BECHA-KPACHA
BECHA-KPACHA is an algorithmic music video for the electronic musician COH. The song’s tittle (pronounced Vesna Krasna) was taken from an old Russian poem and roughly translates “Spring the beautiful”, though it can also mean “Spring the red.” The animation reference’s traditional Russian folk patterns, commonly known as Hohloma. In these patterns, colorful plant leaves expand and twist around one another while fruit grows along side. These patterns were a starting point for this sound-responsive animation.

Brazil Now
BRAZIL NOW is a composition that addresses increasing militarization and surveillance within urban areas. Its geographical and acoustic reference is São Paulo, the largest megacity in Latin America. The piece is based on field recordings that capture the symptoms of a Latin American variant of turbo-capitalism with its distinctive acoustic features. Eruptive public demonstrations on the streets are often accompanied by loud, carnivalesque elements. These are controlled by a militarized infrastructure, openly demonstrating a readiness to deploy violence. The sonic documents are analyzed by machine learning algorithms searching for acoustic memes, textures, and rhythms that could be symptomatic for predominant social forces. The algorithmic results are then used as a base for a score and its interpretation through a musical ensemble. The piece drafts a phantasmatic auditory landscape built on the algorithmic evaluation of urban conflict zones.

Exformation, an interactive installation inspired by the concept of “exformation,” was developed for a composition by Jesper Nordin performed by the Diotima string quartet and combines musical, luminous and colorimetric scores. Around the musicians, positioned on a technically equipped stage, three aluminium-edged cubes with LEDs mounted on circular rails move and angle their light in keeping with an algorithmic programme based on analysis of the spectrum, timbre and intensity of the music. This sensitive object becomes a total composition, a poetic, digital entity responding to the work played at its centre.

Cellogram
composed by James Tenney
performed by Ashley Walters – cello
James Tenney made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation.