Compositional Algorithms, Psychoacoustics, and Computational Music

For my audiovisual performance, I wanted to reveal the process of creating. As an artist, the hours and hours of ideation, experimentation, restarting, and inspirations are never perceived by any audience. All that the audience sees is the final result, the performance in which everything culminates into. To convey this idea, I split my performance into two parts: the first part being the completion of my audiovisual system, in which I am in my room putting the finishing touches on it, and the second part being the actual audiovisual performance. For the first part, I am on a stage designed to mimic my room, facing the audience, and the second part, I step down, facing the screen to perform. My system was relatively simple, consisting of a TouchDesigner patch to control lighting and visuals and an Ableton project for audio. I had a MIDI keyboard to control both.

For this piece, I wanted to use the samples that I recorded of my motorcycle. I captured different audio samples ranging from idle, revving, and other sounds that I could make with my motorcycle. The trajectory of the piece eventually formed itself as I was experimenting with the samples and the instruments I created. The piece begins with the sound of keys which signal the upcoming beginning of a motorcycle ride. As it becomes more intense, the motorcycle starts up and we get the full range of the motorcycle audio samples. Then, eventually everything gets distorted in the last section of the piece, which alludes to the death of the motorcycle rider.

This system was a culmination of my experimentations in TouchDesigner, ChucKDesigner, and ChucK FM and granular synthesis.

I composed this piece inspired by a gray balloon that appeared in my room one day. The balloon fit so well in my room that I just left it there. My composition consists of three oscillators and a handful of balloon sound effects. The oscillators are used to create an ominous background soundscape that I feel is represented in the picture. The balloon sound effects are binaurally layered on top of this soundscape, each part of a representation of the balloon's life cycle. Inflate → Rub/Bop → Deflate/Pop. Over the course of the piece, we experience the life cycle of many balloons that move in space.