In 
1987 Lillian Disney (the widow of Walt Disney) made an initial donation of 50 million dollars for making a performance venue as gift for people of Los Angeles, but may be at that time she herself did not know that this donation will become one of the symbols of ” Art Remix” in 2013.
Walt Disney Concert hall, built on 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown of Los Angeles California, is a place where various forms of art meet in one place, and yet their mixture with one of the most ancient musical instruments, Pipe Organ, is wonderful and amazing. In this field guide I will try to walk you through the process of making this concert hall and its organ.
Walt Disney Concert Hall
in 1988, Frank Gehry won the free competition for giving the best idea for making a concert hall in Los Angeles. Gehry’s unusual sketches for interior and exterior design pf the hall were like a “ship under full sail, with the audience of board journeying through a sequence of adventures” (A Forest of Pipes, by Jenifer Zobelein, 2007).
Though Gehry was a well known architect of his own time and even now he is more famous. He is an exceptional architect with abstract desings. (Frank Gehry) but this concert hall was his first concert hall and had its own issues. Gehry wanted a big concert hall with an Organ and this was a big challenge for him, because he had to make modern concert hall with an ancient musical instrument without ruining face of neither of them. Even his job was of interest of animation makers (Simpsons)
In 1991 Fran Gehry delivered the complete design of the concert hall and 1992 the construction of underground parking garage began. With a 2 year break between 1994-1996 because of fund raising, the concert hall opened on 2003. (Construction)
Pipe Organ
This musical instrument usually is used in churches and cathedrals. called the king of instruments by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, this ancient musical instrument payed a big role in the history of music. (Organ)
Pipe Organ has different parts, pipes, wind system, stops, keyboard… (Pipe Organ Parts)
What makes the Walt Disney concert hall a unique musical instrument is its look. The main pipe of this organ is built of a 6 feet wood.here we can listen to Manuel Rosales talking about his master piece and explaining about it. (02 Track 2)
Walt Disney Concert Hall Pipe Organ
What the mixture of this different aspects of art bring for us, is that “newness” is not always in making everything from the scratch but also rebuilding what we have had from many years ago and modernizing them. In 2013 and the 10th anniversary of Walt Disney Concert Hall, the house of LA Philharmonic, there are many pop stars who are willing to be able to take part in this big project by promoting it (10th Anniversary). I believe “Remix” is the art of today and by remix I mean a vast collection of different types of art, from remixing music and picture and making a newly shaped music video to remixing architecture and music and building a unique big everlasting concert hall.
In the first days of this course I wanted to achieve these goals:
1. Learning the basics of art marketing strategies, tools and their use in this way:
Though I was familiar with working with some of the tools like Illustrator, In design … what this class helped me to get was trying to be more creative. I did not know that I can work with concepts, I did not know that those concepts can be interesting for people around me, I used to keep them for me. Like the day I put my poster behind the pillar not to be seen because I thought it is not understandable and is an ugly big junk.
2. Making a strong ePortfolio just like a real website
My site is not what I want, I couldn’t do that and it is not because I didn’t get enough from this class. It is because I just want it to be perfect immediately and so I need be big free time. like these coming holidays…
3. taking this class’s experience into other projects of other class’s
Although I did not really do that because of time shortage but I know that I had the knowledge and tool for doing that. For example for Cultural Administration, were we had to start and organization and work on it, we were thinking about making a Logo for our organization but making the organization itself was a big chunk of job that did not leave us with any other time to put for making logo, but I think I had the potential.
4. Being familiarized with different impacts of art on the society and vice verse
This is another fully achieved goal. I learned a lot on this especially with the presentations and lectures.
1. What is your organization or company. Give background history including who, when, and why it was founded.
AISO (Austrian Iranian Symphonic Orchestra) is founded on 2006, it is a symphonic orchestra with ACF (Austrian Cultural Forum) which is a cultural exchange platform. ACF is founded in 1955 and is the only cultural forum in Tehran who survived the Iran’s revolution in 1979. Up to 2006, ACF was only dedicated to offering language classes (German) and also literature speeches, though after 2006 it added Opera Studio, Symphonic orchestra, choir and theater.
2. What do they do or make? Describe the products and services and what makes them unique.
AISO is a symphonic orchestra and so music is their product, though there some features that make them unique in Tehran,
1. This Orchestra has too many cello players In Tehran we do not have many cello players in compare with violinists. Although even Tehran Symphonic has 8 cello players at the best case, AISO played Beethoven’s 8th symphony with 10 cello players! and this was one of my reasons for taking cello scroll as my logo.
2. Most of the musicians of AISO are young musicians and so AISO works as a “musician maker” orchestra, and somehow it can be said AISO does the educational part of Iran’s music.
3. It provides musicians with free master classes with Austrian instructors.
3. What is the culture and atmosphere of the organization/meetings? Characteristics of their location and important roles and relationships?
The organization is located in an old building in the upper part of Tehran. Upper part of Tehran is the place for rich people and ironically American’s “downtown” is “uptown” for us! This building has 11 classes in it a hall with a Bozen- Dorfer royal piano in it. This piano is an very old expensive piano. The rent of the house is paid by Austrian Government and they have rented the house over 20 years ago. Interior design of ACF is in contrast with its old look.
4. Who is the targeted audience? What are their demographics?
Musicians, their family and friends. Although AISO is doing a big job in Tehran but because of the dominance of the young people in it, it is counted as an amateur orchestra. This assumption can be also because of the poor publicity of ACF. ACF wants to present AISO in front of the ambassador’s of other countries. Demographics of audience and attendees varies with the programs.
Opera Studio: mostly young girls take part in this program because singing is banned for women in Iran and “Austrian Soil” is not counted as Iran even within Tehran, so female singers can sing and perform there.
AISO: Young musicians (female\male) up to 25 years old, and those old musicians who do not think they know everything and want to take advantage of master classes.
Choir: Young singers male and female.
5. What is the organization or company mission statement?
Based on cultural dialogue, ACF is created to play a role in cultural convergence of different religions, and wants to be an organization in sake and seek of peace between these nations.
Austrian Iranian Symphonic Orchestra is based in Austrian Cultural Forum in Tehran. This orchestra is governed by Austrian
government through their embassy. Austrian Cultural Forum (ACF) has been working in Iran since 1955 and it is the only
foreign cultural forum that has not stopped working in the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979. Austrian Cultural Forum was
known for its German Language classes but from 2006 it has started a symphonic orchestra along with a choir and also theater
classes.
– Snail Mail: OKF has a snail mail which I am in it too. They use their email to inform about future programs. They update their
mail list on every program
– Web site: They have a website (http://www.bmeia.gv.at/kultur/teheran.html) but the web site is only in German and Persian
so if you don’t know either of these languages, it is not informative for you!
– Facebook: They have a Facebook page which is dedicated to members chat and also they use it as a announcement board.
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/60961964576/?ref=ts&fref=ts)
Time :
Little child “Apparently babies don’t just cry when they’re hungry or when they feel like tormenting strangers on airplanes. They also cry when they hear their mothers singing gut-wrenching ballads, like this 10-month-old who was brought to tears when her mother serenaded her with Rod Stewart’s 1988 classic ”My Heart Can’t Tell You No.” The baby goes through a whole range of emotions, offering the occasional wistful smile between streams of tears.”
Copyright is born to help creativity but it exclusively considers the creativity of the “creator of the original work”. I believe w
hile having copyright will be very useful for the creator of original work, it will limit the further creations by other people, especially for those who can create fantastic works of art out people’s nostalgia! As an example I know many drummers in my own country who learned to play drums or drawn to learning how to play drums by copying Metallica albums (Iran does not support Copyright) and in the RIP: Remix Manifesto we see Lars Ulrich (Metallica’s drummer) so upset about all this process because he believes it is robbery. To my own view, if art is about having a universal language to communicate, we have to accept that there must be some “new words” coming to this language. We can not accuse anyone for adding new words to our dictionary because they were not the ones who created language in the first place! Mash up is a way of talking, with new words, with combining all the good words other have said. It is more like you see your own life history like a movie by listening to a 3 minute track, mixture of all music pieces that you have a memory with and it makes you feel good. we can not ask people not to enjoy that, we can not ask them not to share what they enjoy and so we can not stop them from making their own stories, because this was the only thing that the creator wanted! he wanted to compose a music that everybody loves, he wanted to create something that communicate with as many people as possible but he can not remain the story teller for ever! people make their own stories based on that music. What I think is that, copyright act has no other way than respecting second hand creators as well. I think companies should respect art as a way of “Conversation” [Conversation]