For digital feedback with live electronics

20'

(or 10' [tape version])

Stelios Manousakis: Composition, Programming, Live electronics

 

Fantasia On A Single Number is an open composition that takes its final form through live performance. The piece is composed for a live-electronics instrument, designed as a complex dynamical sonic system which the performer guides into states of equilibrium, oscillation, chaotic behavior, noise and silence. It is based on digital feedback, set in motion by one single number which draws from the guts of the machine an intense and compelling stream of bursts, turbulence, drones and resonances. No other sound sources are used but real-time manipulation of the number's path within a synthetic space, thus revealing its emergent beauty as it populates a constantly shifting digital universe.

This solo live electronics project aims to merge vocabularies and approaches from different, often seemingly clashing, realms of electronic music: noise and no-input music with electroacoustic composition with vibrant underground tekno.

Besides the longer live version, there is also a 10 minute fixed medium ('tape') version.

 

Below are excerpts from a live performance at the Chapel Performance Space, on December 1 2009, in different formats and resolutions.

 

 

High resolution video:  

 

Low resolution video:

 

 

Audio mp3 (320kbps):

 

 

The schematic diagram of the instrument (implemented in the SuperCollider programming language) follows: