This artistic PhD project is a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as modular musicking systems. The conceptual framework draws upon an understanding of agency that views musical instruments as real or virtual objects-in-time that come into existence through the act of musicking. The systems created and presented in the thesis are explored through various scenarios presented as patches that include compositions, performance systems, and strategies for musicking. The project seeks to gain knowledge about the co-evolutionary processes found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems. At the core of the research is an exploration of the field of tension between the relative stability and flexibility in the affordances of live electronic instruments. It presents strategies for the design of live electronic systems in order to obtain a balance between these two states, and to understand how instruments are adapted in relation to the artistic processes of composing and performing. The thesis addresses the following research questions: 1. In what ways are my live electronic setups adapted within the acts of composing and performing? 2. How do my live electronic instruments manifest the field of tension between stability and flexibility? 3. What type of strategies can be used to create a predictable field of affordances of live electronic instruments? Through artistic research methods of meletē, transcription, and re-composition, the project gains a deeper understanding of when, how, and why human and non-human agents co-evolve in musicking with live electronics. It presents four core systems developed and refined within the project: Paragraph – a live coding environment, Parsimonia – a modular digital musical instrument, the EMP Triangle – a serial and modular composition tool, and the Sinew0od feedback system – used as a foundation for three transcriptions. The artistic outcomes are further studied using qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel understanding of live electronic musicking as co-evolutionary acts of patching. These acts entail processes of making and breaking connections between human and non-human agencies, and through patching create, transform, and manipulate compositions and performance setups, in order to achieve metastable systems. Hereby, the thesis proposes a cybernetic understanding of musicking as a process, challenging the traditional notion of fixed musical works, blurring the lines between compositions, instruments, interpretations, and performances.

Systems >>

1. Paragraph

2. Parsimonia
3. EMP Triangle
4. Sinew0od

>> Patches

1. TCP/IP: NIME
2. TCP/IP: Sestina
3. TCP/IP: Reconciliation
4. Re-patching Bach
5. Triangular Progressions
6. Sinew0od for Bass Clarinet
7. Sinew0od for Halldorophone
8. Sinew0od for Buchla

Publications >>

1. Global Hyperorgan

2. Exploring Sinew0od

3. Live Coding the Global Hyperorgan

4. A New Morphology

Book >>

Patch 3: TCP/IP – Reconciliation

In this piece the TCP / Indeterminate Place Quartet split up into two duos, connected telematically between the Kapelle der Versöhnung in Berlin and the Orgelpark in Amsterdam. The performance took place on June 6, 2024.

Departing from site-specific material, such as field recordings, interviews, and archive materials, which captured the shared history of division and reconciliation at these sites, we collaboratively created a new scenario within the research project Music of the Indeterminate Place. Both sites host one or more hyperorgans that were used for the performance. In both duos, the Fantasia in c-minor, BWV 562 by J.S. Bach was used as a common starting point for the musical material and pipe organ interactions. The Berlin duo consisted of Robert Ek on his sensor-fitted clarinet (Ek, 2024) and Federico Visi, who premiered his newly designed instrument called the Sophtar (Visi, 2024). Myself and the guitarist Stefan Östersjö were in Amsterdam, controlling the Utopa (Fidom, 2020) and Sauer organs at Orgelpark.

Setup

Each site had a speaker system that projected the audio signal from the other venue. The audio was sent over the Internet through JackTrip. Although we initially discussed telematic control over the other site's organ, e.g., as in the NIME performance, we decided to only play them locally this time.

In addition to live coding of patterns playing with the MIDI proxy algorithm, I also used the Parsimonia DMI with a Buchla 200e modular synthesizer in this setup. The Parsimonia was setup as a live sampler with different granular and transposed looping playback functions, and took the electric guitar as input source. In addition to some effect sounds, the Buchla was used to play the pedal drones of the original piece.

Algorithmic Organ Control

Building further upon the SuperCollider class written for Sestina, and experiences of selecting phrases that were flexible to perform with using such algorithms, I made a more generalized tool for this type of musicking with MIDI files as proxies. This time, me and Östersjö chose material from a MIDI file of the Bach Fantasia. Here, we focused on parts that could be seamlessly looped through a similar algorithm as in the Sestina, and ended up using two phrases as shown to the right. The first was bars 1-7, used both in its original form and in retrograde. Here, the original pedal drone on C was removed and instead performed live when needed. The second phrase starts with a dominant drone on g but continues with more harmonic movement.

Similarly to the Sestina algorithm described earlier, Östersjö could use his MIDI guitar to gradually traverse the selected section so that each note on message triggered a chosen number of beats of the MIDI file to be played back on the organ. The Roland GR-55 MIDI guitar interface was connected to my computer, running the algorithm. This enabled me to alter the patterns before they were sent further to the hyperorgans by means of live coding.

As illustrated in the image above, the algorithm can be understood as a proxy mediating the musical material. As such, it was used on both sites in Berlin and Amsterdam. At the Kapelle der Versöhnung, Robert Ek's sensor-fitted clarinet (Ek, 2024) triggered the algorithm, although with a different selection of musical material, combined with his own gestural hyperorgan control. Visi implemented his own approach, using the Sophtar, but with the same Bach piece as foundational material. However, this material was used more as an acknowledgment of the profound organ music tradition than as an intention to re-interpret the Bach piece. Although similar re-composition methods for selecting and transforming material were used as in the Sestina, the symbolic meaning ascribed to the sites and this music, both by us and by others, was much more important in this piece.

The recording above is a raw mix (made by Robert Ek) from the concert performance of Reconciliation on June 6, 2024. The photo of the TCP/IP quartet was taken during rehearsals at Kapelle der Versöhnung, Berlin, by Nikolaus Bräude.

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The first page of Fantasia in c minor, BWV 562 by J.S. Bach.

Bars 1-7 from the Fantasia, without the pedal, in original and retrograde form, as used in Reconciliation.

Bars 13-24 from the Fantasia, as used in Reconciliation.

Tip

Tip

Patch 3: TCP/IP – Reconciliation

Setup

Algorithmic Organ Control