Fold by Ted Moore, digiscore and browser festival commission

Abstract

Fold by Ted Moore reflects the theme of “location sharing” by using audio feedback to “sound out” the resonant frequencies of the locations of the remote collaborators like Curt Miller in Rhode Island, US and Jana de Troyer in Ghent, Belgium. Using the resonant tubes of their instruments, the performers created and manipulated audio feedback tones in their remote locations. These sounds were broadcast over the internet to the performance space where the audience was present in Stuttgart, Germany. The feedback was generated in the remote locations through a feedback control patch in Max/MSP. Additionally, each remote performer’s sound was analyzed for pitch-class content and frequency content and sent to the performance space (over the internet using a Max package called Colab-Hub) as data, directing the pianist’s playing. The pianist’s gestures were precomposed as rhythms and registrar shapes, but the pitches were mostly supplied by the remote analyses of audio feedback. The hope was that the physical properties of the remote performers’ instruments and spaces would manifest in the performance space as acoustic sound filtered through the piano part. Overall the piece is slow and meditative, inviting everyone to enjoy the sonic relationships between the feedback and the piano. The form of the piece contains different sections where Curt and Jana are doing different things (and we can or cannot see them visually on the projection). Each has a different score indicating when to create feedback vs. performing tones. Also, a pre-composed piano part appears about two-thirds of the way through the performance, grounding the piece and the listeners in the presence of Alex’s expressive piano playing.