Long before digital interfaces democratized electronic sound, the late composer and SFU contemporary arts professor Martin Bartlett was already teaching early microcomputers how to listen. Martin Bartlett: Begin Anywhere offers a breathtaking retrospective on a pioneer whose work bridged analogue synthesis, computer-performer interactivity, and radical community organizing.
To bring this expansive archive to light, artist and former SFU professor David MacWilliam joined forces with the Gibson art museum director Kimberly Phillips, and a curatorial team featuring Charles Colbourne, María Estrada Piñera, and Blqees Zuhair. The team set out to demystify a towering figure in the experimental music scene on the west coast.
Regarding his role in this exhibition, MacWilliam shared in an interview with The Peak, “As I’m not a professional curator, art historian, or archivist, I approached this archive first as an artist. I thought about how things would look visually for a wide range of viewers coming to materials that they might not be familiar with.”
This visual entry point is immediately striking to audiences. Alongside Bartlett’s historic “Black Box” — a handmade analogue modular synthesizer crisscrossed with patch cords — and his one-of-a-kind Buchla 400 synthesizer, the gallery displays intricate graphic scores drawn on vellum paper. Marked with pencil notes and delicate hand-lettered instructions, these scores reveal Bartlett’s obsession with microtonality, stepping outside standard 12-tone Western scale (commonly known as the chromatic scale) to explore natural acoustic rations inspired by Pythagorean tuning (an ancient system that calculates pitch intervals using perfect fifths) and Indonesian Gamelan percussion.
Bartlett’s compositions actively rejected classical hierarchies between musicians on-stage and audiences for whom they are performing, as he looked to dismantle the wall between performer and listener. Works like The Nautical Almanac (1975) featured early microcomputers analyzing the dynamic volume envelope of a live recorder player and responding in real time, an extraordinary leap for mid-70s technology. Another flagship piece, The Arrival of Sir John Franklin in Paradise (1988), pairs evocative synthesis with spoken readings of artifacts salvaged from Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition, weaving poignant and (at that time) revolutionary electronic soundscapes.
Rather than treating these historic synthesizers as silent museum relics, the exhibition actively works to resurrect them. Composers-in-residence Justin Devries, Robyn Jacob, Andromeda Monk, and Kiran Bhumber will create new sonic material directly inside the gallery space throughout the run. Devries, a Bartlett scholar whose MA research laid the groundwork for the residency, even designed a custom iPad interface allowing visitors to interactively manipulate microtonal shifts.
“He’d love to hear them play! As Martin never liked the traditional hierarchy and separation between musicians being on stage performing for an audience and consistently strove to undermine this distinction, I think he’d appreciate that this is an art gallery,” MacWilliam noted.
The exhibition captures both Bartlett’s formidable intellect and his larger-than-life warmth.
Complemented by Glasgow artist Luke Fowler’s tender 2017 film portrait, Electro-Pythagoras, the exhibition captures both Bartlett’s formidable intellect and his larger-than-life warmth. Begin Anywhere serves as a vital homecoming for an SFU legend whose life was unfortunately cut short by AIDS-related complications in 1993, and an inspiring reminder that true innovation lives in shared, living spaces.
Begin Anywhere will be on display at the Gibson Art Museum until February 2027.
