Ceasefire!
I began developing “Ceasefire” in late October 2023. Internally, my interest in nonviolence, sparked by studying the ideas of Marshall B. Rosenberg since 2022 who wrote about authentic self-expression, non-judgmental observation, and the identification of underlying feelings and needs to foster connection and resolve conflicts peacefully. Externally, global events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and my brother’s service in the Canadian armed forces and his subsequent disillusionment with the military-industrial complex, further shaped my perspective; How can businesses become entwined in war to bolster the war for profit. Arms ammunition that’s manufactured in the United States is sent to countries they have proxy wars with, and in turn make a lot of money. A capitalist machine working as a reproductive force for violence in pursuit of capital. This reinforced my commitment to nonviolent principles. I realized the dangers of glorifying violence, whether in warfare or social justice movements. I attended rallies and protests witnessing ongoing conflicts, on the news and domestically. I chose to document the sound world of this time. I also did much research into the sound world of post 9/11protests. I found the same vocabulary was being used at rallies and protests and on the news. The ‘war on terror’ brought with it much criticism. The bombs over Baghdad in the early 2000s resemble the unnecessary use of force on Gaza today. I began to catalog found recordings of protests against the Bush administration as well as recordings of ceasefire protests in Canada. My 2024 Composition and Ballet “CEASEFIRE!” addresses the similarities in the public protest sound world between the bombardments Baghdad in march of 2003 and of Gaza in 2023 as a way of illustrating the cycle of violence. In the second act, there is a sound collage of protesters that transition from 2003 recordings to 2023 recordings seamlessly. The same sentiments from mobilizers twenty years ago are echoed today as the military – industrial complex prevails and our western world entangles itself deeper in the use of violence for money I spent time reflecting on notable acts of protest. In 2023, Aaron Bushnell burned himself alive outside the front gate of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. This brought me back to November 10, 2013, performance artist Petr Pavlensky stapled his scrotum to the cobblestone road in front of the Red Square in a performance piece he called Fixation as a protest on Russia’s annual Police Day. The Red Square is where the Soviet military’s power is shown off during parades, holidays and military demonstrations. I bring up these two examples because it is important going forward to establish the distinction between active and passive violence, which is the biggest difference between Bushnell → Pavelensky → Gandhi’s protest methods. Passive violence is violence through “non-physical means” whereas active violence manifests through physical means. Gandhi’s violence exists within the passive realm because there is no explicit action being taken against himself. The action is covert and implicit. The human pain avoidance instinct makes Gandhi’s passive method seem more desirable to the public, despite carrying heavier implications; Gandhi can die by starving himself whereas Pavlensky is not posing a mortal threat to himself in Fixation. Bushnell is the most actively violent, Gandhi is the least and Pavlensky is somewhere in the middle. I find it interesting that the most passive of these 3 went down in history as the most effective. All this to say, no matter how passive you make your activism, you can’t be an activist without being active, active in disruption. And active disruption usually constitutes violence, whether that’s against someone else or yourself. As a nonviolent ‘activist’ the only active disruption I can partake in is civil disobedience, or I can write stories. “Ceasefire” is the first work in this new approach. The music of “Ceasefire” is an immersive, concept driven electroacoustic composition and ballet about the consequences of human violent actions and inactions, violence and peace. The composition blends three modes of creation that interact with each other: electronics, acoustics, and live performance. The electronic sounds are built using modular synthesis techniques with an electronic music system that I have been building myself over the course of the past year. These analog sounds are resynthesized in the digital realm creating a rich palette of textures. “Ceasefire” is meant to be projected in 5 channels. It was composed with its sounds dynamically positioned in three-dimensional space to make an immersive experience. The composition begins in a front-centric fashion, with the center channel in reverberation, gradually diminishing over time as if the listener is approaching something that is far. In the final act before the coda there are no reverberated signals which signify an arrival at a destination in this way, perhaps an arrival at a place of peace after struggle. The fixed media is accompanied by processed flute using virtual modular synthesis along with process melodica which is spatialized around the space using a MAX algorithm. Furthermore, a Eurorack modular synthesizer was set up during the performance which interfaced with the melodica. The melodicas amplitude contour was tracked using envelope followers in Ableton which would bring up the channel of the modular synthesizer playing a noise based generative patch. Processed flute was performed by James Stinchcombe. Montreal Based dancer and choreographer Marina Elizabeth Gris gave her interpretation of the character, a victim of violence and displacement, was both poignant and timely drawing from her Ukrainian heritage.
Weathered Technophilia
In a literal sense, “weathered” refers to something that has been exposed to the weather, such as wind, rain, sun, etc., resulting in a worn or aged appearance. It can also be used metaphorically to describe something that has endured challenges or experiences over time, developing a sense of resilience or character. “Technophilia” is a term derived from Greek roots, where “techno” means “skill” or “craft,” and “philia” means “love” or “fondness.” Technophilia describes a strong enthusiasm or love for technology, the latest gadgets, or advancements in various technological fields. Combining these concepts, “weathered technophilia” could imply a nuanced relationship with technology. It might suggest a love or enthusiasm for technology that has matured or evolved over time, possibly in response to challenges, changes, or a deepening understanding of the impact of technology. It could also imply a certain level of resilience or adaptability in the face of technological developments or disruptions. This Piece was composed over the course of May 2023 to February 2024 and performed Feb 22, 2024 with the Concordia Laptop Orchestra (CLOrk) and guitarist/composer Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo Location: MB building, 8th fl. room 245 1450 Guy St, Montreal, Quebec H3H 0A1 CLOrk members in this performance Amanda Lea Kempf, Austin Tecks-Bleuer, Ariya Jolaeimoghadam, Cyrus McFarlane, David Gale, Day Nyte, Delia Maertens, Emeric Albert, Findlay Sontag, Hanqing Zhao, Kristian North, Liam Choi, Louise Mwangaza Asende, Matthew Sagar, Maya Jane MacDougall, Nathan Jamal Da Conceicao, Pablo Antonio Flores, Quinn Farncombe, Ritchie Boullosa, Ryan Bourke, james player, Eldad Tsabary (director) highlights: Amanda Lea Kempf, lights and cameras Austin Tecks-Bleuer, audio setup and YouTube streaming Delia Maertens, autoharp/bone-conducting speakers solo, communications and social media.
Telematic Mysticism
Telematic Mysticism is an electronic chamber piece by Justin Tatone and Ian Klempan. The aim of the performance is to see telematic connectivity and data exchange as a mystical force that can be invoked to guide composition, and embrace the unintended consequences of this process. This concept was developed using live radio signals from local radio stations both in the fixed media and the live performance, as well as guitar elements from rehearsals. With content overlap between the fixed media and the live elements, with live manipulation of versions of the fixed media in the performance, the performance in a way creates a live expanded 8-channel version of the fixed media piece. Both performers work with this idea of resynthesis. The guitar is played into a loop with varying playback rates, while also having envelope tracking applied to manipulate the amplitude of another version of the fixed media. The guitar amplitude also controls the frequency of an oscillating panning between the two guitar channels. The live modular synthesis is sampling the fixed media with an SD card loaded sampler. One performer reiterates the fixed media using digital resynthesis, the other using analog resynthesis. This builds a 3 pronged relationship between the two performers and the fixed media.
Nova Scotia’s Coastal Edge Effect
In ecology, ‘edge effects’ are changes in population or community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats. The aim of this soundscape composition is to explore the acoustic ecology of Nova Scotia’s coastal edge effect through the application of cross-domain recording techniques. This involves capturing waterfront sounds using both a stereo microphone positioned on the shore and a hydrophone submerged in the water simultaneously. This way, we can observe the acoustic difference between land and water. Changes in one domain affect the acoustic response of the other subtly. For example; wind in the air can be heard in the brustling of the trees and the shaking of the docs on the harbor while beneath the water, wind-driven waves that approach the shore are picked up by the shallowly positioned hydrophone. The relationship between the land and the water that form the ‘edge effect’ is what guides the compositional methodology for the sound processing and narrative of the piece. I used Ableton Live as an expansive modular system by using the modules within the DAW that can change any parameter of any processor using LFOs, envelope followers, vector mapping and so on. This modulation is often applied to delay parameters like delay time and feedback to create the processed and texturized iterations of the field recordings.
The Gleaner
Justin Tatone’s 8 channel electronic composition “The Gleaner” is a musical interpretation of the German expressionist painting of the same name by Georg Baselitz. It is Baselitz’s stroke style and paint application method (wet on wet paint / wet on dry paint) that inform the sound gestures and their spatial arrangement, mirroring the brushwork techniques in the painting. These brushwork mimetic sound gestures were created mostly using frequency modulation of chord tones using mutable instruments’ eurorack module ‘plaits’ and waveshaping of the modulating LFO using Make Noise’s ‘Maths’. The balance and symmetry within the painting as well as how the figure occupies the visual dominance hierarchy inform the sound composition’s form and structure, calling for an off-balance, nonlinear composition to reflect the painting. This is why the sound piece has 3 distinct sections but there is no recapitulation of a theme, there is disparity in the length of time of each section and there is no clear expository or ending phrase, gesture or dynamic change. The painting falls somewhere in the middle of the representation – abstraction continuum, and as such, a mixture of field recordings and acousmatic sounds that mimic the sound objects in the field recordings were used to shroud any sense of representation in ambiguity. Advance study of German expressionist painting techniques was done to inform the direction of the sound composition.