On the altar of a former cathedral turned recording studio, an ensemble of musicians begins to play.

Their notes are piercing and sometimes dissonant. It’s not your typical cathedral music -- but then again, these aren’t your typical musicians.

They’re robots.

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TRBQ Podcast 12 -- I, Musician

Mystification is an exploration of the juxtaposition between simplicity/complexity, consonance/dissonance, and clarity/distortion. This piece consists of two contradictory trajectories. The acoustic instruments move from a highly complex and dissonant texture to a relatively simple and consonant one. At the same time, the computer processing begins by simply amplifying the instruments. Over the course of the piece the computer begins to alter the sounds of the instruments, processing them with increasing complexity. The result is a kind of mirror form with different versions of simplicity/complexity, consonance/dissonance, and clarity/distortion at either end. 

Mystification

Live concert recording from June 2, 2016 - Santa Clara Laptop Orchestra (SCLOrk). Music Recital Hall, Santa Clara University. For more information on this piece, see http://brunoruviaro.github.io/Wherever-We-Are/

07 SCLOrk 2016 Wherever We Are

Associate Professor of Music Technology and Composition at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI).

Mystification

Steven Kemper

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