Penumbra / Umbra / Void
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Douglas McCausland
11.1.21

FULL PIECE AVAILABLE HERE: https://youtu.be/2gF24WisN-w

Penumbra / Umbra / Void is an entry in a diary. This piece is about self perception and identity, finding catharsis through the artistic process, recursive self-destructive cycles, obsession over minutiae, and self-inflicted isolation starting long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Composed for cellist Seth Parker Woods in 2021, this work was supported by Music 541 and Experimental Sound Studio; cello materials were recorded with the assistance of Alex Inglizian and Ben Kolak.
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Penumbra / Umbra / Void (2021) // Binaural Audio

“SILO” is a work composed for feedback-augmented bass drums and electronics, and was written for the Line Upon Line percussion trio.

Sonically, this work explores the complex acoustics of feedback systems, vibration and the transduction of sound through physical objects, and performer agency and control of chaotic systems.  Compositionally, this visceral and demanding piece presents a constantly fragmenting web of materials which blur and shift in and out of focus; exploring a world in which the microscopic and the monolithic are harshly juxtaposed, and in which dizzying chaos and stasis exist nearly simultaneously.    

Performance of “SILO” is facilitated through the use of a video score constructed out of materials shot and edited together in isolation.  The performers respond to the same video score in real-time using intersecting sets of rules and strict timing cues, yielding a performance practice similar to that of a foley artist.  The subtle differences in interpretation reveal a sonic spectrum that shifts wildly between coherence and disjunction.  From one perspective, the performers are simultaneously “siloed” apart from one another.  However, from another perspective, they are all bound to the same score and exist as one unified vertical sonic structure.

SILO (2023) // Performed by Line Upon Line

ENTANGLEMENT 
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FULL VIDEO: https://youtu.be/y9jeOhGcpnY?si=OgjXDhOBwUFk7xj5

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PLEASE NOTE: Headphones are recommended for listening. This work has been mastered for binaural from full-3D ambisonics, and is best experienced with a pair of over-ear headphones.

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ENTANGLEMENT is an intermedia work for live-electronics performer, higher order ambisonics audio, video projection, and programmed lights.

The culmination of over a decade of research and creative practice in electronic music, this work is a collection of ten visceral and dynamic personal reflections. Aesthetically, ENTANGLEMENT demands us to experience the contrast of extremes: tension and release, density and stasis, and – sometimes – discomfort and catharsis. These ten sections are structurally linked to one another by a network of interconnections in material, form, and theme; ENTANGLEMENT is:

i. Terminus 
ii. Reclamation 
iii. why do you distort your face? 
iv. static / wake 
v. in situ 
vi. Wormwood 
vii. [REDACTED] 
viii. degrade.loop(16) 
ix. ENTANGLEMENT 
x. six lines 
detritus // a catalogue of souls

Performance of this work is facilitated by a bespoke electronic performance interface (MH2 / CH2) which, with the assistance of supervised machine-learning processes, leverages the hands and gestures of the performer to afford a high-degree of control over an array of digital synthesis engines and spatial controls. credits

Originally Released: October 1, 2023

x. six lines

ix. ENTANGLEMENT

viii. degrade.loop(16)

vii. [REDACTED]

vi. Wormwood

v. in situ

iv. static / wake

iii. why do you distort your face?

ii. Reclamation

i. Terminus

[re]Glossolalia, Note:
Updated: June 20, 2018

Written in 2018, [re]Glossolalia was composed as a companion work to another composition of mine from early 2017 for alto saxophone and live electronics. Both pieces heavily critique the sometimes insidious and subversive nature of late-night rural US radio broadcasts, utilizing excerpts recorded from a circuit-bent radio. The broadcasts used in this piece vary in content, covering topics such as: predicting the United States’ role in bringing about the biblical apocalypse, why monetary donations earn entry into the afterlife, to the “comforts” of mutually assured destruction, and so on. Compositionally, the piece presents an unpredictable, dense, and continuously fracturing interpretation and dialogue of that radio content – exploring the balance between real and imaginary sound worlds in a type of liminal space. The sonic materials for [re]Glossolalia were created and transformed using custom-written granular synthesis programs, duffing oscillator synthesis, FM synthesis, and through hardware hacking.

Please note: I don’t intend for this piece to present a prescriptive worldview, or condemnation of socio-political affiliation and / or religious beliefs. However, I do intend to utilize this as a platform in which I can bring blind hatred, anti-intellectualism, and dangerous zealotry under scrutiny.

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A further element of this work is the installation portion, which was placed in the Talbot Rice Gallery stairwell and elevator entry routes.  These placed fractured elements derived from this composition within the space of the gallery as "echoes" which inhabited the gallery.

[re]Glossolalia (2018)

"Black Amnesia" Program Note:

Written for the TAK Ensemble’s February 2019 residency at Stanford University, "Black Amnesia" is a work composed for soprano voice, bass flute, bass clarinet, percussion, and electronics which explores themes of identity, mania, and catharsis.

Compositionally, the work utilizes fragmentation and interpolation as methodologies for crafting relationships between musical materials and text / language.  These relationships are augmented through the use of live electronics in order to expand the sonic capabilities of the ensemble.  The result of this is a chaotic work in which thematic gestures and timbral materials continuously fracture, in which antecedent musical ideas are not necessarily presented with their consequent, and in which excerpts from seven texts are continuously integrated with broken speech.

The title, "Black Amnesia", is a reference to the first of seven texts utilized in its composition, which is an excerpt (lines 18 through 21) from "The Night Dances" by poet Sylvia Plath.

“... So your gestures flake off- 
Warm and human, then their pink light 
Bleeding and peeling
Through the black amnesias of heaven ...”

The remaining six texts were collected from the works of Mark Z. Danielewski, Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Marguerite Duras, Joseph Conrad, and Dylan Walker of the band Full of Hell.

Black Amnesia (2019) // Performed by the TAK Ensemble

Written in 2019, ISOLATE was composed as the first piece written exclusively for performance with my handmade electronics performance interface Master Hand, also known as “Franky”.

In this work I am exploring compositional concepts such as performer agency in live electronic music, the use of harshly juxtaposed sonic elements, complex / nested gestural materials, and an investigation of density and texture in higher-order ambisonics. In regards to the sounds themselves, the materials used to create this composition are widely varied and range from closely recorded vocal samples (breath, vocal fry, and so on) to more intense methods of digital synthesis such as granular synthesis and Tom Mudd’s gutter synthesis. The result of all of these factors is a work which inhabits both periods of near stasis and the highly chaotic, in which musical materials and gestures continuously fracture and constellate. ISOLATE is presented in mixed-order ambisonics; many elements are generated in real- time, which are diffused and output natively in fifth-order ambisonics. Meanwhile, there are fixed-media cues which, using Master Hand are further manipulated and diffused in first-order ambisonics.

In regards to the interface itself, “Franky” is a real-time electronics performance interface developed for implementation with Max/MSP and Wekinator. Originally designed as a spin on the core design concepts of video game controllers, such as the failed Nintendo Power Glove, this interface makes use of a specially made glove and exoskeleton which places five small 2-axis control sticks at the user’s fingertips, alongside of a ribbon sensor and a 3-axis gyroscope. With some practice, this type of interface allows for nuanced control over various parameters in a performance system. Beyond the sensors and interface, this system is further augmented both by carefully tuned mappings, and by the implementation of Wekinator as a platform for building gesture recognition using machine learning. This build of the interface is the second iteration in what is currently planned as an ongoing project.

ISOLATE (2019) // Binaural Audio

"[neo]Lalia" is an intermedia work for video and third-order ambisonics audio.  Created as a companion work to "Autoimmune", a collaboration with artist Marcos Serafim, "[neo]Lalia" would not exist without his generosity and artistic input.  

Video Available Here: https://youtu.be/1JNX7qTVDiU

Neolalia:
Noun // ne·​o·​la·​lia // nēōˈlālēə
Speech, especially of a psychotic nature that includes words that are new and meaningless to the hearer.  

"[neo]Lalia" is a meditation on the human voice and the intersection of the organic and the artificial.  Aesthetically, in this work I’m seeking to engage with the liminal points which can be found between these two concepts.   To this end, both the video and audio were constructed with the assistance of machine-learning systems, which were trained using a corpus of hours of recordings of human speech.  This training was then utilized to manipulate elements across the audiovisual spectrum, including the manipulation of newly recorded materials, the synthesis of completely new materials, the distortion / fragmentation of video, and so on.  Though often highly chaotic and removed from its source material, materials which are innately human can be found throughout the entirety of "[neo]Lalia".  

The title of the work further serves to tie this work to my previous "[re]//Glossolalia" project, which similarly mediated on the sonic qualities of human speech.

[neo]Lalia (2020) // Binaural Audio

4K Video: https://youtu.be/fXtqIpnBt0c

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Program Note:

Convergence is a work composed for augmented double-bass and electronics performer in third-order ambisonics, which explores numerous concepts including the interactivity and agency between acoustic / electronic elements, and the interplay of gesture and musical materials in three-dimensional space. Convergence is the second piece in a small collection of works developed for five-string double-bass and ambisonic electronics, in collaboration with bassist Aleksander Gabryś.

In order to perform Convergence, the bass is outfitted with eight microphones placed at various points across the body of the instrument. This causes the physical actions of the bassist to correspond not only to specific sounds / timbres, but also to discrete points in space. However, this perceptual mapping is then manipulated and paired against new electronically generated materials in real-time by an electronics performer using a pair of bespoke electronic performance interfaces, MH & CH. MH is constructed out of a metal frame which mounts to the palm; this structure places five 2-axis control sticks at the performer’s fingertips, as well as a ribbon sensor on the back of the hand, and a 3-axis accelerometer. Meanwhile, CH is constructed with flex sensors, which provide data about the bending of individual fingers, and another 3-axis accelerometer. Both of these controllers feed into machine-learning processes (made with the ml.star package for Max/MSP and Wekinator) which allow for the classification of a number of gestures, as well as shaping the sometimes chaotic control data.

All of these ideas collide in a densely chaotic and gestural work which encourages both performers to push their respective limits musically and technically while interacting with a performance system that encourages intricate and nimble musical interactions. In working with Aleksander, we developed a set of expectations and rules which governed the performance, and which allowed for occasionally subtle, and sometimes pronounced shifts in our musical roles. Convergence also makes use of an audio score paired with visual cues, which is visible to the performers on a small screen nearby. Ultimately, the chaotic nature of the work gives both performers agency to explore the sonic and performative extremes of this complex system, as well as the liminal spaces which exist in-between.

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Additional Technical Notes:

Both Convergence and its companion piece Conduit make use of some fixed-media sound, as well as a microphone array, which was developed and recorded with the assistance of Mr. Gabryś in January 2020 at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. In order to create this system, eight microphones were placed at various points across the body of a five-string double-bass. Each of these microphone inputs were then spatialized into a three-dimensional “exploded map" of the instrument using the ICST Ambisonics Package in Max/MSP. In addition to placing the listener “inside” of the fragmented instrument, this technique also allows for physical gesture, and sound produced all over the instrument to correspond to literal points in space. In both Convergence and Conduit, this technique is further employed in real-time, in third-order and fifth-order ambisonics respectively.

The microphone array was achieved with the following microphone models and placements:

2x DPA 4099 Microphones
One placed at the primary point of bow contact (near the bridge) on the strings
The other placed at the top of the fingerboard

4x AKG C411 Condenser Vibration Microphones
Placed in a “four-corners” pattern on the front of the instrument, with two on
opposite sides of the upper bout, and the other two on opposite sides of the
lower bout.

2x Schertler Bass Pickup Microphones
One attached directly to the bridge
The other attached directly to the tailpiece

Convergence (2020) // Binaural Audio

Douglas McCausland is a composer / performer, sound designer, and digital artist whose visceral and often chaotic works explore the extremes of sound, technology, and the digital medium.

As an artist, he researches and leverages the intersections of numerous technologies and creative practices, such as real-time electronic music performance with purpose-built interfaces, spatial audio, interactive systems, intermedia art, musical applications of machine-learning, experimental sound design, and hardware-hacking.

Described as “Tremendously powerful, dark, and sometimes terrifying…” (SEAMUS) and “Ruthlessly visceral…” (The Wire), his works have been performed internationally, including features at Sonorities, SEAMUS, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, MISE-EN Music Festival, Klingt Gut!, Sounds Like THIS!, NYCEMF, Sonicscape, and Ars Electronica.  Recent collaborations include artists such as bassist Aleksander Gabryś, cellist Seth Parker Woods, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the TAK Ensemble, and vocal ensemble Variant 6.  His work is available through various online platforms, and on SEAMUS, Plyta Z Audiomatu, and Jikken Records.

Recent honors include an award of distinction in the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica for his piece “Convergence”, winning 1st-Prize in the 2021 ASCAP/SEAMUS commission competition, the gold-prize award for “contemporary computer music” in the Verband Deutscher Tonmeister Student 3D Audio Production Competition, and being awarded the runner-up nomination for the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music's 2019 CIME Prix. 

Douglas is currently the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Studio Manager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  He holds a DMA in music composition from Stanford University, where he studied with Chris Chafe, Patricia Alessandrini, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, and Mark Applebaum.  He additionally holds a MSc in Digital Composition and Performance from the University of Edinburgh, a MM in Music Composition from Michigan State University, and a BM in Music Composition, Saxophone Performance, and Music Education from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Douglas McCausland

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