Output details

'The Broken Is Beautiful', interactive performance for alto-flute with real-time audio processing via a video interface.

This research involved an interactive performance for alto flute with real-time audio processing via a video interface, with my music composition and programming of the video interface initially based on collaboration with flautist Cecile Daroux. The research set out to combine analysis of the flute’s physical relationship with the flautist during performance, developing an innovative system that affords the flautist direct gestural control of the sound’s processing through Fast Fourier Transform in real-time.

The composition took as a departure point the analysis of recorded sounds from the flute, covering a wide array from the flute’s repertoire as well as sounds proposed by Daroux. Musical materials were initially drawn using OpenMusic (IRCAM). The flute’s sounds are captured as they are played and transformed by means of a real-time analysis of the displacement of the instrument depicted as a series of vectors identified by XY co-ordinates. The visual analysis is made in Max/Jitter, and the programming of the interface builds on my previous research in live electronics, ultimately with composition and programming occurring concomitantly.

Its originality derives from the combination of visual interface, gestural control, instrument tracking and real-time audio processing. This combination unfolds in the output and builds on my artistic practice that sets out to revisit musical performance as an interaction between performer and musical technologies, historical and contemporary, present and remote. Through the elaborate means of audio processing and real-time performance and interaction a composition has been constructed that highlights all aspects of the performance as equally important.

This piece has been presented at international conferences (Expo ’74, NYU, USA and Music and Sonic Arts International Conference, Juiz de Fora, Brazil), displayed in a design exhibition in London and has been performed in Beijing and NYC.