works

Stacco is a new digital instrument with embedded magnetometers. It attracts and repels magnetic spheres, and detects the variations in the magnetic fields they produce. Stacco comes with graphical scores that function as guides for the exploration of the sonic output of the neural audio synthesis.

In the performance ”Magnetologues”, for two Staccos we explore some of the scores developed by participants in the workshop we held at  Tenor Conference 2024. In this performance, one device operates a neural audio engine and the other controls in real-time the sound in space via ambisonics (24 speakers for this performance). 

Performed and recorded at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) - Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

Check the video here.

End of Empire is an interactive textile installation developed in collaboration with Eva Sajovic for the British Textile Biennial. It is a reflection on themes such as imperialism, community and participation, knowledge and technology. It features four interactive textile colums containing a speaker each, plus four sub woofer son the side rooms. 
This work invites the viewers to actively participate in the making of the sounds by stepping inside the colums or touching the soft fabrics. In doing this, the sounds are activated.
Each column controls  AI model (RAVE) trained with sounds collected by the community.

Johann Sperger (1750-1812) was a composer and contrabass virtuoso that thoroughly explored the technical and expressive boundaries of the instrument. Sperger worked on his Sonata for Contrabass and Viola (1789) while travelling from Trieste to Venice, as he states in the manuscript. 

For this work, we traced his route and recorded the soundscapes we encountered. We used these sounds, as well as our performative gestures, to train and navigate a RAVE model, with the aim of exploring, through a historically-informed approach, the relationship between past and present technologies, virtuosity, compositional methodologies and performative practices.

Notochord and Scramble are two generative MIDI models of our creation. Notochord has eaten all the MIDI files on the internet, while Scramble digests and regurgitates individual MIDI files and sampled snippets. In this performance we wrangle Notochord and Scramble, struggling to make sense from their infinite capacities for nonsense. Notochord extrudes big slabs of quasi-music which are filtered and refined by Scramble before being re-harmonized by Notochord, ad nauseum. We human operators, with very little control on the system, frantically push buttons and twiddle knobs, as our wayward creations attempt to submerge us with their "eighties" vibes made of of odd, glistening General MIDI sounds.

Thales is a composed instrument developed at the Intelligent Instruments Lab, and based on two controllers that interact with each other through permanent magnets. When the performer attempts to join the controllers, these repel each other allowing him to play with the tangible manifestation of their oppðosing magnetic fields, similarly to a drum skin. Each controller contains a riser, held in position by the player's palm. When a magnetic field is encountered the riser activates and pushes on the performer's hand.

Thales uses RAVE, a Neural Synthesis model for real time interaction. The model itsel is trained on the sounds of magnets, hence the "composed" nature of this instrument.

The Sonic Baton is a prototype developed at the Intelligent Instruments Lab from an idea by the conductor Majella CLarke, with the aim of exploring how the conductor's practice might be extended thorugh an augmented baton. 
The instrument consists of a microcontroller, a giroscope and accelerometer wirelesslly forwarding data to the computer. The computer runs a series of Neural Synthesis models based on RAVE and trained at IIL.
We developed three batons, each controlling a different model. We then performed with them at Limbó Finissage and invited people from the audience to play with them in order to understand how the would interact with AI though this particular interface.
The results from these observations led to a research on the spatial projection of AI into the physical space.

W.E.I.R.D. is a generative score for piano and tweeter users. A bot downloads and shows all the real-time tweets containing a specific word, which then affects in various ways the score. W.E.I.R.D. is meant for live performances, but these recorded versions have a special value for me, since they were recorded during the Covid pandemic as a way to share the collective experience of music in a period of social isolation.
W.E.I.R.D. stands for Western-Educated-Industrialised-Rich-Democratic, and is the acronym of a representative bias of social sciences. 
The composition is loosely serial: the first movement processes in various ways the intervals of c-a-f-b, the second adds d-eb-ab-b, the third complete the dodecaphonic series with db-e-f#-g.

"Uncertainty" is the keyword for the first of the three movements,  followed by "Emergency" and "Identity". The choice of the keywords is very much influenced by Zygmunt Bauman's essays, and is an attempt to address some of the main issues of postmodern society.
In "Uncertainty" the tweets trigger at first the creation of the composition, bar by bar. Once most of the bars are out (the last one that never appears), the soloist starts to play, while the tweets move the score back and forth from a finished version to a less rythmically and melodically refined one: The score itself is influenced by uncertainty, which triggers it to action but at the same time prevents it from reaching a defined appearance.

"Emergency" is the second of three movements. Here the focus is on the number of tweets containing the keyword. Once started, the program analyses the average number of tweets and self calibrate. After two minutes, the fist scene gets triggered. The program counts the tweets received every 20 second, and compares the resulting number to that of the preceding scene. If the number is higher, the color changes and the player moves to the following section, otherwisethe preceding scene is displayed.

"Identity" is the third and final movement. It is longer and more articulated than the first two, and was developed about eight monts after the first lockdown. In this movement the performer has to use a specifically designed looper, which as the score changes keeps juxtaposes the last four musical phrases. It is conceived as a metaphor of the way we develop our own identities, combining chance, the pressure of society around us and the compounding of our choices. Identity counts the tweets being posted, and after fourteen it moves to the next phrase, which the performer has to record by activating the looper and playing. The overall sound is determined by how the different phrases overlap one over the other, which in turn depends on the timing of the tweets and the recording of the loop.

Magnetologues

Mouja

Contingent Snapshot

Stacco

Studies on AI and Space

End of Empire

Johann Sperger through Time and Bass

Magnetic Scores

Notochord Arcs and Scrambled Signals

Thales

Sonic Baton

Knitworks/Plantascapes

O_o

Scramble

Emo

W.E.I.R.D. Suite

1_Uncertainty

2_Emergency

3_Identity

Treatise

Peregrinazioni Veneziane

Grandi Navi

Touch

Civico 19