Concert — Blagoje Bersa Hall, Music Academy Zagreb

Weip – for percussion and EJ | Iván Ferrer-Orozco

Weip - "to turn, vacillate, tremble ecstatically, move quickly to and from. Weip is the Proto-Indo-Eeuropean etymology of the latin word vibrare, root of vibrate”.
 Sound is matter in motion. We perceive vibrating bodies as sound.
 Vibration:
 •(n)  the act of vibrating 
 •(n) vibration a distinctive emotional aura experienced instinctively "that place gave me bad vibrations", "it gave me a nostalgic vibe"
 •(n) vibration (physics) a regular periodic variation in value about a mean 
 •(n) vibration a shaky motion "the shaking of his fingers as he lit his pipe"
 Weip is based on the sole note of a recorded vibratone and its sound spectrum. The piece is an elaboration of the ideas of vibration, vacillation, trembling, oscillation and our perception of this motion.

Iván Ferrer-Orozco is a composer, electronic media performer, and electronic music designer. His music has been performed extensively by ensembles in Europe, America and Asia. He is currently a member of the Vertixe Sonora and Synergein Project ensembles. In 2019 and 2024, the Mexican government appointed him to the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte programme, which recognises outstanding artists from all disciplines. He was awarded the Best Music Award in 2021 by the International Computer Music Association.

TRANSITIONS – for 8-channel live electronics | Javier Alejandro Garavaglia

The composition proposes a dialogue across space and time between two distinct sonic worlds: one purely synthetic, and the other composed of concrete sound events that might surround us in various situations, all presented continuously and without interruption. Such sequence represents an intertwined strangeness of different worlds, between which ‘transitions’ occur creating a sense of disorientation, as that described by E. Adnan in ‘Shifting the Silence’ (2021). Sounds combine field recordings, sound synthesis/algorithmic sound design via Supercollider, plus a MAX version of Xenakis' GENDYN algorithm, heavily modified by the composer. The piece exists in stereo, 8.1 and flexible versions (the latter, for 16 to 250 speakers, plus LFEs).

Javier Alejandro Garavaglia is an award-winning composer, violist, sound artist and retired academic with a broad interdisciplinary approach to digital art and related technologies. His work focuses on aspects of music/sound composition and performance supported by computing, constantly searching for new sonic experiences (instrumental and electroacoustic) with new developments in computer-aided sound synthesis, live interaction, extended instrumental techniques and sound spatialisation.

Info: https://tinyurl.com/JavierGaravaglia

Fracture and Flow – for percussion and live electronics | Steven Lewis

Fracture and Flow documents an experiment in combining machine learning, real-time onset-based descriptor analysis, and sonic classifiers with jazz drum set improvisation. Using the audio analysis tools in the FluCoMa and Data Knot libraries, I designed an interactive performance system that analyzes real-time or onset-based sonic properties of an acoustic drum performance. These analyses, together with supervised classification training, were used to generate a range of sonic outcomes from digital synthesis, samplers, and various user-made corpora.
 
 Fracture and Flow represents a combination of seemingly divergent musical practices, situating them within a personal engagement with augmented gestural performance vocabularies. This piece serves as a provocation to negotiate the balance between acoustic and data-driven digital music practices, presenting critical considerations regarding gestural and musical reflex, systems design, and real-time technological mediation.

 Steven Lewis is a percussionist, technologist, and researcher. His research focuses on the ontological and political transformations that AI catalyzes in experimental and institutionalized music, theorizing about the convergence of virtuosity and creativity in AI-mediated performance and composition. His work has been accepted at NYCEMF, SEAMUS, ICMC, SMC, AIMC, the International Timbre Conference, among others. Steven Lewis is currently an Assistant Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Entrepreneurship in the Arts at the University of South Florida.

Eigenform – for 8-channel live electronics | Nicola Casetta

Eigenform is a hybrid feedback-neural system for solo improvised electronic performance. A closed eight-channel network of nonlinear processing modules is coupled with a RAVE neural audio model trained exclusively on recordings of its predecessor, Quiet Catastrophe Unleashed. The model’s output can sound as a parallel voice beside the live process, recognizably of the same family yet slightly out of time. It can also be injected back into the loop, where the network reprocesses and re-encodes it, pulling the system toward states it finds probable. Moving continuously between these modes, the performer decides how much of the present is allowed to be unprecedented: at low depth one improvises with a history, at high depth the history improvises with the performer. The title, after Heinz von Foerster, names the forms that stabilize through this recursion.

Nicola Casetta is a computer musician, live electronics performer, and scholar. His work explores sound as a network of relationships, through live electronics that embrace spontaneity and the vitality of the moment. His music has been performed at AIMC in Berlin, ICMC in Hamburg, Boston and Athens, CNMAT in Berkeley, Manifeste IRCAM in Paris, Borealis in Bergen, NYCEMF in New York, SAG in Leicester, and Angelica Festival in Bologna, among others.

Matters 11 – for 8-channel fixed media | Daniel Mayer

How do I find what I like?
 Not at all, as I like what I find, and I'm searching without knowing for what. It appears and queries me wordlessly. The talk develops within the experiment, the algorithms of transformation and organization.
 'Matters', a series of multichannel fixed-media pieces, started in 2017. It reflects my practice-driven research, where I'm artistically exploring sound synthesis and spatialization variants. In 'Matters 11, the latest, I've been experimenting with the leser-known technique of buffer rewriting, in combination with granular synthesis.
 See the 'Publications menu on my website for recent links to detailed descriptions of synthesis and the working process (daniel-mayer.at).

Mixobloodify – for audiovisual fixed media | Bowen Wu

Mixobloodify is an audiovisual work for pipa and electronics exploring identity, belonging and coexistence within cultural hybridity. Its coined title describes cultural experiences intermingling, transforming and generating new forms. At its sonic core are pipa sounds performed and recorded by Bowen Wu, then reshaped into instrumental timbres, electronic textures and noise. Sound and image converge, collide and shift. Red, white and black shape the visual language, with red evoking the blood of the title. The work presents cultural hybridity as a continually evolving process, shaped by difference, tension and mutual influence.

Bowen Wu is a Glasgow-based composer, sound designer, instrument designer and audiovisual artist. Beyond East-West binaries, his practice reimagines Chineseness through an ecological lens and connects sound, environment, body and technology. His work has been exhibited and performed in the UK, the USA, Japan, South Korea, China, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Brazil, Australia, Thailand, Ecuador, Serbia and Greece. He is pursuing a PhD at the University of Glasgow.