totem instruments & electronics

Pour violoncelle et électronque

Benjamin Thigpen & Benjamin Carat
2010-2015...

“Benjamin n’écris pas pour instruments et je n’improvise pas”. Ainsi dit Benjamin un jour à Stockholm quand on nous demande des clarifications sur l’origine du projet. De cette collaboration improbable - collaboration où le fait de partager un prénom devient symbolique - coule une musique, ni écrite ni improvisée, où des identités qu’on prend habituellement pour solides - compositeur/interprète, acoustique/électronique, intention/hasard - deviennent manifestement fluides. 

C'est une musique d’impermanences, de fluidité, de formes en transformation, comme celles dans les nuages et dans l’eau. Et chaque interpretation n’est que la trace d’un instant : comme la photo d’une chute d’eau ou du feu.
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"fluid identities" is an artistic collaboration between composer Benjamin Thigpen and cellist Benjamin Carat. The music developed out of Thigpen's open work, "paths," commissioned in 2011 by the French Ministry of Culture. Expanding on this work, Thigpen and Carat wrote a collective composition for cello and computer (live real-time processing) which they perform as a duo. They recorded the piece in April 2011 at EMS studio in Stockholm and mixed it in February 2012 at GRM in Paris. 

They gave the first public performance of the piece - a two-hour-long version! - on 14 January 2016 in the  Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, France; it was the opening concert of the festival Autres Mesures

fluid identities (with cellist Benjamin Carat)   (April 2011 - EMS, Stockholm)

a bird flying leaves no mark of its passage
                               - Chuang Tzu

Small fragments of an endlessly pulsating universe: arising and subsiding. Only that... A cloud in the sky, a leaf in the wind, a wave in the sea. The ever-changing colors of the northern sun...

All the sounds were produced by a Buchla 200 analog synthesizer. 

Composed in Sweden at EMS and VICC, and in Paris at GRM. 
Permiered in the festival Présences Electronique (Paris) 2015.
Commissioned by InaGRM 2015.
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Released on the CD “flux” (empreintes DIGITALes, 2017). https://electrocd.com/en/album/5605/Benjamin_Thigpen/Flux
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soon out on CD

pulse   (2015)

Divide by zero: impossible. Or rather, invalid, illegal, forbidden. Because the result is infinity, undefined: beyond the realm of numbers. To choose to divide by zero: a refusal to follow the rules. And an error, a confrontation with a limit, a failure of intentionality. Potentially: a passageway to something other and beyond.

*  *  *

The music on this CD was composed using division by zero – along with various other operations, including: converting the raw data of computer programs into soundfiles; recording the audio output of a malfunctioning computer; performing arbitrary mathematical operations; generating extreme fragmentations and jittery loops; writing algorithms to control hundreds of rapidly shifting filters and transpositions.

These are mostly unstable processes with multiple, conflicting levels of control – gestural, algorithmic, graphic, parametric, musical, mechanical. The uncertainties of their interactions give rise to interpenetrations of  the willed and the arbitrary, the foreseeable and the unpredictable, the carefully controlled and the uncontrollable, the human and the non-human. Leading to a point where the sounds begin to speak – or sing – for themselves, where the work begins to form itself of its own accord, where the music begins to emerge as an inevitable, impersonal life force. Where – maybe – truth begins to happen. 

*  *  *

This music is very “black” – harsh, violent, extreme. Yet at the same time, it performs a kind of sonic incandescence: applying heat to matter until it gives off light. Beyond mere blackness and yet emerging within and through it, at the utmost limits of energy and intensity, there is “... a secret light that came from the black... a light transmuted from blackness... another realm, another mental state...” (Pierre Soulages, “Du noir à l'outrenoir,” Écrits et propos, 59.)

Because music is transcendent: beyond sound; beyond all symbols, concepts, numbers, ideas; before language and beneath it. It is inexplicable, unsayable, unknowable: satori – blinding illumination. 

Benjamin Thigpen
June 2010

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Released on the CD “divide by zero” (Sub Rosa, 2011).
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/new-series-framework/benjamin-thigpen.html
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Buy CD from Sub Rosa

divide by zero   (2003-2007)

Les Frères Bobine (Benjamin Thigpen and Stefano Bassanese) use inductors, coils, small metallic objects, amplifiers and computers to generate silent magnetic feedback loops. These "electromagnetic oscillators" are our instruments – at once material and virtual, digital, analog and acoustic. Through continual gestural control, we we interact with them and influence them, without seeking total control. They behave like natural process, producing sounds that are fascinating, unpredictable and organic.

Les Frères Bobine

Les Frères Bobine (Benjamin Thigpen and Stefano Bassanese) performing with clarinetist Massimo Carrozzo. Recorded live in concert on 14 May 2014 during the Festival Imprudences, at the Église Saint Merri, Paris. (Photo © Olli Bery, http://www.olli-bery.com.)

Les Frères Bobine & Massimo Carrozzo (14 May 2014 - Imprudences, Paris)

Les Frères Bobine (Benjamin Thigpen and Stefano Bassanese) performing with guitarist Carlo Barbagallo. Recorded live in concert on 10 June 2016 during the Festival Imprudences, at the Église Saint Merri, Paris.

Les Frères Bobine & Carlo Barbagallo @ Imprudence 2016, Paris

Calm like the sea;
Like a high wind that never ceases.
– Lao Tzu

Stillness in movement. Attention fully concentrated on a single point: resting, changing… Stability within an endless flow.

All the sounds in “still” are recordings of common objects, used without transformation; the only processes applied are equalization, compression and reverberation. 

Composed in Sweden (VICC, EMS) and in Paris (GRM), 2007-2009. 
Premiered in the series Multiphonies (Paris) 2012.
Commissioned by InaGRM.
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Released on the CD “flux” (empreintes DIGITALes, 2017). https://electrocd.com/en/album/5605/Benjamin_Thigpen/Flux

Distributed in Europe by Metamkine.
http://www.metamkine.com/?monlabelrec=8
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flux

still i   (excerpt)

For solo computer and sound diffusion.
Composed by Benjamin Thigpen, 2008.
Commissioned by InaGRM 2008.

Every moment you are born, decay and die. 
– Buddha

Experiment : “an act the outcome of which is unknown.” 
– John Cage

Vacchagotta comes to the Buddha and asks: “Venerable Gotama, does the Self exist?” The Buddha is silent. “Then Venerable Gotama, does the Self not exist?” Again the Buddha is silent. Vacchagotta gets up and goes away.

head transplant experiment   (2008)

For totem instrument ensemble and live electronics.
Commissioned by Productions Totem Contemporain, 2015.

∇ (nabla) is a mathematical operator which describes certain global characteristics of a field or region. ∇ may denote the direction and magnitude of the greatest rate of increase (gradient); the tendency to converge toward or repel from a point (divergence), or the infinitesimal rotation at a given point (curl). The symbol, an inverted delta, takes its name from the Greek word for an ancient Phoenician harp.

∇ (nabla)   (1 March 2015 - RectoVerso, Montreal)

Pour violoncelle et électronque

Benjamin Thigpen & Benjamin Carat
2010-2015...

“Benjamin n’écris pas pour instruments et je n’improvise pas”. Ainsi dit Benjamin un jour à Stockholm quand on nous demande des clarifications sur l’origine du projet. De cette collaboration improbable - collaboration où le fait de partager un prénom devient symbolique - coule une musique, ni écrite ni improvisée, où des identités qu’on prend habituellement pour solides - compositeur/interprète, acoustique/électronique, intention/hasard - deviennent manifestement fluides. 

C'est une musique d’impermanences, de fluidité, de formes en transformation, comme celles dans les nuages et dans l’eau. Et chaque interpretation n’est que la trace d’un instant : comme la photo d’une chute d’eau ou du feu.
__________________________________________

"fluid identities" is an artistic collaboration between composer Benjamin Thigpen and cellist Benjamin Carat. The music developed out of Thigpen's open work, "paths," commissioned in 2011 by the French Ministry of Culture. Expanding on this work, Thigpen and Carat wrote a collective composition for cello and computer (live real-time processing) which they perform as a duo. They recorded the piece in April 2011 at EMS studio in Stockholm and mixed it in February 2012 at GRM in Paris. 

For the debut performance, they performed a 2-hour-long version of the piece at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, France as the opening concert of the festival Autres Mesures.

turn - fluid identities 7

disintegrate - fluid identities 6

deform - fluid identities 5

diverge - fluid identities 4

speed - fluid identities 3

revolve - fluid identities 2

distort - fluid identities 1

This piece was composed for the video of the same name by Evi Keller (http://www.evikeller.com).
The video (with music) can be viewed here:  http://www.evikeller.com/html/ek-ml-ttl.mp4 
Or downloaded here: http://www.evikeller.com/html/ek-ml-ttl.zip
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Musique composée en avril 2012 à EMS à partir de quelques sons de gouttes d'eau enregistrés avec des microphones subaquatiques à Stockholm en avril 2010. Les sons d'origine ont été soumis à des petites transpositions et à des étirages extrêmes (souvent de l'ordre de 100 à 150 fois plus lents). Ces procédures nous permettent de percevoir les évolutions extraordinaires qui constituent ces petits “ploufs”, et nous installent à l'intérieur des leurs mouvements, leurs respirations, leurs transformations.

towards the light   (2012)

The sounds of "thread zero" were all produced by a Buchla 200 modular analog synthesizer. 

I built complex patches involving extensive webs of intermodulations (at times controlled by computer-generated signals) in order to provoke coherent but unstable and unpredictable behaviors. The resulting sounds, carefully selected and edited, were then submitted to increasingly extreme distortions in Max/MSP.

The piece is built around the coexistence of non-directional, quasi-repetitive variations – circular, semi-static, not "going somewhere," remaining in one place – and a very progressive, continually mounting tension: incessantly augmenting the already-suffocating pressure, relentlessly filling a space that is already full…

"thread zero" was written for the CD "An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music n° 7" (Sub Rosa, 2013 - sold out).

The sound material was recorded at EMS (Stockholm) and edited at Visby International Centre for Composers (Visby, Sweden). The music was composed and mixed at InaGRM (Paris).
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An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music 7

Sub Rosa CD (sold out)

thread zero   (2012)

a bird flying leaves no mark of its passage
                               - Chuang Tzu

Small fragments of an endlessly pulsating universe: arising and subsiding. Only that... A cloud in the sky, a leaf in the wind, a wave in the sea. The ever-changing colors of the northern sun...

All the sounds were produced by a Buchla 200 analog synthesizer. 

Composed in Sweden at EMS and VICC, and in Paris at GRM. 
Permiered in the festival Présences Electronique (Paris) 2015.
Commissioned by InaGRM 2015.
__________________________________________

Released on the CD “flux” (empreintes DIGITALes, 2017). https://electrocd.com/en/album/5605/Benjamin_Thigpen/Flux

Distributed in Europe by Metamkine.
http://www.metamkine.com/?monlabelrec=8
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pulse iii   (excerpt)

pulse ii   (excerpt)

pulse i   (excerpt)

Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi.
　　　– Dante Alighieri, Nuova vita

"It starts out quietly — almost imperceptibly. The nature of the small bouncing sounds that open the piece, however, should put us on our guard: tense and nervous, they announce the catastrophes to come. Because "0.95652…" is a catastrophic, cataclysmic piece. Its very substance seems to be catastrophe. Relationships are inverted. Tumultuous, roaring upheavals, increasing throughout the piece, are, paradoxically, its moments of calm. Which may shed some light on its title — enigmatic and unpronounceable (like the name of God in the Old Testament?). This almost one speaks the limit, the smallest difference, which is also the instant of maximal intensity. And "0.95652..." places us within this instant as if within a nest. (After, there will be one: completion (?), silence (?), death (?) — domains beyond our reach.) The “total sound,” immobile and solar agitation, is detached from all causality. It appears brutally (increasingly brutally as the piece advances), and stops just as abruptly, without reason. — Or at the very least as a displaced and disproportionate consequence of what could be its cause: iterations of white steel, mechanical frictions of poor children's' toys unexpectedly skidding out of control, exploding into intergalactic rodeos, into crackling, rattling epics, comico-cosmic. Possible images among others left to the listeners' imagination. The whole speaks of a fundamental ambivalence between ends and means. The almost one's “total sound” is not the result of a learnedly elaborated construction (à la Beethoven or Wagner, say): it is already there. It takes the place of silence. This music inhabits a complexity that it acquires and accepts — indecipherable – and there, very naturally, it finds stillness, calm. Which is what gives it its most unexpected quality, its “moral”: the lightness and transparency of this extreme power does not overwhelm us. Instead it leaves us free and invigorated, as if we had been bathing in air."
　　　- Régis Renouard Larivière

Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, 2005.
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Released on the CD “divide by zero” (Sub Rosa, 2011).
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/new-series-framework/benjamin-thigpen.html
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divide by zero

0.95652173913   (2005)

"Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence, part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things that hurry by on which a man would set a high price?  It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows that fly by, when it has already passed out of sight."

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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Most of the sounds of "brief candle" were generated by recording childrens' toys and then modifying them through extreme spectral and temporal transformations; others were generated by reading computer programs as soundfiles. All percieved spatial movements are produced by varying the phase relations among 6 independent channels. 

Composed at Djerassi, SCRIME, La Kitchen.kom and in my bedroom. 

Selected in  the Concours Internationaux de Musique et d'Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges 2006 and in the contest CIMESP 2005.

Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture. 
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Released on the CD “divide by zero” (Sub Rosa, 2011).
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/new-series-framework/benjamin-thigpen.html
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brief candle   (2005)

"Les bleus chez vous dansant la ronde
Boiront le sang de votre coeur.
Nous n'avons qu'un espoir au monde,
C'est le coeur de Notre Seigneur."

Performed by the Front National, 1 May 2002, Paris. Distorted by division.
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Released on the CD “divide by zero” (Sub Rosa, 2011).
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/new-series-framework/benjamin-thigpen.html
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espoir   (2003)

"Si ambulem in medio umbre mortis."

In May 2004, I recorded the sounds of a malfunctioning computer in Ircam's Salle Varèse. Three years later at the Visby International Centre for Composers, I used this material to compose "malfunction30931." The only processing applied was filtration.
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Released on the CD “divide by zero” (Sub Rosa, 2011).
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/new-series-framework/benjamin-thigpen.html
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malfunction30931   (2007)

For Iannis Xenakis

This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; 
but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be:  everliving fire, 
with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.
　　　– Heraclitus

Nearly all the original sound material for "incandescence" was extracted from "Persepolis" by Iannis Xenakis, to whom the piece is dedicated. This material was transformed by such processes as fragmentation, scrambling, distortion, comb filtering and reverberation. 

Composed during a Djerassi Artists Residency in May 2003.

Chosen as a finalist in the competitions Musica Nova 2006 and Citta di Udine 2006.
__________________________________________

Released on the CD “divide by zero” (Sub Rosa, 2011).
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/new-series-framework/benjamin-thigpen.html
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incandescence   (2003)

For live solo computer, hand-held Holosonic AudioSpotlight speakers and low-level automated multi-channel spatialization.

Live performance at the Fast Forward festival in Toronto, 25 November 2011. 

While we wait for something to happen, the space comes to be inhabited by a quiet clicking. 

Slowly it is joined by others. They move around. Everywhere: behind, in front, across all the walls, the cealing, the floor. Across the furniture, the people. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, they have different characters and rhythms. They pass very close, they glide far away, they disappear into the distance. They also move through the center of our heads. They don't seem to respect the boundary between inside and outside. Nor do they reveal themselves in the same way to each of us.

Independent and interconnected, they come and go, swell and turn, speed up and slow down, float about, spin around, move on. They ignore us, or maybe they observe us with disinterest. Exploring "this" space, they seem to open up another. As if they inhabited another kind of space, as if their space were moving somehow diagonally thru our own.

switch   (25 November 2011 - Fast Forward, Toronto)

For two Tu-Yos and live electronics.
Commissioned by Productions Totem Contemporain. Montréal 2012.

"Ksana" is the Sanskrit word designating the smallest interval of time.

     To see a World in a Grain of Sand
     And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
     Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
     And Eternity in an hour.
                    - William Blake
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Released on the compilation CD "Totem électrique" (Productions Totem Contemporain, 2013). Distributed by electrocd: https://www.electrocd.com/en/album/ptc_2013/Various_artists/Totem_électrique
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link to full CD

ksana   (2012)

Benjamin Thigpen. Nomad, born in the United States, naturalized in France. After dropping out of conservatory, he studied literature and aesthetics and travelled extensively. He gradually returned to music though electronic composition.

He creates music for loudspeakers – as a composer and as a performing electronic musician. He composes in various European electroacoustic studios (GRM, VICC, EMS, STEIM) and gives concerts throughout the world. 

He has taught computer music at Ircam (Paris), at the University of Washington (United States), and at the Conservatorio di Cuneo (Italy); he currently teaches at Arts2, in Belgium. 

He has put out two solo CDs – "human for scale" (EMF Media 2005), "divide by zero" (Sub Rosa 2011); a third, "flux," will be released on empreintes DIGITALes in  2017. His music also appears on various compilations. 

He performs in the duo "Rust" with instrument inventor and composer Jean-François Laporte, in "Fluid Identities" with cellist Benjamin Carat, and in "Les Frères Bobine" with composer and electronic musician Stefano Bassanese.

He thinks that music is not a language but a lived visceral experience, and that it is not the art of sound but the art of the transcendence of sound.

benjamin thigpen

Pinned to spotlight

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