for chamber orchestra and electronics · site specific · dedicated to the Berg Orchestra · 2024
Original intention:
reGenerator builds on the 2013 multimedia project “Scent”, which worked with generative electroacoustic music. The main idea is the mutual interaction of orchestra and electronics, which operates both on the audio level and as a tool generating the score/parts for the individual musicians in real time. reGenerator is built on a technique I call the “wrapped reinjection infinity loop” – it is capable of analysing the musical structure played by the orchestra and further developing it in individual musical parameters, i.e. inventing continuations that are represented as a score projected onto canvases (one placed behind the musicians for the audience and the conductor, the other suspended above the conductor for the individual players..?). Besides his usual role, the conductor can also enter the generative process via a tablet connected to the core of reGenerator at the metadata level (e.g. he can assign the generated part to different players, influence the temporal layout of proportional sections of the music, influence the distribution of the EA audio? And also the overall macroform). The whole thing contains a certain degree of freedom which I define with the term “applied chance” (see my article for Opus Musicum from 2013). It is not, however, free improvisation!
The openness of the form stems from the essence of the concept, and the conductor can influence it. The preservation of a certain musical morphology (“musical language”) is ensured by firmly defined algorithmic processes which, once combined with applied chance, generate essentially permutations of individual solutions. The tangible result of each “level” – performance – will be the generated score of the whole. A performance – rather than the classical concept of a concert, this strikes me as something like an “escape game from reality?:)
A word about the piece:
The compositional process, like most human activities, can be viewed in individual phases/parameters, which leads us to very concrete thinking. The element of chance, by contrast, gives every human experience a certain mark of unrepeatable uniqueness. Both concepts form the main pillars of my generative project “regenerator”. I deliberately avoid the word composition; I understand the whole thing rather as a game, a game with sound, time and the patience of the players:) A score generated in real time naturally takes both the individual players and the conductor out of their comfort zone. I would like to thank them for that. From a certain angle the whole thing may look more like an installation than a concert performance, but that is not how I see it. Each player brings their own emotions and sensuality, which turn the whole thing into a living organism even though the score is generated electronically.
