Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes

Supplemental Content

Biophysical Music

• Track 1a (.mp3 12 mb)
CrackleBox Solo Live in Ottawa 1978, track 1 (4:51)

• Track 1b (.mp3 13 mb)
CrackleBox Solo Live in Ottawa 1978, track 2 (5:25)

• Track 2 (.mp4 141 mb)
Into the Flesh (7:02)

• Track 3 (.mp4 93 mb)
Breathing (7:33)

• Track 4 (.m4v 256 mb)
[radical] signs of life (8:06)

• Track 5 (.mp4 47 mb)
Epizoo (8:28)

• Track 6 (.mp4 34 mb)
Carne (9:32)

• Track 7 (.mp4 75 mb)
Ominous (5:14)

• Track 8 (.m4v 279 mb)
Heart Chamber Orchestra (48:55)

• Track 9 (.m4v 58 mb)
Trio for Violin, Biosensors, and Computer (16:41)

• Track 10 (.m4v 28 mb)
Myogram (8:15)

Biophysical Music: Marco Donnarumma, Curator

Curator’s Note

It is with great delight that I introduce the reader to Computer Music Journal’s 2015 Sound and Video Anthology. I have curated a series of diverse, yet interrelated, works on the theme of biophysical music. With this term, I refer to live music pieces based on a combination of physiological technology and markedly physical, gestural performance. In these works, the physical and physiological properties of the performers’ bodies are interlaced with the material and computational qualities of the electronic instruments, with varying degrees of mutual influence. Musical expression thus arises from an intimate and, often, not fully predictable negotiation of human bodies, instruments, and programmatic musical ideas.

We begin with a rare audio recording of a solo improvisation by seminal composer Michel Waisvisz in which he creates rhythmic textures and frantic glitches of analog electronic sounds by altering, with the touch of his hands, the voltages of the Crackle Synthesizer circuits. The sonic aesthetic of Waisvisz’s piece resonates with the work by Shiori Usui, who, drawing on a similarly granular sonic palette, presents an enthralling composition for double bass, trombone, and the XTH Sense biophysical instrument. Here, two performers interact not only through the sound of their traditional instruments, but also by listening to the amplified and processed sounds of their muscles. The idea of the body as a source of sonic material lies at the core of the performance by Pamela Z, where grains of breath sounds mutate into multiple virtual voices in a complex counterpoint, elegantly mixing her gestural manipulation of digital sound processing and matchless vocal skill.

But what happens when the bioacoustic sounds of multiple bodies are networked into a large-scale instrument? Heidi J. Boisvert and colleagues feed the sound and data from muscles and blood flow of five dancers to genetic algorithms that, in turn, produce organic, multilayered sonic and visual bodies. The result is a gracefully dark audio and video composition manifesting a creative and physical tension between human and algorithmic agents. Shifting from dance to body art, we see the concept of the performer’s body as an instrument stretched to its limits. In the work by Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca and his colleagues, pioneers of interactive audio and video performance, audience members trigger physical contractions of the performer’s body by activating pneumatic devices attached to the performer’s muscles and limbs. Each trigger initiates a tense series of rhythms, timbre variations, and visual animations—and there is room for some fire, too.

Taking the cue from the dense sound forms and intense gestural performance of Antúnez Roca, we introduce the practice of gestural music performance with a piece by Miguel Ortiz. By blending the processed sounds of an electric viola with the bioelectrical signals from his arms as he performs, he constructs a complex and vivid musical composition that compellingly explores the auditory thresholds of human hearing. In my performance for XTH Sense and light, I share Ortiz’s interest in exciting human auditory thresholds, but I do so by making the digital instrument accumulate the very low frequencies of muscle sounds and blood flow until an unstable mass of acoustic energy unfolds and explodes in my hands. It is an approach that emphasizes the expressive potential of the unbalance between control and emergence in bodily musical performance, something that resonates with Terminal Beach’s audiovisual orchestral work. Their piece has no predetermined score...