Output details

On the Impossibility of Reflection (2011) for piano and live electroacoustics. 12 minutes : for piano live electroacoustics. 12 minutes

This work is a collaboration with pianist Xenia Pestova, and is in some ways an extension of previous work I have done in the area of interactive musical systems. Most notably it extends a system I developed in my work Broken Allegory for percussion and live electroacoustics. That system provided a framework for imitative improvisation between a performer and a computer music system. On the Impossibility of Reflection extends that to include the element of pitch. In addition to conventional processing of the piano, there are several sections involving somewhat free improvisation of this type. The computer analyses the input from the piano, dividing it into a series of phrases and subphrases tracking pitch, amplitude, and timing, and creates from this dataset a series of related responses in a semi-antiphonal fashion. Using an algorithm which tracks piano note onsets, other sections provide imperfect ‘echoes’ of the performer’s music, in some cases making direct reference to the history of ‘delay’ pieces, creating polyrhythmic responses which while seemingly distorted delays are in fact artificially generated.

The work has been performed numerous times, in Ottawa, Birmingham, London (as part of the SuperCollider Symposium), Bangor, and Miami. It has been recorded for the US label Innova Records, and is published by the Canadian Music Centre. It was commissioned by Xenia Pestova with assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts.