misnomer during the Nazi era and then sat on the ‘death strip’ on the Berlin Wall from 1961, where snipers would use its tower to shoot escapees. After the demolition of the 19th century church, the chapel was built to commemorate the site’s shocking past whilst looking towards a brighter future. The organ itself, being built from new, had no formal history, but within its design, the Evangelical Parish of Reconciliation invoked the site’s history of reconciliation.
To incorporate the idea of reconciliation into the instrument's design, four registers were assigned, in terms of their construction and tonal characteristics, to a country of the former Allies at the time of German division. Great Britain, France, the USA, and Russia are thus represented and, in a sense, united in the instrument.
The chapel website talks about reconciliation in the context of when things are allowed to change, from dark to light or emerging from the shadows. This is embodied in the construction of the chapel ambulatory, where the spaced vertical timbers cast light and dark lines within, which is also mirrored in the organ pipe construction (Evangelical Parish of Reconciliation 2025).
The TCP/IP Quartet embraced the chapel’s concept of change and reconciliation in their composition for their performance in Berlin and Amsterdam. They used archive audio recorded at the time of the Berlin Wall, conversations from local Berliners discussing the impact and loss of the former church when it was demolished in 1985, the raging loudspeaker war at the barbed wall and sounds of the wall being broken down by the hands of the people.
In Amsterdam, the idea of reconciliation is not dissimilar, albeit less destructive and impactful on human life. The current Orgelpark, formerly known as Parkkerk, was a church built in 1918, under the Gereformeerde Kerken (Reformed Churches of the Netherlands). At that time, Rev. J. G. Geelkerken preached that the serpent mentioned in Genesis 3 should be interpreted symbolically rather than literally. This triggered a major controversy within the church, which led to his expulsion. Despite this, he continued to preach his views alongside his followers, which often required police management of dissenting crowds. Part of his congregation then formed the Hersteld Verband (Restored Union). The dispute symbolised wider anxieties about biblical interpretation and the rise of modernist readings and science (Melle, Wisman 2003). Reconciliation came slowly but eventually merged and liberalised into the Dutch Reformed Church (NHK) in 1946, with Geelkerken accepted as a minister. By the 1960s, many theologians accepted symbolic or non-literal readings of Genesis 3, essentially embracing the approach for which Geelkerken had been condemned (Mulder 2006). This reconciliation echoes the Parkkerk’s transformation into the Orgelpark in 2007, where secular and liturgical music have met, and traditional organ music within the Orgelpark sits alongside hyperorgan performance and alternative organ composition with electronic instruments. The Utopa Foundation funded the reconstruction and refurbishment of the building and the Utopa Baroque Organ that has very modern hyperorgan capabilities, allowing its social life as an instrument to form a symbiotic bond with musicians and sonic artists now and generations to come (Orgelpark Foundation 2025).
The quartet fused their reconciliation composition in this fourth dimension between Berlin and Amsterdam with spoken word of this historic reconciliation at Parkkerk, with Orgelpark’s lead researcher, Professor Hans Fidom, voicing the text alongside the Berliner conversations and Berlin Wall soundscape (see Appendix).
The Global Hyperorgan project itself is made up of people from Sweden, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and the UK, which is a testament to the reconciliation between countries and cultures.
It is admirable that the project, like my own, is also ethnographic in its development and does not have a singular purpose of expanding the hyperorgan through this process of telematic performance, connecting organs in different countries, and advancing technological praxis. However, the goal of sociohistorical inclusion of the instruments and their sites is just as important to the project and the people involved in it.
Methodology and Mode of Representation
Despite researching the Global Hyperorgan prior to my departure for Europe, I was still unsure how this would unfold, and I didn’t want to force my own methods of capturing what I observed. I adopted an observational stance, not wanting to objectify, but I wanted to pay close attention ‘with’ the quartet, rather than just a study ‘of’ them (Ingold 2018:14).
So I endeavoured to be flexible in my approach, but had the tools ready, limited as they were, travelling light on a motorcycle. This was to my bureaucratic advantage, as normally one would have the laborious task of using a carnet when crossing borders with film production equipment. I avoided this by travelling with video kit that would position me as a tourist; however, my simple but professional lighting, audio field recorder and microphones might question this if stopped. My student status and letter explaining my fieldwork funding from Goldsmiths, and email correspondence with Luleå University, gave me a strong element of confidence at the border control. I have never been stopped and checked at the border when travelling solo on a motorbike before, but ironically, at the Dover docks on my outward journey, I was pulled over and given a card showing illegal items and asked if I was carrying any of them. After my response in the negative, they asked me to open my bike's top box to have a quick look. Despite it containing a tripod, camera gimbal and batteries, there appeared to be no thought of professional filming. Today, the lines between professional and consumer-looking film kit are so blurred that they probably didn’t blink an eye, and no doubt were only interested in illegal goods. I was sent on my way without even checking my large dry bag or rucksack containing my pro audio kit.
I was keen to use my GoPro to capture the journey by motorbike, highlighting my carbon footprint, sense of slow(er) travel, cultural transition and immersion. This would also give me an element of interaction and reflection within my film (Brown, Lackova 2020:238). In reality, this was good up until my return journey from Sweden, when some grit got into the lens area of the waterproof camera housing and scratched the lens so badly that I could no longer use it. But it had done its job for the route to Berlin and Amsterdam.
My old Sony A7s Mk1 camera has been a trusty tool for over a decade and the perfect choice for my fieldwork. Being able to record only HD footage on this camera suited me. I didn’t want to shoot 4k as I knew my shooting ratio would be high and I had limited time to backup my rushes in between shoots. I had to travel light, so I didn’t have the luxury of multiple lenses. So I opted for my favourite Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, which has consistently given me great service for many years after heavy use. This combination of camera, lens, and a Smallrig cage to support large capacity batteries worked out well without being overly heavy for handheld or gimbal use, and I could quickly deploy the rig to capture footage when it mattered.
I own an older DJI Ronin gimbal, which works well with the A7s for corporate and some documentary work, but it is bulky and cumbersome, taking time to set up and is not suitable for light travel. After a recommendation from a filmmaker friend, I bought a secondhand DJI RSC2 small portable gimbal that supports the A7s. This was easy to pack and use, but in reality, it had little use for the footprint and weight it took up in my bike's top box. My old Manfrotto monopod, taking up very little space and being lightweight, was a godsend. Using this and pure handheld for shots was ideal for quick observational work. In addition, I wanted locked-off shots for interviews, so I took my tall, lightweight carbon tripod legs with a small ball-joint head that nicely broke down to fit neatly inside my top box.
For lighting, I used my old but very reliable flexible, waterproof, bi-colour foot square Brightcast light panel and an old basic lightweight tripod that can break down into small pieces to support it. This was only used for interviews, as I was keen to keep the light natural for everything else. The A7s can perform at high ISOs in low-light conditions without the risk of the image getting too grainy, so the need for extra lighting is minimal.
My Zoom F8 8-channel field recorder in a small Orca sound bag with a few cables for recording from a sound desk and wireless mics worked faultlessly as always. I heavily depended on four RØDE Go wireless mics to capture each of the quartet’s conversations the moment they arrived at the Chapel of Reconciliation and onwards to the Orgelpark. They were also used for each interview, coupled with a Sony ECM-77B lavalier mic and the F8. The beauty of the RØDE Go system is that each mic unit has the ability to record for a few hours without charging or ingesting the rushes, which was invaluable when recording rehearsals and conversations on the fly, especially with the built-in limiter preventing clipping. My only downfall was that one of the mics kept switching itself off, which I have since found out was due to a faulty internal battery.
If need be, all my ancillary devices and batteries could be charged on the bike during travel, but in reality, I charged everything at my destinations.
Backing up my rushes has long been important to me, but after losing irreplaceable footage in the past, I have now become paranoid! I have used film industry YoYotta backup and archive software for a number of years, using LTO tapes, but on the road, it works incredibly well with any hard drive medium. Using a duplicate pair of SSD drives connected to my Apple MacBook running YoYotta proved indispensable for looking after my rushes.
I was aware that my time with the quartet as a whole in Berlin was limited; on Sunday, 2nd June, I had one day with the whole quartet and on Monday, only half a day with half of them (Federico and Robert) to conduct interviews. A chunk of that time would be unexpectedly spent with a photographer for their press shots, and I would also need to logistically engage Rick, my filmmaker friend, on B camera and discuss with him and the quartet his A camera role during my absence for the Thursday performance later in the week. Our common timecode for the performance to synchronise our cameras in Berlin and Amsterdam would be the laptop audio playback within the performance, sent live from Berlin.
I arrived at The Chapel of Reconciliation before the quartet had arrived, set up my A7s rig, and waited for their arrival. Although arriving separately at different times, I was able to capture a sense of immediate cohesion between the group when they met. Despite living great distances apart, they had formed a common bond of purpose since the inception of the Global Hyperorgan project, which showed through the immediacy of their artistic engagement upon arriving at the chapel. I quickly pinned the RØDE Go mics to each of them to capture this energy and then followed them around the chapel with the A7s to observe their interactions. I was keen at this point not to interfere, but to purely work from an observational perspective to understand their dynamic as a group of not just musicians, but as academics who were trying to make sense of their own evolutionary process as a quartet trying to achieve a musical harmony between themselves and this fourth dimension of indeterminate space between organs in different countries. Nichols makes a valid statement of ‘ethical considerations’ by not intruding in a way that could potentially change the path of events of your subjects because of your filmmaking (Nichols 1992:39).
I intended for my film to show a sequential real-time progression of their rehearsals to show the potential technical and group dynamics and issues that would arise over time. This presented a challenge to shoot and ingest the rushes, working with the quartet’s and my own tight schedules, but it would help to develop my film’s narrative. It would reinforce the feeling of transformational development instead of an ‘impression of an atemporal slice of selected scenes from a single moment in time’ (ibid:41).
It took all of Tuesday to ride to Amsterdam and then set up my MacBook to ingest the rushes overnight in my room, but after a good night’s sleep, I arrived at the Orgelpark refreshed and ready to meet the other half of the quartet (Stefan and Mattias) to begin capturing their rehearsals coupled to the grand Utopa Baroque hyperorgan. This time, the dynamic between them had dramatically changed. Uncoupled from the other half of the quartet and the oppressive presence of a demanding and somewhat rude sound engineer who also refused to be filmed made observational capture difficult to shoot, but it appeared to be an even more difficult environment for Stefan and Mattias to rehearse in. This was a shame, as generally the staff at Orgelpark were very welcoming and easy to work with, which enabled me to have free rein to film in this magnificent place. However, the humble nature and professionalism of both Stefan and Mattias allowed them to rehearse and see through any technical hindrances.
It became apparent during this time that I would not be able to get the close-up shots of the actual performance I wanted, so I would have to adapt my mode of representation and adopt an element of cinéma vérité and a ‘modified’ observational style by working with the rehearsals to incorporate them in the film’s depiction of the performance. It was still truthful in the sense that both rehearsal and performance were carbon copies and were synchronous with the Berlin contingent of the quartet (Barbash, Taylor 1997:30).
During the conference, I managed to schedule interviews with the remaining half of the quartet alongside other key people who influence the developments of the hyperogan. Even if these were not used in the film, they were essential fieldwork material for my research. It was becoming clear that my work was becoming more multimodal, and for good reason, for more ‘diverse ways of knowing’ (Westmoreland 2022:174).
The lightbulb moment came during the organ conference, when it dawned on me that the pipe organ had incredible potential outside of the traditional organist realm for someone like me, who was not a classically trained musician but grew up as an autodidactic experimentalist of electronic instruments and DJ turntables. It also felt to me that the traditional organist monoculture, despite its forward-thinking approach to organ composition and performance, lacked the inclusion of non-Western ethnicities and cultures.
However, I felt that something refreshingly new was emerging from this ancient ‘king of instruments’ (Komlós 2002:59), a pipe organ counter-culture, as it were. Could the pipe organ in its new incarnation as a hyperorgan open up possibilities not only to me as a white Western male interested in its non-traditional electronic use, but also as a multicultural, multigenre instrument outside of the pipe organ mainstream? These strong thoughts and ideas impacted how I would go forward and would alter the course of my long-term future studies. It also changed the narrative of my film, as well as a big shift from pure observation.
Narrative, Style and Structure
When constructing my film, I was pleased that I didn’t try to pre-structure my film before shooting, as I would normally do, or to preconceive a narrative and style. I had learnt a lot from my fieldwork, not only from the Global Hyperorgan project, but also from what I had gleaned from the conference at the Orgelpark.
Satirically, I smiled that my realisation was like a liturgical epiphany during that conference: the potential of the pipe organ and its relatively new technical ability to create any genre of music, even as a low-frequency percussive instrument. I saw it now as an instrument, not just for experimental music, but that could be played electronically with DAW software such as Ableton Live within the circles of global electronic dance music, jazz, indigenous music and more.
I initially set out to make an observational film centred around a quartet of characters and their performance within this indeterminate place between the organs in Berlin and Amsterdam. The conference, leading up to their performance and beyond, dramatically changed my perspective and the narrative, style and construction of my film, and I would adopt a more multimodal and reflexive approach.
From this point in time during interviews, although my observational cap was on early in the interview to let the interviewee relax and lead the conversation, my interactive reflexive cap came out occasionally to provoke conversation into a multicultural multigenre strand of thought, while still allowing the interviewee to have full control of the conversation.
In my interview with Randall Harlow (see Appendix), I asked how the hyperorgan can be used outside of Western cultures, particularly in postcolonial cultures where organs remain. He has advocated multicultural use for some time (Harlow 2024:61), but says, ‘I'm not a specialist and I'm maybe not the best person to lead, but I know the challenge that that presents’.
By being more reflexive, I would question how I would represent the historical world of the pipe organ. Like poetic exposition, shifting attention from reference to the text itself, but where poetry emphasises a form’s pleasures, being reflexive would highlight the challenges. It would treat representation as an immediate problem rather than a later analysis, making texts self-aware not just out of style but also of ‘strategy, structure,’ and ‘effects’ (Nichols 1992:57). My thoughts turned to the origin of the pipe organ and how my own narrative would expand from its humble beginnings.
The average person, when asked, would regard the pipe organ as mainly a European instrument, and many would be surprised to hear that it was born within the African continent in Alexandria, c. 300 BCE, invented by a man named Ctesibius. It was first called the hydraulis, as it used water pressure to stabilise airflow. He wanted to replace the pipe player’s limited supply of breath with a continuous, regular flow of air generated by a machine that would supply air to multiple pipes. It evolved and remained a secular instrument for over a millennium and was regarded as pagan until it entered Western Europe in 757 CE and didn’t begin entering churches until the 10th century (Perrot 1971:6, 7, 207, 223).
I then thought, how many people know this, and does it matter? Do people's perceptions of the pipe organ matter? How does that influence the future of the pipe organ and whether it would be an instrument of choice? So I decided to randomly ask people’s perception of the pipe organ and what words come to mind. People locally to me and from distant lands, either from post-colonial countries or countries that had never been invaded, would give the same answer. The church. This would be the starting point and the evolution of my film.
Despite starting off as a secular instrument and being considered pagan, it had become firmly integrated in liturgy by the 13th century (ibid:270), became a strong voice within the church, and eventually became a tool of colonial power and oppression (Harlow 2024:61).
To pick the archival imagery to convey the long period of the pipe organ’s chequered continued domination throughout the globe would be difficult. The concept of Eisenstein’s metric montage or rapid, staccato montage with photographic stills and text devices such as have been used in the church idol scene of Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm (1931), experimental films such as Tony Conrad’s Flicker (1966) and Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma (1970), came to mind as a way of portraying the idea of people’s pipe organ perceptions and its connected past. Suhr and Willerslev explain the need to ‘expand our understanding of how montage and other disruptive devices can and must be used to break the mimetic dogma of the humanized camera, thus enabling an enhanced perception of the social realities depicted in ethnographic films’ (Suhr, Willerslev 2012:283).
I decided to use a form of these styles of montage and text devices that grew and intensified from archival video into a homogenous, amalgam blur of stills that would create a sense of power the pipe organ had/has over the world, coupled with a recognisable soundtrack that would capture the mind of the viewer and trigger a response to its difficult history. Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time and create an observational film on events over the past millennium, but sometimes we do have the imagery that we can use to evoke the ‘invisible’ dimensions of life that could otherwise be recorded (Weiner 1997:197-199).
Through this brief historical montage of the pipe organ, it led me to ask the viewer if its evolved life into the liturgy is what its inventor and his contemporaries intended? As far as they were concerned, it would stay and evolve as a secular instrument for the entertainment of all (Perrot 1971:50,67). The concept of the hyperorgan from an engineer like Ctesibius would make perfect sense as would his purveyors, but it took until the 21st century for this to begin to evolve into an inclusive instrument.
To introduce the hyperogan into my film, I chose to highlight works from the early adopters. It is by no coincidence that they are mainly of Belgian roots. The name Decap is synonymous with the dance organ, an automated invention that the Decap family thrived on from the 1930s and particularly in the last decade, the pioneering son, Tony Decap, has been pushing the boundaries of what the organ can do to function as a hyperorgan. The Belgian composer Walter Hus, who has worked extensively with Decap, has produced modern electronic dance music with a purpose-built pipe organ that features in the dance music documentary, The Sound of Belgium (2012). Maxime Denuc, based in Brussels, has created pioneering ambient dance music and dub techno on a Decap-designed mobile hyperorgan and is being exhibited at the 2025 Biennale Musica, Venice. Other featured emerging hyperorgan artists include myself, Yves Rechsteiner, Gamut Inc and George Rahi.
Logically, the Global Hyperorgan project was introduced into the film at this point as the hyperorgan evolves and expands its focus outside of inner circles and begins to connect globally. Using academic montaged footage of the TCP/IP Quartet of their 2021 pilot performance sets the scene of the dynamic of the group and gives the viewer context of the local organ being controlled by the quartet, and the split frame shows the remote organ is also being controlled by the quartet. I used text devices to leave the viewer in no doubt of the process.
I felt it appropriate and a ‘moral obligation’ at this point after introducing the reason for the film, to become reflexive and reveal myself via the GoPro on the motorbike as a fieldworker and filmmaker to send a message of objective truth between myself and the subject (Barbash, Taylor 1997:31, 59). It also gives context with regard to my time and place, and metaphorically reflects the multispatial and multitemporal complexities of the pipe organ (Suhr, Willerslev 2012:288). Speeding up the bike footage and using Maxime Denuc’s rhythmic, steam train-like hyperorgan piece Ouverture (2022), fitted the overland travelling pace and destination goal.
Using the motorbike footage to transport me to Berlin, the Wall, and the Chapel of Reconciliation establishes the scene and the quartet’s choice of venue. The insertion of the documentary clip explaining the site's history helps to explain their compositional narrative. The textual devices within the chapel's ambulatory at night emphasise the gravity and contextualise their narrative.
Observationally but rhythmically, my jump cuts between observing the group's dynamic and introducing them to the viewer allowed me to ‘fabricate a homogeneous space’ and ‘further the logic’ of their coming together, but still trying to imply rather than demonstrate (Barbash, Taylor 1997:28). Using the synchronous sound of the rehearsals cemented the feeling of being there, building intensity and drawing in the site’s dark but reconciling past, capturing its deeper past of the original altar retable, with its defaced saints with shortened limbs, and passing over the window in the floor below the retable reveals remnants of the old church’s cellar, including a doorway boarded up in 1961, making visible the buried history of division, lit by the chapel roof window above the altar (Stegers 2001, 2008).
The intense wall of sound by the quartet and their connectivity to the chapel organ is carried through into this fourth-dimensional spatial-temporal place between Berlin and Amsterdam, where we are also connected to the Orgelpark’s reconciled temporality. Through continuous and synchronous sound and video in Berlin, coupled with my overland travel to the Orgelpark, I tried to imply a feeling of synchronicity between the quartet in both locations, creating another dimension that is both musically multispacial and multitemporal.
It was important to include Hans Fidom, who is the driving force at the Orgelpark and an advocate for expanding the territory of pipe organs beyond tradition and into all disciplines of music. The full interview reveals his passion for this exploration (see Appendix). Stefan Östersjö encapsulates this in his closing words with his own experience, such as the potential for a Vietnamese laptop musician to repurpose the organ for their own culture, but brings back the real meaning behind this technological collaboration, that of reconciliation.
The closing scene needed to embody an excerpt of the synchronised performance in this indeterminate place between the quartet, the instruments, the audience, the locations and temporality. I chose to mimic this by layering video using the aptly named ‘Difference’ blend mode within the Final Cut Pro editing software. I felt it gave a sense of dimensional transformation when the imagery interlocked with each other, complementing the music and dialogue. As Hans says in his closing words, ‘not just respecting the past, but being inclusive about it’.
Conclusion
Returning to my opening ambition to achieve Feld’s ‘better ethnomusicology,’ the conclusion of this fieldwork has strengthened my resolve to continuously use audiovisual recording tools in my research. In my experience, ‘film can evoke hidden dimensions of ethnographic reality’ (Suhr, Willerslev 2012:282), as in the Global Hyperorgan’s fourth-dimensional organ in an indeterminate place. This is often not realised in the lived moment until field recordings are analysed, and this is particularly of note when dealing with my own neurodiversity. Film also serves in ‘building relationships’ with sincerity and authenticity for the people we engage with and our audiences (Vannini 2020:8). I have learnt that I need to be adaptable in my modes and styles of representation to be able to capture the essence, nuances and immediacy irrespective of the mode, but always with respect for my subject. ‘The challenge is to invent and improvise new twists to old styles, not for their own sake, but as you wrestle with and respond to your subject’ (Barbash, Taylor 1997:33). By changing tack during my fieldwork and being open to ‘alternative audiovisual modalities,’ it has helped me to ‘consider new ways of working and theorizing that engage with the sensorial, affective, aesthetic, performative and experiential potential of sound film’ (Norton 2021:139) In doing so it ‘enables new disciplinary constellations and research partnerships’ and ‘revealing unrealized approaches to the aporias of ethics, representation, and interpretation’ (Westmoreland 2022:175). More recently, I have begun employing new techniques of multimodality, such as hacking my 360° video footage in my ethnographic research. 360° video can capture an extended ‘invisible’ (Suhr, Willerslev 2012:283), enabling me to analyse recordings for things I have missed from a different perspective and allow a thicker depiction. It also gives me the advantage of ‘extending the affordance of looking in any direction to its editing capacities’, flattening and using these angles alongside other 16:9 footage in a non-spherical frame (Westmoreland 2020:260).
I shot many interviews during and after the organ conference, which I intended to use in the film. I had much more to say about the fieldwork trip, but space does not allow it, so I chose to focus on the Global Hyperogan project and its temporality. The appendix with uncut interviews will help elaborate on the project and fieldwork in general. This extra material has proved invaluable and has informed my future doctoral research decisions, and I will expand on my exciting affordances and opportunities over the coming months as I push for a hyperorgan counter-culture.
Pipe organs in postcolonial countries appear not to have been used to develop indigenous emerging digital cultures for sonic creation. In my interview with Randall Harlow, he makes the valid point that the West can often march into other non-Western countries and impose its own ideas of inclusivity. So some of the questions are: How does empowerment happen? Can and how does the use of Western privilege facilitate a move towards pipe organ inclusivity? Do former colonising countries have an obligation to support postcolonial countries towards empowerment? How will the use of church pipe organs as hyperorgans for non-liturgical genres be received?
My future research will tackle these questions and others, starting at home in the UK with diverse communities. With an estimated 30–40,000 pipe organs in the UK, with at least one being scrapped daily, local diasporas could repurpose them for their own music. My research practice will help develop new works for hyperorgan with artists with postcolonial roots.
Reconciliation on a global scale means allowing the pipe organ to be embraced by all cultures, bringing it back to postcolonial and indigenous cultures that had their musical voices muted during colonialism and even still today (Drewett, Cloonan 2006:6-8).
The hyperorgan, and by extension, the Global Hyperorgan project, reconciles with the inception of the pipe organ and its contemporaries of the Hellenistic period; an instrument for all cultures and genres, and not just the liturgy and classical traditions.
References
Filmography
Conrad, T. (dir.). (1966). Flicker, 30 mins. USA: Anthology Film Archives.
Deville, J. (dir.). (2012). The Sound of Belgium, 85 mins. Belgium: Visualantics.
Frampton, H. (dir.). (1970). Zorns Lemma, 60 mins. USA: The Criterion Collection.
Vertov, D. (dir.). (1931). Enthusiasm: The Symphony of Donbas, 65 mins. Soviet Union: Ukrainfilm.
Recordings
Denuc, M. (2022). Ouverture. Performed by Maxime Denuc. Belgium: Vlek.
Bibliography
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Brown, K.M., Lackova, P. (2020). The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video. Edited by P. Vannini. London, England: Routledge.
Drewett, M., Cloonan, M. (eds) (2006). Popular music censorship in Africa. Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate (Ashgate popular and folk music series).
Evangelical Parish of Reconciliation (2025). Instruments. Evangelical Parish of Reconciliation. Available at: https://gemeinde-versoehnung.de/musik/instrumente (Accessed: 16 August 2025).
Feld, S. (1976). ‘Ethnomusicology and visual communication’, Ethnomusicology 20(2):315.
Harlow, R., Petersson, M., Ek, R., Visi, F., Östersjö, S. (2021). Global Hyperorgan: a platform for telematic musicking and research. NIME 2021. https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.d4146b2d
Harlow, R. (2024). Hyperorgan Part 1: Reinventing the Wondrous Machine. American Guild of Organists, New York.
Harlow, R. (2024). ‘Hyperorgan Part 3: Cultivating New Organ Art’, The American Organist, June, pp. 60–65.
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Appendix
Fieldwork Interviews and Archival Recordings
This appendix lists the supplementary audio materials hosted on the Goldsmiths Panopto server. All participants gave informed consent.
Robert Ek full interview. 3 June 2024, Orgelpark, Amsterdam. Duration: 11 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=cbfa6bbb-1ae3-449e-bede-b35c01099347
Federico Visi full interview. 3 June 2024, Orgelpark, Amsterdam. Duration: 10 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=0ba51cc0-7de1-41df-a220-b35c010979fb
Stefan Östersjö full interview. 5 June 2024, Orgelpark, Amsterdam. Duration: 35 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=86d903c0-b2c7-406f-90b3-b35c0109c94d
Mattias Petersson full interview. 5 June 2024, Orgelpark, Amsterdam. Duration: 20 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=b717ea49-7790-4841-90ca-b35c010979f7
Randall Harlow full interview. 7 June 2024, Orgelpark, Amsterdam. Duration: 16 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=198d36e3-a4fe-445d-acf6-b35c01097a07
Hans Fidom full interview. 12 June 2024, Orgelpark, Amsterdam. Duration: 56 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=94767af4-0ef8-4ab6-b7ba-b35c010979f5
Berlin Wall Soundscape and Conversations (c. 1960s–1980s). Private collection ℅ TCP/IP Quartet. Duration: 4 mins. Panopto link: https://goldsmiths.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=039f5338-a167-49dd-9756-b35c010f63d6