Using the ambience recorded from Linbury gallery itself - at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where the HEAR installation took place, featuring RWCMD designer's recreations of the works of renowned artists such as Modigliani, Otto Dix, Toulouse-Lautrec and Craig Hanna - this electroacoustic soundscape explores the sonic potential of the white noise which surrounds us in our environment and through its transformation, it ventures into the depth of Lolotte’s mysterious and melancholic stare through the paint on canvas.

Lolotte - Milad K. Mardakheh

A semi-improvised, electroacoustic/computer-music piece, this work is performed in open-source software written for Max/MSP programming environment, which decomposes and then (re)concatenates 'data-driven' sounds (concatenative synthesis). 

These 'data-driven' sounds are all synthesized by myself, using the sonification of data derived from the bio-molecular research of cancer cells.

Sonification is the process of mapping data or data-relationships to sound parameters, whether for scientific or artistic purposes.

Malignant Grains

Sleep Single

Sleep

I wrote this song as part of a five-piece song cycle called ‘Agua’, over 3 years ago; exploring the theme of water in Lorca's poetry.

This is the live recording of an ad lib performance of it.
————
Music: Milad Mardakheh
Words: Federico García Lorca
Translation: Adrian Mitchell
Piano: Giordano Ferla
Soprano: Ffion Edwards

Agua

Peaceful Waters

Movement one of the acousmatic/mixed-media work "Death". Using recordings of breath from the inside of the mouth, this piece explores the theme of death, breath and asphyxiation.

Death - Mvt. I

Improvising with a simple pure-tone synth and some patterns I coded in SuperCollider. Playing around with arpeggios and feedback drones in the persian-folk-music Rast-Panjgah mode.

Coded Improvisation in Rast-Panjgah

"Programmed cell death by apoptosis serves as a natural barrier to cancer development." 

“Tumor cells evolve a variety of strategies to limit or circumvent apoptosis. Most common is the loss of TP53 tumor suppressor function, which eliminates this critical damage sensor from the apoptosis-inducing circuitry." 

“Tumors may also evade apoptosis by increasing expression of anti-apoptotic regulators, or of survival signals, by down-regulating pro-apoptotic factors (Bax, Bim, Puma), or by short-circuiting the death pathway intercepting stress signals from outside of the cell. “ 

 

This data-driven piece, attempts to bring forth the genetic world of cells during their transformation from normal to malignant sate, conceived as music. Using sounds generated by the sonification of data derived from the bio-molecular research of cancer cells, Cell Death by Apoptosis briefly explores one of the important Hallmarks of Cancer: resisting the powerful natural barrier of the programmatic death of cells (apoptosis). While the overall compositional outlook of this piece would place it within a textural/spectral category, the gestural interplay of the sound-objects in the foreground, attempts at painting a sonic picture of the interactions between important regulatory proteins within the cell – as noted above -, which are responsible for signaling (or preventing) the apoptosis program. From a broader ‘overall form' perspective, dramatic sharp cuts have been used in the transitions between different sections of this piece, which bear a metaphorical link to the sudden and finite nature of death, while the ambiguous and melancholic harmonic landscape - illustrated by the use of various, pitch-based multilayered drones - carries forward the emotionally charged and textural narrative of Cell Death by Apoptosis. This harmonic landscape is then transposed down lower by a major 6th in the second half of the piece, marking the transformation of the normal cell to a darker, unnatural and malignant state. 

 

Ref: The Hallmarks of Cancer: The Next Generation. Cell, [online] Vol. 144 (5), pp. 646-674. Available at: http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(11)00127-9

Hallmarks of Cancer

Cell Death by Apoptosis

Cell Death By Apoptosis

Hours of Oncogene was composed as part of the early findings of my PhD project, Sound of the Hallmarks of Cancer. In the course of three parts/movements, this piece explores musical form, sonic textures and various sonorities in the sound material produced by the Sonification of abstract numerical data, derived from the Bio-molecular research of cancer cells, as they progress through their transformation from normal to cancerous. Various experimental and theoretical synthesis techniques have been applied in producing the sounds in this piece, in order to give voice to and reflect the grotesque nature of cancer as a disease from a granular perspective. Compositionally, the approach towards the molding of the produced sonic material is improvisational and free-form; bearing the main aim of crafting a variety of intriguing musical narratives, which are abstracted from the sounds and their intrinsic sonic potential in terms of their organization and interactions with other sound-objects. This is done so while being as inclusive and puristic as possible in using the sonified source material, in order to reflect its data-driven quality. Therefore, even clicks and pops which are normally disposed of as unwanted noise, are actively utilized here as spatialized textures, ornaments and rhythmic elements.

Hours of Oncogene

Hours of Oncogene: Part I

Hours of Oncogene: Part II

Hours Of Oncogene Part II

Hours Of Oncogene: Part III

Hours Of Oncogene Part III

Listen to the buzz, 
In this vacuum.
Where sounds endlessly resonate,
dissipating only by choice,
in the airless medium of the mind.

Listen to the dawn, 
break this noisy silence, in which you and I stand.
Engulfed by its coarse electric fabric of nothingness. 
Staring at the circuit boards with our eyes closed. 
Ever impatient for light.

Finally, the rays slowly illuminate,  
all the intangible surfaces we've built.
Nothing is no more, 
as birds chirp and sing, 
Animating the hush.

This is where you whisper to yourself:
“It's alive now.
Finally, we're free,
Free from pain.
Free to bask in the silent glow once more.
Knowing what we've left behind”
============
Dawn is a live-improvised, audiovisual work exploring multimodal expression in a surrealistic context, using the Makenoise modular synthesizer and visuals in Max/MSP. It was realized in the studios of BEAST - Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre - at the University of Birmingham, March 2021.

Dawn

- Iranian composer, sound-artist and programmer; based in Birmingham, UK. Recent PhD graduate in music composition at the University of Birmingham(BEAST).

- 1/3 of Achromatic Band: Lead Vocalist, Guitarist and Songwriter.

- 1/2 of Dechroma: Composer/multi-instrumentalist

Milad Mardakheh - Composer

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