Developing further on the concept that a composed work can exist in formats other than a traditional score, I created ‘CONCRETE’. In a similar manner to the philosophy behind my previous project, 75,557,864,000,000,000,000,000 Possibilities, I began to create work whose constituent elements were not fixed sounds or material. The kernel of the idea of ‘work-as-system’ came from George Lewis and his artificially intelligent improvisatory algorithm, Voyager. Discovering this project forced me to reconstruct my notions of how the work-concept could exist in a digital world. Voyager had no fixed sound elements, and its output was so varied that its ontological structure seemed paradigmatically different from the ‘open’ works of the 20th century, which still relied on text, graphic, or audio scores.
Alongside the expansion of the work-concept, I was interested in the sensory impact of audiovisual performance. An ongoing focus of my recent projects has been the sensory intensity achieved through the iteration of rules and the creation of systems. This approach was informed by research into synesthesia—the blending of sensory experiences—as a basic assumption of multimedia. I was also inspired by live performances by Ryoji Ikeda and Ryoichi Kurokawa, which utilized the connection between audio and visual perception at an architectural scale. Such immersive environments build on the conventions of cinema and live music to deliver a scale of experience impossible with acoustic instruments alone.
Throughout the year, I developed a modular approach to programming, where blocks of code written for audiovisual sketches could be applied to multiple projects. This "sketching" methodology was heavily inspired by artist Zach Lieberman’s practice of daily experimentation. My goal with CONCRETE was to create a performance system I could interact with using only my laptop, moving away from traditional expressive interfaces.
Creating a live performance system proved more complex than a fixed work, as the code had to account for real-time control. I realized that a single performer cannot have "fine-grain" control over an entire audiovisual system simultaneously. Therefore, the performance involves a mixture of 1-1 correlations—such as a button press triggering a specific sound—and looser correlations where an input changes the behavior of a continuous algorithmic process. In this sense, the computer acts as a collaborator; at times I make large changes to the output, while at others I react to the varied output of the algorithms.
The title CONCRETE refers to a technique developed in my sketches: using audio samples and manipulating them in real time to create an aggregate of materials. The sonic surface can be complex and granular, like concrete, while remaining a single cohesive object. I focused on specific transformations where audio triggers visual changes. For example, a single sound can be mapped to the speed of objects on screen—such as an impact sound causing visual movement to suddenly slow down—or mapped to a random speed, ensuring the reaction is different every time the gesture is executed.
This approach challenges the viewer to interrogate their assumptions about perception. Unlike traditional cinema, where music often serves as a "background" to the screen action, CONCRETE presents a hybrid audiovisual object where the aesthetic functionality cannot be accessed without accounting for both components simultaneously.
Modularity was a significant factor in the creation of the work, allowing it to be flexible and adaptive. The system evolved from an earlier audio-only performance where I used granular synthesis to manipulate samples of acoustic instruments like flute, viola, harp, and prepared piano. This earlier version allowed me to develop a live-coding system in Supercollider, which I then expanded into a full audiovisual system.
The visual language of CONCRETE currently focuses on rectangles as core elements. Rectangles are computationally efficient to render and can be controlled through parameters like size, color, and position. By narrowing my focus to these simple shapes, I could more easily program partially generative behaviors. For instance, a performer’s gesture might change the speed of the rectangles or the algorithm deciding their color. Because rectangles can be scaled from point-like entities to large panes of color, this modularity ensures that the latent space of possible audiovisual states remains vast.
Ultimately, performing CONCRETE is a feedback loop between the performer and the computer. The laptop acts as both an instrument and a performer, making decisions that influence my own. In this context, the boundary between instrument and performer is broken. The "work-concept" here is not a single set of rules or materials, but an algorithmic performance system that uses simple constraints—audio samples and visual rectangles—to create a continuously transforming hybrid object.