For digital feedback with live electronics

20'

(or 10' [fixed medium version])

Stelios Manousakis: Composition, Programming, Live electronics

 

About

Fantasia On A Single Number (pronounced: /fantazía/) is an open composition that takes its final form through live performance. ‘Fantasia’ is the most open to improvisation classical music form. Described by Renaissance composer Luis de Milán in the 16th century as an instrumental composition whose form and invention spring ‘solely from the fantasy and skill of the author who created it’, the form developed considerably in the following centuries, varying widely from free, improvisatory types to much stricter contrapuntal forms, while always remaining highly virtuosic.
Fantasia On a Single Number grows from and expands on the tradition of virtuosic, 'composed improvisation', and is an exploration of the continuum between these two poles (composition / improvisation). It is an Open Composition whose structural backbone and overall dramatic arc are pre-defined, but in a manner that allows - and at specific points requires - the inclusion of spontaneous ideas and their development according to the compositional and aesthetical framework of the piece. This ensures that particular qualities and micro-moods will freely emerge and develop within each performance, while assuring that the piece always remains recognizable, retaining its formal outline, together with key sonic, gestural and motivic characteristics.

Fantasia On A Single Number is composed for a live-electronics instrument; the instrument is designed as a complex dynamical sonic system whose raw power the performer guides into states of equilibrium, oscillation, chaotic behavior, noise and silence to create an immersive sonic experience that fluctuates between varying degrees of tension and release. The piece and the instrument are based on digital feedback, set in motion by one single number which draws from the guts of the machine an intense visceral stream of bursts, rhythms, turbulence, drones and resonances. No other sound sources are used but real-time manipulation of the number's path within a synthetic space, revealing its emergent beauty as it populates a constantly shifting digital universe.

Fantasia On A Single Number is written for a solo live electronics project that 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 live version, there is also a short 10 minute fixed medium ('tape') version.

 

Listen / Watch

Below are excerpts from a live performance at the Chapel Performance Space, on December 1 2009, in different formats and resolutions (soundcloud/vimeo/youtube):

 

Stelios Manousakis: Fantasia On A Single Number (live) [2009] by modularbrains

 

High resolution video:  

 

Low resolution video:

 

 

Schematics

 

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

 

Score

A page from the score for 'Fantasia On A Single Number'

 

Acknowledgments

Fantasia On A Single Number was developed in the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) during 2009. I owe many thanks to Juan Pampin for his input in the early development of the system and of the piece and for his suggestion to focus on a purely digital feedback network. Also, to Richard Karpen, Nicolás Varchausky and Hugo Solís for their input during the development of the composition.