impossible translations #4 “suite”
Formation: piano + video
Creation: july 2012 – february 2013
Premiere: 8th december 2013. LLUÏSA ESPIGOLÉ
Duration: 16 min.
1. Ouverture | 2. Allemande (5:41) | 3. Courante (8:12) | 4. Sarabande (11:05) | 5. Gigue-Epilogue (13:12)
Impossible translations is a series of works in which I try to establish a relationship between music and the outside world by means of a rather arbitrary translation from a non musical input (usually videos or still images) into a playable instrumental score.
In this fourth piece, whose form establishes certain relations with the suite form, several sequences of images from the reality realm are faced to a sound material belonging to the musical realm. The material of the score is completely generated through several kinds of video analysis: tracking of movements, colors and forms and their changing and arbitrary assignment to several parameters of the music: pitches, articulations, distribution, dynamics… The video is also lightly processed through easy pixeling and blur procedures, whose goal is mainly to balance the perception between the real and concrete character of the image when it’s in full resolution, and its perception as a purely abstract element in its maximal pixelation degree.
It’s not a work about synesthesia, but about forcing a relationship in order to put together two incompatible layers, about the paradox of an impossible music made possible through the materialization of its impossible translation.
→ “impossible translations” series