Name: Music for magnetic pickup, chargers, balloon and feedback no.1 by Cao Thanh Lan
Duration: 7 min 34 s
Description: Composition by Cao Thanh Lan for magnetic pickup, some chargers, balloon, feedback and samples.

A remix of the infamous Lipps Inc track performed to by Playboyz Inc.  The track was made for a performance in Taiwan in honor of the late, great Playboy Rob, rest in peace. Playboyz Inc/Familia worldwide

Designer Music (Tesko Remix)

Composition by Cao Thanh Lan for magnetic pickup, some chargers, balloon, feedback and samples.

Music for magnetic pickup, chargers, balloon and feedback no.1

2016, played by Ensemble ascolta and conducted by Chung-Yuan Yu

La suite en écart (2016)

for clarinettist, guitarist, harpist, percussionist, violoncellist, subwoofer and tape

Performed by DensiteS ensemble
conducted by Denis Gautheyrie
Cervantes Institute, Paris

Program Notes
Les Paradoxes de Zénon is the result of three main lines of questioning. First, regarding the relation of sound’s nature and human’s auditory perception: How can we use a musical language which will have a natural reference to sound and how this could be coherently linked to human’s sonic perception? How can we benefit from the phenomenon of ‘emergence’ apparent in every natural system, including our perceptual ability?
Second, about the connection between visual and musical gesture: How could we oppose ourselves to the concert situation’s ‘cold’ formalism? How can provide to the musicians further means of expression than their instrument’s playing?
Finally, concerning the electronic medium and his relationship with the instrumental: How can we separate their roles and how can we keep them together? How could we use the electronic medium as another instrument without steeling the role of the existing ones? How could the electronic medium create an illusionary situation, a virtual environment? 
Here, there are no answers to these questions only even further questioning.<br/>

The relationship between the work and the spectator
Les Paradoxes de Zénon is a spectator-centric work. The composer puts himself in the place of the spectator. In addition, the spectator is not considered just as a listener placed in front of a music concert. Here, he is put in the centre of a complete experience involving the whole complex of his senses, asked to participate actively with his perception. The work’s main objective is to create a unique situation for the spectator using any possible means available in a concert hall.
Several different creative approaches are used to achieve the above. Firstly, the musicians are asked to use more than just their instruments. Here, the musicians are performing with their whole bodies. Consequently, the awareness of the spectator is extended in order to track the unusual performing attitude, introducing a constant feeling of curiosity. 
Secondly, the subwoofer, which is considered as an instrument, introduces extremely low sounds which in general tend to have a rather imposing presence. In addition to that, the use of the element of pulse from all the instruments gives a ritualistic sensation, sometimes being apparent and in other moments influencing the overall appreciation of the work. 
Finally, concrete means are used to influence the spectators in very direct way, like the constant surrounding sounds of nature and the lightning control. In this way, there is a kind of perceptual disassociation for the spectator from the regular concert hall. The listener takes himself from the concert hall and places him a world he creates spontaneously, a world evoking from his experience of Les Paradoxes de Zénon. 

Les Paradoxes de Zenon

for ten musicians, actor and the active perception

Performed by 
Le Balcon new music Ensemble
conducted by Maxime Pascal
Saint-Merry church, Paris, France

Experientia was composed for Le Balcon new music Ensemble. It was premiered at the church of Saint-Merry, Paris. 
	The work can be considered as a chamber music theatre work, a musical game with the auditor’s awareness. Playing with the idea that every auditor, when being present with his awareness in a work’s performance, he addresses his proper meanings, his own symbols, his personal representation of the work’s experience. The composer on his part, even in a well-defined work with precise objectives, he can only suggest the directions of the auditor’s interpretations in regard to his own personal history of experience and his actual state of mind. Based on this belief, we play with the idea of the work as a ‘self-referential experience’. Like constructing a labyrinth, which will include the content of the auditor’s mind. A construction in which the composer will guide the auditor towards the characteristics of his choice, while the auditor will choose the course of his journey.
	The inspirations are many and this creation is the emerging result of their interactions. Considering the piece as a big construction of interacting ideas, on the first corner there is the philosophical tendency of constructivism, advocating that everyone creates his own reality by interacting with the ‘common’ reality. On the second corner, there is the communicational element of Milton Erickson and neuro-linguistic programming, a model of human experience made by linguistic theories, systems theories and different psychological techniques. On a third corner there is Xenakis’ hypothesis of second order sonorities, that if we consider sound, as we consider light, made of numerous small chunks, then from a number of given sonorities we can create new emerging sonorities – like from the collection of small dots of simple colours a complex pointillist painting emerges. On a fourth corner there is magic artistry, and in particular Derren Brown; the direct connection a magician has with his audience, how he creates a whole unique experience although everyone knows that it is just a trick. And of course last but not list, in the final corner there is ‘playing’, the never-ending lust to play and acquire new experiences through a game. 
	Getting inside the piece, the voice is interacting with the audience, introducing every auditor individually inside his own uniquely personal experience.  This is done by playing a game with the auditor, a game that suggests the main idea of the piece. As the voice sais: “The game is simple: I give you a sound and you create your meaning. Or I give you a word and you will create your sound.” Asking the auditor to close his eyes, providing him with a purely ‘acousmatic’ experience while leading the processes of the experience.

Experientia - Le Balcon new music Ensemble

caothanhlan.com
musician/composer/performer/sound artist
Lan (first name) was born 1987 in Hanoi, Vietnam. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose practices encompass composition, improvisation, performance and installation. She is the scholarship holder of Startstipendium 2018 from the Austrian Federal Chancellery. She was trained as a classical contemporary music pianist in Köln (with Pierre-Laurent Aimard) and Brussels. With her recent transdisciplinary and sound art works, many of which incorporate site-specific sound installations and audience participation, she explores the (re-, de-)contextualisation, intentionality and un-intentionality, nature and artificiality, human and machine.

Active as a sound artist, composer and improviser in Vienna, Berlin and Hanoi in many different projects, notably the composer-performer Duo Siedl/Cao which received the award „New Austrian Sound of Music“ for 2 years 2018-2020. She has been touring and giving workshops for contemporary music and improvisation in Europe, Japan, Brasil, China, Taiwan, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Australia, Iran, Indonesia and Vietnam. Her works have been released on labels Moloko Plus, Impakt, InPolySons, Monsterk7, Ouidah, Attenuation Circuit, Syrphe, Flaming Pines, Off Record and Acefalo Records. She has performed at Ars Electronica Linz, Emittermicro Berlin, Flux Festival Berlin, Brechtfestival Augsburg, FIME festival for experimental music in Sao Paulo Brazil, Hanoi New Music Festival, Strom festival Cologne, Festival Frischzelle Cologne, PhonoFemme Vienna, Sonic Territories Vienna, etc.

She was the guest pianist/performer of Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin (KNM Ensemble) with whom she has performed at Ultraschall Festival Berlin, Musica Electronica Nova Wroclaw, Poesiefestival Berlin, etc. She has earned a wide range of solo and ensemble experience in contemporary music festivals namely Darmstadt Festival for new music, Festival Ircam Paris@Manifest and in festival academies such as Klangspuren – Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, Impuls Festival – Ensemble Klangforum Vienna, etc.

Music for magnetic pickup, chargers, balloon and feedback no.1

Cao Thanh Lan

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