Music for "Submerging Geometry"

My compositions Transmutation and Synchronicity were used in "Submerging Geometry" which debuted on September 30, 2021 at OMiami Festival, Miami Beach.

Video courtesy of TMSisters/LopezDeVictoria

ABOUT THE PIECES

SYNCHRONICITY* 6' (2021) explores the strange paradox that connects rhythmic gesture, choreutic flow, surface tension, submergence and the ways in which meaning are received in seemingly disparate yet elementally entwined environments such as air (mind) & water (heart).

Thanks to Monica Lopez de Victoria and her collaborators, I was able to get into the water and learn several techniques early on in my compositional process. There is a delicate balance of maintaining a calm state of maintaining stillness while floating at the surface of the water, moving the body, positioning it into geometrical shapes individually and eventually as a part of a larger interconnected organism. This embodied experience highlighted the harmonization of breath-heart rate to stillness of the mind informing the tempo of 92 bpm. Many of the choreographic expressions, gestures and dynamics were used to shape sound in this piece.

Over the course of several weeks, I conducted experiments in my studio both above and below the water during the sound design phase. Above, surface tension triggers were rigged to floor toms while professional musician Nabedi Osorio played everything from basic rudiments to dynamic improvisational patterns. As for below the surface, an assortment of percussive materials were played/recorded through a hydrophone while submerged in several water tanks of varied shapes & sizes. Underwater recordings of the environment were also used as virtual enviroments for sound design. Additionally, the findings in the experiments were valuable during technical rehearsals for the "Submerging Geometry" performance for discerning the standing wave of the pool for the proper positioning and eq of the aqua-sonic sound systems' placement + underwater performance monitor mix.

TRANSMUTATION** 8', (2018) was first performed by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay on the HISS (an immersive sound system). The world premiere took place in the UK at HCMF/HISS@10 November 2018. During the compositional process of this piece I used my bespoke system called "The Tesseract", a technological mediation of Human Computer Interaction, to use my body's movements as a way to shape sound.

An exploration of the amalgamation of artificial intelligence and the human soul. These two concepts act, at first, as two separate characters weaving themselves together into one cord. The piece then follows this tether-like a portal towards understanding connectedness over time and space. As it moves on it tinkers with and reverse engineers various rhythmic elements, vocalizations, tonalities, and frequencies. As these elements begin to pick up the pace and heat up, the two entities meld together; robotics and consciousness. Body movement mapping was used to shape the dynamics of the journey into the mysteries of the alchemical process of human-computer interaction. Transmutation examines the quintessence & coalescence of the two, as an evolution of quantum computing in the near future.

*Synchronicity is a precursor for a larger body of work (in process at the time of this post) where instruments specifically designed for various environments and tailored for diverse bodies, will be used in an interactive audio/visual work.

**Transmutation is the result of my 2017-2018 portfolio of works from my graduate research "The Tesseract: using the body's movement to shape my compositional practice". It also features vocals performed by my young daughter as well as a heavily processed iteration of a sample from a piano p played by M. Adkins.