I’m working on a comission for Norwegian contemporary ensemble BIT20. The working title is “The Bow Corpse”, with premiere at Nattjazz, Bergen, June 2015.
I’m currently intrigued with big data and privacy. In wetware, swarms and individuals. Conceptually I am using swarms and flocks to recreate zombie clones of musicians.
I am using these themes both theoretically and practically to build instruments and create music. I already started working with the orchestra, having individual sessions with the performers of the ensemble. I’m currently working on creating ghost clones of musicians and musical phenomena, and then using swarm and crowd simulators to create flocks of these ghost clones, and THEN using these hive-minded clone armies as musical instruments.
In January we did a “field test”, together with Spanish choreographer and dancer Nuria Guiu Sagarra, performing in the empty space after a regular concert, using ghost sounds from gone musicians. Using a swarm simulator from Swarms.CC, I was controlling pheromonic “lights” to attract flocks or groups of agents, where each agent represented one ghost clone of a musician. Each agent operates on it’s own but also in flock behaviour with it’s neighbour. Each ghost clone could be tiny sounds from the musicians, like fingers on the flute, sticks vibrating through the air, shuffling of feet, etc, tiny sounds. As the agents move in swarms after the lights, the ghost clones play themselves with variations in pitch, timbre, speed, velocity, creating a ghostly, musical cloud impression of the now-gone musicians.
