w.e.i.r.d. interactive connected score

This interactive sound installation is part of the exhibition Knitworks/Plantscapes by Eva Sajovic. It augments the beautiful textiles that Eva produces with natural and recycled materials, with a system of sensors triggered by the interaction with the viewer. At the base of this work is the idea that of exposing technology in order to foster the understanding of its agency and to embrace the responsibility it entails.  Similarly to the way human interactions in the environment often produce unexpected outcomes,  the interaction of the viewers with the system is not linear, and leads to a series of unpredictable results. 
The sound installation is octophonic. Capacitive and ultrasonic sensors are triggered by the hand's interaction with the textiles and by the viewer's proximity to the rugs. Interestingly, since the capacitance of the large sensors embedded in-between the two faces of the rugs changes with humidity, the behaviour of the installation is in dialogue with the environment.

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.

Home artistic residency promoted by Peoplesbureau.co.uk. as a way of developing a collective artistic experience in times of social isolation. Similarly to W.E.I.R.D., the sound events are triggered by real-time tweets containing three words: "touch, free, fear".  Every time a tweet containing the keyword is posted online, a bot downloads it and displays the keyword on the screen. The order of appearance of the words creates contrasting textual meanings and at the same time affects the soundscapes. 

1_Uncertainty

2_Emergency

3_Identity

Der Nix

Civico 19

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