that’s what they said  (2022)

c. 16′

For amplified quartet (violin, bass clarinet, electric guitar, violoncello) and multimedia (fixed & live), featuring uses of OpenAI GPT text-generating models, REFACE AI Face-swapping app, as well as the DDSP VST developed by the Google Magenta research team.

Co-created with & dedicated to Distractfold (Linda Jankowska, Rocío Bolaños, Daniel Brew, Alice Purton)

Programme notes:

that’s what they said is a piece and an artistic statement developed alongside Distractfold Ensemble in 2022. It is scored for four amplified performers (both playing their instruments and using their voices), as well as multimedia which consists of fixed audio-visual elements and live electronics.

The piece generally addresses ‘deepfake’, both as a technological tool and as a ‘genre’. It explicitly places all five people involved in the process centre stage, including myself and the four ensemble members. Incorporating AI generated or manipulated text, audio, and visuals, the piece looks at ways by which words escape their meanings, and sounds detach from their origins. It is framed within a state of play where story-telling interacts with plausibility, and where fabricated speech becomes a form of musical discourse, eventually articulating an emergent latent space where lived experience consistently outweighs the automated, the generalised, and the stereotyped.

The work revolves around an active position-taking in the age of technology and (geo-) political instability. It is about re-embodying our own avatars, as well as listening to what’s not been said in the news. It is about encountering mis-representation. It is about resistance.

World premiere:

RNCM PRiSM Future Music #4 Festival Distractfold with players from BBC Philharmonic & Drake Music

Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, 25 October 2022

Watch on YouTube:

This work is supported by PRiSM, the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music at the Royal Northern College of Music, funded by the Research England fund Expanding Excellence in England (E3).

The Wernicke’s Area (sound design) (2022- )

60′ sound-design / AI-informed electroacoustic track as part of an interdisciplinary, mixed media installation of the same title.

Project led by ANU Productions Ireland, and created in close collaboration with visual artist Owen Boss, composer Emily Howard, neurophysiologist Mark Cunningham, mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton, violist Stephen Upshaw, as well as IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art).

The sound-design is both a self-contained electroacoustic piece and, in part, the accompanying fixed-media segment of Ombra (for voice and solo viola) composed by Emily Howard. It – and the installation as a whole – responds to the medical condition of Debbie Boss (the wife of ANU’s co-artistic director and visual artist Owen Boss), drawing on a series of diaries of Debbie’s where she charts personal stories of living with epileptic seizures – following surgery to remove a previously undiagnosed meningioma brain tumour in 2014.

The installation provisionally run at IMMA between 8 October 2022 – 6 November 2022 (full details here), and has attracted international press attention:

The Irish Times:

Multi-layered Art-science Collaboration Explores the Experience of Epilepsy

The New York Times:

When Technology Makes Music More Accessible

Podcast spotlight by RTĒ Lyric FM:

Wernicke’s Area | Culture File

Watch a preview of the project on YouTube:

#outtakes III (2021)

7’57”

multimedia / video art

Programme Note:

#outtakes is a series of three short video pieces that poses an array of questions. It is an audio-visual monologue, contemplating the uncanny, the claustrophobic, and a breakout room in between the inside and the outside. It perhaps is a commentary. It perhaps is meant to be a commentary. A commentary is however the last thing it asks to be. It could even be an orange inside a mesh bag amongst a sea of bags. It is about the self and an auto-biographical lens through which the self is mirrored. It is about making a statement without making a statement. It is what it is despite what is out there, not because of it. It is about acceptance.

Watch on YouTube:

#outtakes II (2020)

5’48”

multimedia / video art

Commissioned for IN)cógnito #2

Programme Note:

#outtakes is a series of three short video pieces that poses an array of questions. It is an audio-visual monologue, contemplating the uncanny, the claustrophobic, and a breakout room in between the inside and the outside. It perhaps is a commentary. It perhaps is meant to be a commentary. A commentary is however the last thing it asks to be. It could even be an orange inside a mesh bag amongst a sea of bags. It is about the self and an auto-biographical lens through which the self is mirrored. It is about making a statement without making a statement. It is what it is despite what is out there, not because of it. It is about acceptance.

Watch on YouTube:

Watch as part of the IN)cógnito #2 event, virtually premiered on 1 September 2020:

#outtakes I (2020)

9’12”

multimedia / video art

Commissioned for PRiSM Together Apart: Composing in the age of Zoom

Programme Note:

#outtakes is a series of three short video pieces that poses an array of questions. It is an audio-visual monologue, contemplating the uncanny, the claustrophobic, and a breakout room in between the inside and the outside. It perhaps is a commentary. It perhaps is meant to be a commentary. A commentary is however the last thing it asks to be. It could even be an orange inside a mesh bag amongst a sea of bags. It is about the self and an auto-biographical lens through which the self is mirrored. It is about making a statement without making a statement. It is what it is despite what is out there, not because of it. It is about acceptance.

Watch on YouTube:

Original version at Together Apart livestream (part of PRiSM Future Music #2):

vibrato / scratch lottery / vegetable soup
(2020-21)

c. 6′

solo viola

Composed as part of Psappha – “Composing for Viola” Scheme 2020, developed in close collaboration with violist Heather Wallington

Programme Note:

This is a piece about viola jokes. It aims to question how much of a resistance we tend to have against those stereotype-informed opinions on who we are and what we do; and how this resistance manifests itself.

Threaded together by a distorted version of Bach’s G Major Prelude, most of the materials in this piece are arranged from a MIDI transcription of a recording of myself telling viola jokes. They are to musically uncover, as well as articulate the multiple layers of sarcasm entrenched within the intersection between cheap punchlines and incredible versatility. And by drawing associations between sound and words, in as implicit a way as it is, I hope for the resistance and an emergent theatre to naturally surface. Hence, this solo viola piece essentially embodies a network of dialogues between a violist who tries hard, a distant joke-telling voice, a superimposed narrative in which the jokes are greatly appreciated, the active resistance towards and against this narrative, and a viola virtuoso who subverts all existing prejudices.

All of the original text can be found at this link below:
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/jokes/viola.html

Recording made in Hallé St Peters, Manchester, and premiered online on 12/07/2021

Heather Wallington – viola
Mark Thomas – Director of Photography
Rob Kelledy – Sound recording and Mastering
Tim Williams – Editor and Producer

upfold, downfold, unfold
(2021, rev. 2022)

c. 6′ (v.1)
or
c. 14′ (v.2)

V.1 — multimedia / video art (for an indeterminate number of performers playing remotely)

V.2 — for 9 players (live performance)

V.1 commissioned by CoMA Manchester | V.2 reimagined for UnHeard Collective

Programme Note:

An audio-visual collage, exploring the beauty of the everyday, and the fun of dubbing.

Version 1 was a game played remotely. All the materials for the collage were sourced individually and independently by each player, instead of from a collective rehearsal or performance. It was also a two-part challenge, in which all sound associated with the image was made retrospectively. Each ensemble member produced a silent film that documents a plainly mundane event. The films were then exchanged amongst the group, before everyone captured and superimposed a reimagined sonic appearance on top of the footage received.

Version 2 is complete with a similar approach. Part 1 (making silent videos) remains the same, whereas the assembled collage will remain silent until the final live performance, where all players gather together and dub their assigned parts in real time.

Watch the premiere of Version 1 by CoMA Manchester here:

Full programme of CoMA Manchester – “To be held for a long time”, released 18/03/2021:

Find the score here.

#insulative (2019)

c.27′

—- open score for 6 performers

Commissioned by Kinetic Manchester for the second instalment of their 2019 series ‘SPACE/SENSE’

Made in collaboration with Vonnegut Collective and Manchester Victoria baths

Programme Note:

Something in between the ambient and the artificial. A nonstop lookout for pertinent reference. A table. An echo chain. A failed attempt of double glazing. A windmill from which the approaching ice-cream truck is in sight. To say what needs to be said. Or to yell the exact opposite. To harmonise the upside-downs. Or to embrace the stereotype. To see what awaits to be seen. To hear what is and is not here.

Premiere:

Vonnegut Collective (Gemma Bass | Kay Stephen | Paul Grennan | Gary Farr | Marianne Rawles | Harry Percy)

Kinetic Manchester – ‘SPACE/SENSE II’, Victoria Baths, Manchester, 03/07/2019

Find score excerpt here

Conference presentation on this piece: Midlands New Music Symposium, December 2020, Online –

#enclosingenclosedenclosure (2019)

c.2′

—- a set of one-breath pieces for solo flute

Composed as part of Kathryn Williams’ Coming up for air project

General Info:

Coming up for air consists of an expanding volume of musical compositions – written for and/or commissioned by Williams – that are limited to a single breath cycle (an inhale and an exhale). Emerged from Williams’ recovery from her long-term, asthma-related respiratory conditions, the project holistically examines the physical restrictions around flute performance, as well as the visibility of breathing difficulties, particularly for players of wind instruments under a wider social context.

#enclosingenclosedenclosure is, therefore, a metaphor. It articulates an accustomed, encultured performance ritual. A smile to the audience is to a certain extent forced, when put under public scrutiny in a circumstance where it is not necessarily a natural occurrence. It interrogates what is being enclosed in a concert performance, and in the idea of a person playing an instrument.

Watch Kathryn perform one segment of the set as part of an online concert in 2020 here:

Find the score here.

#rulingwheel$1 (2018-19)

indeterminate

Performance installation with amplified swivel chairs and animation

Created/designed for 2018 Being Human Festival

#rulingwheel$1 @Being Human Festival 2018, 24/11/2018:

Animation component:

The project was later jointly developed – alongside composer-producer Tywi J H Roberts and saxophonist Simeon Evans – into a live performance study using Virtual Reality, and motion-responsive audio-visual generation technology.

Performance documentation:

VIRTUAL REALITY+ at PRiSM Future Music Festival 2019, Concert Hall, RNCM, 13/06/19

Simeon Evans – saxophone and swivel chair

Tywi Roberts & Bofan Ma – VR & electronics

offset v – set-off (2018-19)

c. 8’30”

—- for conductor and ensemble (picc, ob, b.cl, c.bn, hn, tpt, tbn, 1 perc, cel, str. 1.1.1.1.1)

Commissioned by RNCM for the ‘IN FOCUS: GEORGE BENJAMIN’ Festival 2019

Programme Note:
A piece for ensemble. A structure to be filled with action and reaction. A study of a subtle interplay between the conductor and instrumentalists. An attempt of looking from different angles whilst keeping a straight face. An ongoing and spontaneous search for control. An all-round exercise.

Premiere:

RNCM New Ensemble Presents – IN FOCUS: GEORGE BENJAMIN Festival

Concert Hall, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, 23/01/2019

Conductor: Mark Heron

(Find the conductor’s part here)

offset iv – backflash  (2018)

indeterminate

—- openly scored for bass flute, contrabass clarinet, a dedicated page-turner, and members of audience

Commissioned by flautist Rosalind Ridout

Composed in collaboration with Rosalind herself, and (bass) clarinettist Jason Alder

Premiere: Flute Recital – Rosalind Ridout, Carole Nash Recital Room, Royal Northern College of Music, 31/05/2018

Bass flute – Rosalind Ridout

Contrabass clarinet – Jason Alder

Page turner – Callum Coomber

(Recording of Ros’ entire recital programme can be found here.)

Further performance as part of INCOGNITO #1 – the visual side of music (October 2018):

Bass flute – Jeremy Salter

Contrabass clarinet – Jason Alder

Page turner – Flora Birkbeck

(Find the performers’ score here)

offset ii – Nocturne !@#$% (2017)

c.10′

—- for solo amplified accordion, amplified score objects, and (live) electronics

Premiere: Decontamination #11 – New, Re-imagined, and Modified Instruments, Carole Nash Recital Room, RNCM, 12/12/2017

Eldad Diamant – Accordion & Score Objects
Bofan Ma – Electronics

Find the video recording here (produced by Ensemble+)