Output details

Hearing Your Genes Evolve. Composition for String Quartet. Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Residency at Cambridge University. Premiere: Greenwich International String Quartet Festival, 13th April 2013. Score and DVD (filmed live performance). Programme brochure evidences date of dissemination.

The core of the research process that led to this composition was the devising of music cells and rhythmic computational structures that aimed at illustrating data that is connected to mechanisms of how genes evolve, or the sonic translation of some hidden principles behind DNA. It resulted from my Leverhulme Artist in Residence project at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, in 2013. There was also a focus on maintaining structural approaches to composition, alongside transcribing interpretations of data relating to DNA profiles of four anonymous individuals from the ‘1000 genome Project’, by manipulating data through wet-lab experimentation and analysis of number/letter fraction specifics, in consultation with geneticist Dr Sarah Teichmann. The key focus for the research process was the appropriate sonic translation of data: how to not only representative genetic variation, but also authentically decode genetic modification through pitch mobilization and propulsive rhythmic motifs. The sound world utlizes 'post-minimalist precept's' (Volans). Harmony is derived from refined, controlled modal pitch groups, with extraneous pitch material correlating to significant points of genetic 'transference'. Scale-cells were used in a hierarchical dialogue to divide the quartet into defined counterpoints, representing a single DNA 'profile'. Multiple superimposed pitch groups depict multiple DNA stands. The climactic poly-rhythmic section correlates to points of genetic cross-referencing and modifications. Conclusive rhythmic intersections interlock at points of overlap, not cadentially, but through an evolving forward motion. ‘Switch’ elements of genetic replication, whereby genetic letters switch suddenly and visibly, radically affected harmonic choice and rhythm direction.