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JACOPO CARRERAS

A Search for Parallelism

The question is how to import an Historical fact in music, actually my way of performing music, and to relate to contemporary living.

I searched first for an Historical fact, which, if following a scientific approach to History, IS not an isolated event in time. It should be considered more as the event horizon of a continuous flow (Time). To "catch" a fact is not easy, also because I needed to relate this fact to our horizons. Following a parallelist historical approach, for me one of the most important things happened in the first half of the 20th century has been the developing blocks of computer science, for example the building of the first computer, in 1936 by a German Engineer. Why this is related to our times is apparently obvious, though indeed it is NOT what one expects. In fact the historical parallelism lies in the distribution of technology between masses, and not in the building of the first mechanical computing machine. The parallelism in this case, lies between the second industrial revolution, end of 19th century, the Micro Chip Revolution at the end of the 20th century, and its consequent diffusion among us, consumers.

What is quite clear among historians is the relationship between the first mass distributed technology revolution and the consequent World Wars. What is not clear is where WE are going, and our relationship with the computer revolution.

To do this I hacked the material from the Audio tour guide to the first built computer reproduction which lies in the German Technology museum of Berlin.

To process the piece I used solely my plug-ins, in a typical Bau style, just to stay in theme, and recorded the piece as a live performance.

By live I mean there is absolutely NO editing of audio material. I captured the vocal parts (in English, French, German, Polish and Turkish) directly from a web browser, straight into a software sequencer, which hosted also my plug-ins, processed these signals, and played around with a synth and a drum machine.

Each of the generating elements (audio material) is strictly related in a chronological way, first the voices (30s), then the computer processing (40s-50s), then a Quasi Moog synth sound (60s), poppy drum beats (60s/70s) and a psychedelic organ (70s-now).

This was my score.

The LSP (Live Signal Processing) is done by a Ring Modulator, a Tape Delay emulator, a Reverb and a Granular Delay, all VSTs made by me.

I hope this is clear enough.

It took me some time to hack the material, in fact first I wanted to use some Political speeches, but I found it boring, then I thought that maybe what really changed my life in the last ten years, is exactly with what I am writing this piece of Digital DATA.

To find material, recorded material on this, yes this is what took me so long. The actual composition took only the duration of the piece times three, because this is the number of performances I made, before I liked the "output".

jacopo carreras - process part 081 (micro-mass) by modyfier