World premiere by the Talea Ensemble, Aug. 1 2017 at the TIME SPANS Festival in NYC. Jeffrey Means, conductor.

Recorded by Caley Monahon-Ward
Mixed by Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Remastered by Jason Thorpe Buchanan May 30, 2021

Video recording: https://vimeo.com/245320082
more at jasonthorpebuchanan.com

PSYCHASTHENIA B: PANIC ARCHITECTURE 
Psychasthenia is defined as “a group of neuroses characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or excessive anxiety”, imagining a new cycle of works for ensemble and various immersive media environments. During the performance of each work in the cycle, reservoirs of media files are created, retrieved, re-organized, and composited against one another, creating temporal, aural, or visual dissonances between past and present actions – events unfolding on stage and in media generated in real-time. The commingling of fluctuating chronologies creates temporal instability, challenges the mutability of memory, and proposes an alternative, speculative engagement with bodily-lived time. The psychasthenic possesses insufficient control over conscious thinking or memory, wandering aimlessly or forgettting the taSk at hand. Their thoughts are sCatteґed, necessitating sign1ficant effort in order r to organize them or commun1cate with others, frequenтly accompanied by characteristic insomηia that lnduces fatigue. Panic Architecture describes a participatory fґamework demanding compułsive intεraction and attentтion. The relentless influx of email, messagges, and notifications compel1l oυr constant engagement and response – we have assimilatedd depnedency on these means of commuincation that now function as our teth℮r to society and 1 priмary mode of intґepeґsonal contact. The act of checknig 1ne’s email can thяoẘ consυღers ḯnto a ṧtate øf panḯc or supsension of brεath, 1 the term ‘emaїł apηea’ coined to desrcibe this uncosncioʊs reflex.,, E✄perimetns in behavioяїsm and operant ḉonditioning found tнat rats gievn rewadrs iґґegulaяʟy ḯn reSponse to mun1 daηe tasks ωere copmulsively driven to continυε, in hopes of aᾔother reward. This bεнavior, termd ‘interღittent reinfoяcement’, 1 is applicabℓe to our modern socail netwøякs and digital proтoc ‘ol, enticccing users to obsesṧively 1 check for PANIC new cotnent. Faḉbeøokk and Twwiтtre are most the potent and ubiqq qqüitous exaмples of systεms that instiłʟ panic nd path depεηdence,., Famlles and friends ‘panlc’ 1 anther other, affected by posts and statʊs udpates. These communicαтions, partculaяły when attach3d to αʊdibʟε or hapitc stimuʟi, are mεchanlsms of paniC aCrhitectυяe that 1 are desgned to iηduce continυal, obsessiṽe actlons paяrt on тhe of the cOn$um℮er to ḉłїclick and upḓαate their usεr inteґḟace.,,’ Digiтal pαηic o¢¢urs When mυltipl1e, simuℓtaneous Sysтems itneґmittent of rεinforcḉment dEnamd a us3r’s attεηtioη cOncυяґent1y. Ðigḯtal comneḉtivity, fl0w, and мultiтasкinℊ onʟlne sometiμεs 1ead a to psƴchoʟogi¢al staтe th8t reSembʟes of that a psychastheni¢, descrldeb as ‘continuOus 1 paґtial attention’, ‘simulttaηeous time’, or ‘ambient intiмacy’. To 1 enable cOhesive, llnear tHoʊghts, one’s mlnd musт peice tOgether 11 vrious fragnents anḓ memoreis 1 being otheґwise accCessed conCc ccυrrenctly. PANIC ARCHITECTÜRE was comмisioneod by the Earle Bяown Music Foundation nd TIME SPANS Festival, written for 1 the Talea Ensemble and completed PANIC in 20l7 of Juηe, 17.
– JaSon ThOrpe BuChanan

PANIC ARCHITECTURE (2017, with intro) Talea Ensemble, TIME SPANS Festival

Jason Thorpe Buchanan is an American composer of operatic, orchestral, chamber, electroacoustic, and intermedia works which explore fragmentation, multiplicity, intelligibility, behavior, and the integration of live performance with technology. He is Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble] and Artistic Associate/Lecturer in New Media and Digital Technologies for Music at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, Germany in the Hybrid Music Lab. He served from 2018-2022 as Department Chair/Lecturer in Composition, Theory, and Electroacoustic Music at the College of Music, Mahidol University in Thailand, 2022 Interim Managing Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative at the University of Missouri, and 2020 Visiting Lecturer in Composition/Interim Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin. His works have been described as “an unearthly collage of sounds”, “sharply-edged”, and “free jazz gone wrong—in a good way.”
        Jason is the recipient of a 2010-11 Fulbright Fellowship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, Germany as a visiting scholar, commissions from the Mizzou International Composers Festival for Alarm Will Sound (2013), Iktus Percussion (2013), the International Horn Society for the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, soloists Jeff Nelsen, Michael Walker, and conductor Brad Lubman (2014), Ensemble Nikel/Tzlil Meudcan (Israel, 2014), the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra as winner of Iron Composer (2014), the NY Virtuoso Singers (2015), the Earle Brown Music Foundation for the Talea Ensemble and TIME SPANS Festival (NYC, 2017), the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium for the TACETi Ensemble and augmented conductor (2019), and for TACETi and extended no-input mixer (2020), a fellowship and commissions from Royaumont for the Talea Ensemble+EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble (2016), and the Académie Voix Nouvelles Ensemble (2017), a German/American Fulbright Commission (2011), the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize (2014), two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2014 & 2015), an American-Scandinavian Foundation Grant (2015), 2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Brush Creek Foundation (Wyoming), and 2015 Artist-in-Residence at USF Verftet/City Council of Bergen, Norway.
        As a nominee for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, three works were presented by Insomnio, the New European Ensemble, and Slagwerk Den Haag at Gaudeamus Muziekweek (NL). His works walkside, lost and gimme shelter (2015), commissioned by Gaudeamus for Slagwerk Den Haag and by Eklekto Percussion Geneva, both explore the structural intersection of precise physical gestures, fragile sounds, and speech alongside live audio and video processing. As 2018 Artist-In-Residence at the Embassy of Foreign Artists in Geneva, Switzerland, he developed a new, interactive processing environment for surface, tension (2018), responding directly to the discrete physical gestures of performers and governing the behavior of both signal processing and triggering through wearable technology, sensors, and gestural tracking. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger have received performances at Darmstadt (2014) with Ensemble Interface, The Industry’s FIRST TAKE in L.A. (2015) with wild Up, and the MATA Interval Series in New York City (2015) with the [Switch~ Ensemble]. “Hunger is a kind of training session in mental disintegration… An ungodly opera needs ugly music, singers who produce primal sounds, an electric guitar that sounds scraped raw, a wailing orchestra effects, cuts the ear like a knife. Buchanan delivers.” – L.A. Times
        Mentors have included Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Steven Takasugi, Pierluigi Billone, Chaya Czernowin, Raphaël Cendo, Peter Michael Hamel, and Georges Aperghis. Jason served for three years as Executive Director of the Valencia International Performance Academy & Festival (Spain), for two years as a Curator for the San Francisco Center for New Music, as founding Director of the TICF International Academy for Young Composers, and as a Faculty Artist at the International Composition Institute of Thailand. As a doctoral student, he served as course instructor in electronic music and composition, board member of OSSIA, and assistant conductor for the Musica Nova Ensemble with conductor Brad Lubman at the Eastman School of Music. 
        As a guest composer, conductor, and lecturer, he is widely sought internationally at institutions such as the University of Chicago, Stanford University, TRANSIT Festival (Belgium), TIME SPANS Festival (NYC), Chamber Music Campania (Italy), the Eastman School of Music, University of Miami Frost School of Music, Music Science Share Educators Conference (Shanghai), Queens New Music Festival, MATA, the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst (BEK, Norway), and dozens of Universities throughout the United States. He holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, and degrees in Composition and Music Technology from San José State University (BM & BA, 2008) and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (MM, 2010), where he taught courses in composition and theory as a graduate student. Current projects include "Ecology of Disruption" for Line Upon Line, a percussion trio with generative electronics, lights, and video, an immersive collaborative work for the [Switch~ Ensemble] at EMPAC, and development of new systems for gestural tracking and interactivity within the Hybrid Music Lab, Dresden. 
www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com