Output details

Summerhouses (Album Composition) . Mille Plateaux (MPCLU01) (Audio CD) and performance materials (USB Memory Card) (2010).

This work arose from two main research questions: to investigate the relationship between source recognisable found sounds, and their abstraction through extensive audio timescale-pitch modification; and secondly, to frame this discourse within a performative software environment capable of interrogating the microstructuration of these sounds.

Recordings of these interactive computer-music performances were released and published by Mille Plateaux, and supported by a series of performances, most notably York Minster (October 2009).

The sound sources were deliberately diverse, referencing materials such as pop music, film soundtracks, hydrophone recordings, rivers of ice and contemporary classical music. A software environment was designed that extended the function of a computer into a hyperinstrument capable of transforming sound in realtime through a human-computer interface. The performer scans an onscreen “playhead” through each audio file. The unfolding composition of interleaved grains of microsound were modified by increments in speed according to perceived points of interest: textures, aggregates, pitch, perceived thematic trajectories.

This body of work aimed to present as its theme not solely the spectral, textural, and morphological components extrapolated from each sample of microsound, but also a deeper focus on the perceived identity of the source sound. The improvised exploration of, say, track 2 used 2 seconds of found music to produce a seven minute composition that is cohesive in terms of discourse, operates independently of its referential twin, and produces cinematic imagery in the minds of the listener: “a clicking, vibrating, noise-filled piece that sounds a bit like the lead up to an alien invasion” http://regenmag.com/reviews/craig-vear-summerhouses/ (accessed 27 August 2013).

The transformation of the computer into a hyperinstrument proved a robust solution to the issue of human-computer interaction, and offered an innovative example of composing with found materials.