Output details

Dark Glass

Dark Glass

for 8-channel fixed sound (also stereo version)

“… what we will be has not yet been made known …”

(1 John 3:2)

When a piece of glass breaks its physical structure is broken, degraded, and ultimately destroyed; but at the same time its liberated fragments are able to resonate with a new music, a unique harmony which was always present in the original pane, but which could only be freed through the act of destruction. Since each piece breaks in a different way, the resulting pattern of pitches and resonances is always unique, and since the fragments add up to the same total surface area as the original pane, there is a subtle and beautiful logic to the way these harmonies are constructed: larger, lower pitched fragments perfectly balanced by smaller, higher pitched ones. Thus a kaleidoscopic variety of colour and beauty emerges from panes of glass which appeared uniform and commonplace, a unique and personal song which only death itself can bring to light.

Dark Glass combines recordings of glass breaking with physical modelling of glass and other materials using IRCAM's Modalys software, implemented through custom built Max patches. This makes it possible to achieve a seamless transition between the immediacy and solidity of the real world and the other-worldiness of almost real yet impossible sonic objects, suggesting a transcending of the material and a journey towards the solidly immaterial world-to-come.