Watch Video of the Live Zoom Discussion from Saturday 2nd May at 5pm UK Time

>19980 – Into Silence They Appear —- View and Make Comments

Mengtai Zhang (visual), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, US
Lemon Guo (music)

In a more inductive process, >19980 is an audiovisual project where we try to tune into the inaudible world. We recorded the calls of orca underwater in Alaska, transposed them into human range, recomposed the sonic pattern, and incorporated computer-generated imagery as imagination of such sound world.

Self-Explanatory Music II: keyboards and objects —- View and Make Comments

Alex Nikiporenko

“Self-Explanatory Music” features a narrated text that both explains the systems behind the piece and functions as a source material for those systems. It is an example of a “top-down”, deductive approach to composition – the systems that generate the music are designed to test the “Self-Explanatory” concept.

“Alter” for mezzo-soprano and ensemble —- View and Make Comments

Robert Laidlow, Royal Northern College of Music

Alter is a work about and utilising artificial intelligence, composed in collaboration with data scientists. The text for the work is created using an AI algorithm. The process of deciphering or imposing “meaning” onto a text generated through a mathematical function relates to a “bottom-up” approach of interpretation, since AI-generated text cannot have inherent meaning in the same way a poem does, yet the fact that the text was generated through learning from a dataset determined by the composer implies an advantage to a “top-down” approach of analysis too. The work’s approach to text-setting (not to mention other elements) fuses these approaches.

Uncannily Alike —- View and Make Comments

 Nassos Polyzoidis, Bath Spa University

‘Uncannily Alike’ is an experimental fusion of Greek rebetiko and Afro-American blues, which follows the deductive model. The songwriting process started with the hypothesis that the mixture of their scales and modes, time signatures, harmonic structures and typical instruments could demonstrate the common ground between these two distinct traditions.

-ect -act (extracts from duet piece for visual projectionist and cello/double bass) —- View and Make Comments

Lynette Quek, University of York

-ect -act is a duet piece that crosses fields of live projection, visual music, graphic score, sound painting, conduction, and improvisation – essentially forming links between image and sound. The piece aims to demolish hierarchy in the creating and producing between the ‘visual performer’ and the ‘sound maker’. This is done through methods of improvisation, real-time auditory responses of visuals, and visual representations of sound, forming a balanced audiovisual language for interpretation. 

“Caravela” and “Aos olhos de meu Pai” —- View and Make Comments

Pedro Duarte, Bath Spa University

During my research into lusophone music I became aware there was a gap on organology. It seems like the cittern also known as Portuguese guitar, ergo English guitar, had somewhat stopped developing for decades if not centuries (arguable). For a musician with my background in pop, rock and jazz music it was apparently necessary to further develop the instrument into the 21st century. The limitations of the application of electric guitar techniques to the  Portuguese guitar made my personal playing language become diffuse and vague, and the opposite was also true. For the sort of music I was creating I needed to free myself from the timbre of the electric guitar, and embrace the timbre of the Portuguese guitar. Nevertheless, the portuguese guitar had technological limitations and my performance technique was not transferable to that instrument. From that standpoint, I developed an hybrid instrument, half way from an acoustic baritone cittern and an electric guitar. I’m currently composing and the performance outcome of my PhD thesis, which is a CD, using this new instrument. The patent process was successfully concluded. The video shows the performance of two instrumental tracks of my own composition, played live with the Electric Baritone Cittern or “Electric Guitolao”

Light Gleams An Instant —- View and Make Comments

Jimmy Eadie, Trinity College Dublin

The ‘light gleams an instant’ is concerned with the critical role of ‘memory’ in terms of listening. This piece was composed through a process of improvisation, which is essentially fused to memory, if only I could remember to forget…
The title is taken from Samuel Beckett’s waiting for Godot ‘They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more’. The video still is from Edwar Hopper ‘Morning Sun’. Both works influenced the piece.

Time Uncovers Truth —- View and Make Comments

Ziazan

The sound of the deductive-based, established way of singing historic music has been so long unquestioned that my inductive, practical approach is rejected. Perhaps if I offered it as new music it would be welcomed. This film explores how ‘no platforming’ scholarly work can arrest the evolution of art.

Shower Thoughts In Self-Isolation —- View and Make Comments

Madison Miller, University of Wolverhampton

Through cognitive routes, our emotions, memories, or bodily movements react to the sounds we are exposed to. This piece is an example of inductive reasoning, where the listener is presented sound data of a shower, leading the listener to create the meaningful association of ‘shower thoughts’ through the additional sounds overlaid.