Ps[c]yched, for string quartet, bikes and electronics
- Submitting institution
-
University of Glasgow
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33-02537
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ps[c]yched is a composition for string quartet, bicycles and electronics, commissioned for the cultural festival surrounding the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Its research dimension is evidenced by a range of material. The main output is multi-component, comprising performance materials (score, Max patch, Processing script) with accompanying audio recording. Contextual information takes the form of an html microsite which summarises the research process, details past performances, shows contextual images, and which provides guidance on setting up and running the piece.
The research process entailed investigating the possibilities of hybridising two distinct sonic types – bicycle sound and quartet sound – whilst keeping one of those, the quartet, unprocessed and unamplified. The aim of this constraint was to retain the quartet as an acoustic point of focus in the sound world, and to enable players to move around freely on stage, unhindered by concerns over amplification.
To achieve this hybridisation, a system was developed to extract live spectral information from bike sounds, translate that into pitch information, and feed it back to the players as real time staff notation on laptop screens, enabling players to match pitches to prominent spectral components in the noise textures generated by the bikes. The aim was for quartet sonorities to emerge from or blend with these textures through degrees of spectral congruence, creating a kind of spatially perspectival spectral crossfading of string sounds and bike sounds in the performance space.
Modes of interaction between bike and string sounds were explored through a collaborative workshop process, to afford the players agency over the materials and ‘choreography’ required to perform with both bikes and instruments.
The work builds on experimental approaches broadly practiced and debated within the live electronic music field, but sits too within a spectral composition frame, drawing particularly on Rădulescu’s approach to form and texture.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
