COINCIDENT
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COINCIDENT is a telematic, multi-episode, audio visual collaboration with new music ensemble Zeitgeist (Heather Barringer, Patti Cudd, Pat O’Keefe, Nikki Melville), video/installation artist Carole Kim, spoken word artist Joseph Horton, and new music ensemble No Exit. Coincident was commissioned by Zeitgeist in May 2020, the first work produced as part of Zeitgeist’s DECADE FIVE commissioning series. Coincident was developed, recorded, and released episodically over the course of 2021. The development process led down different paths, forks along a trail of artistic inquiry informed by the central themes of communication, isolation, and distance. These themes guided the exploration of different technical and aesthetic strategies for telematic collaborative creation which may have eluded me if I undertook this commission at some other time.
Each artist participating in the creation of Coincident performed from their home studio, connected by software that preserves audio quality while reducing latency (time lag due to the internet connection and distances the sound must travel). Because latency is reduced, but not eliminated, the music on this album embraces asynchronicity; individual events can occur at different relative times without compromising the musical idea. The music in Coincident Episodes 1, 2, and 3 are paired with a projection world created by Carole Kim, derived from micro-installations (located under her kitchen table) and projections performed in real-time with the music. Coincident Episode 5 was created in collaboration with Joseph Horton, and Zeitgeist is joined by Cara Tweed and Nicholas Diodore from the ensemble No Exit in Exit Velocity (released between the third and fourth episodes in the project series).
My very earliest inspiration for how to approach Coincident came from the sci-fi genre of space opera; epic, galaxy or universe spanning stories that necessarily involve long periods of isolation, unfathomably long distances, asynchronous communication and latency, all impacted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The fact that there’s a universal speed limit—the speed of light—means that at best we merely have the perception of instantaneous, synchronous communication. Introduce enough latency by inserting enough distance between transmitter and receiver, and the perception of synchronicity collapses. The connection to our situation was obvious, as physical isolation and distance impose limitations on communication that are not present in all collaborative processes. The members participating to date are in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and New Zealand.
A key part of the collaborative creative process in Coincident was figuring out the “process” of making and sharing art in an environment of pandemic-induced isolation, one defined in part by latency. What strategies enable us to produce work in an environment uniquely perceived by each local observer—even though we think we’re inhabiting the same virtual space? My approach has been to establish a methodology for each episode of Coincident based on a specific challenge posed by the limits of our situation.
Some of the strategies I implemented to address technical concerns include:
Applying musical processes that enable individual performers to produce music based on local information, free from synchronous expectations typical of so many musical traditions.
Defining the coordination of a performance by shared events that cannot be synchronously experienced because of the nature of distant communication latency.
Producing a finished product that meets the expectations of a broad new music audience by performing in real-time, recording in multitrack DAW, and applying the same editing techniques and post-processing that would be applied in the production of a studio recording.
Integrally related to these are strategies addressing aesthetic concerns:
Doubling down on polyphony—by using ancient approaches to process music, seeking inspiration from imitative and contrapuntal traditions, creating a polyphony of truly (in some cases, radically) independent voices when mediated by a latent/asynchronous communication system.
Working with timbral material that either masks or is similar/sonically-adjacent to the glitches and distortions inherent in audio signals transmitted over the internet.
Embedding game-like challenges to the performance of a composition. This includes designing electronic music/digital signal processing that is designed to fail over time through use.
Creating scores that include or are dependent upon individual and collective improvisation. This includes static graphic scores and animated music.
COINCIDENT Episode 1
I considered the idea of synchronicity across vast distances, where it is really only possible to evaluate the question “Are we together?” from a local perspective. Each participant thinks they are, based on the information they have. But to an outside observer who can consider everyone together on more equal footing, there is only pure independence, a stark polyphony of four people working together toward a common goal, in good faith, but with outdated information. In this case, the information is the sound of the other performers and with the temporal cues from the electronic sounds degraded by design and by the performance itself. We do the best with what we have.
Read Pamela Espeland’s review of the premiere online screening in the MINNPOST.
COINCIDENT Episode 2
The collaboration began by inviting video/installation artist Carole Kim into the project. Carole and I met as part of the NowNet Arts Lab Ensemble.
To realize this, I looked to a Renaissance compositional structure, the isorhythm. Each performer has a melodic and/or timbral line that is made of two different cycles. One cycle is a rhythmic loop, the other is a repeated pattern of pitch and/or timbre. The tempo of the performance is “conducted” by electronic cues that begins with an absurdly slow tempo and over the course of the composition becomes absurdly fast. The extremes are impossible to play with rigor or accuracy, but Zeitgeist does try. And it is in the effort and their listening to each other, earnestly and musically, that we hear the resulting polyphony of independent minds, doing their level best.
COINCIDENT Episode 3
Carole Kim took the lead in Episode #3. In this work, the audio-reactive video serves as the score. I performed as a musician member of the ensemble, in addition to processing Zeitgeist’s audio signals.
COINCIDENT Episode 4
Coincident Episode 4 was written for Zeitgeist alone. Early in the Coincident project, I adopted graphic notation of scores as part of my telematic music practice. The score for Episode 4 employs pseudo-scientific data visualization and composited individual parts for each musician—an approach to notating my compositions that has become an increasingly important part of my compositional practice. As part of the larger Coincident project, this episode is different from the first three by making use of a static visual component, rather than moving or audio-reactive visuals.
COINCIDENT Episode 5
Episode 5 introduced spoken-word artist Joseph Horton to the Coincident project as a collaborator. The starting point was an alternate take of Zeitgeist’s recording of Episode 4. Joe wrote and performed the spoken-word poetry, which I processed in real-time with Kyma during the recording session. I later edited and mixed Joe’s performance with the Zeitgeist recording, producing the finished work.
EXIT VELOCITY
For this episode, No Exit new music ensemble joined Zeitgeist. The title is a play on the name of the ensemble, and another graphic score based on pseudo-scientific data visualizations.
Exit velocity (the term) is the speed a baseball is traveling as it leaves the bat, considered a data point for predicting a player’s likelihood of being a power hitter. A player who consistently hits against pitchers with a high exit velocity and a proper launch angle is probably going to hit the ball farther, more frequently when they are at bat.
The score is composed of seven parts, each with three different curves indicating performance metaphors based on the idea of a batter getting multiple at bats during a game. Performers approach a performance as a single game, and read their parts by applying the data curves metaphorically to an appropriate aspect of their instrument.
Read the review by Mike Telin in Cleveland Classical of the premiere screening of Exit Velocity.
COINCIDENT #7
The final episode of the Coincident project, Coincident #7 is built on fixed-media electronics developed from materials from prior episodes. In a sense, it celebrates our ability to safely perform in person again, while featuring elements telematically curated and gathered.
Coincident #5 video coming soon