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Unnatural Habitats
for performer and real-time computer music system
Unnatural Habitats
for performer and real-time computer music system
(2016)
Unnatural Habitats is a piece of real-time electronic music for computer and performer. This piece represents my first resolved development in an effort to use the live electronic performance tools created for Unnatural Processes in a broader environment and for further exploration. In contrast to the earlier work, in Unnatural Habitats I adopt an approach to sound design focusing on creating tension between aspects of timbre that fuse, and aspects that resist one another. Since my individual lines are canonic repetitions of a melodic motive,[1] the individual independence of the lines presented is in a constant state of tension with their collective identity as a fused whole.
While active listening is a performative consideration for Unnatural Processes, it is central to a performance of Unnatural Habitats. Through this practice, the phenomenological aims of Unnatural Habitats come closer to the central aims of all of my recent work. The performer is called upon to adopt a specific attitude of both receptivity and action in order to perform the piece correctly. The score advises performers to practice not only the music, but also concentration.
Unnatural Habitats is the first work from my research period in which the performer acts to focus the sound according to their own personal experience of what they hear. Instructions provide circumstances as to what to listen for (emergent patterns that arise from combinations of performed material, along with room resonances), but the foregrounded aspects of the sounding texture are in the hands of a specific performer and their interpretive approach. This work continues in pieces like Magnetic Arch and Circular Bridge Squirrel Walk.
