This pair of works is part of a new (April ’23) music and video project.
Dioicus derives from a Greek term meaning “of two houses”.
Our plan is to compose/record/publish movements of this piece on our sites, and play them live. We’re organizing some performances now.
In a previous M/R project Lili had developed some video techniques she wanted to explore further. In the interim I had become involved in some music/alternative tuning/synthesis work (see previous post) and over the past few weeks it became clear that the music I was making and the imagery Lili wanted to create were aligned.
Musically, the individual pieces are Polytonal – i.e, based on relationships between different scales derived from different fundamental tones that occur simultaneously. My entry point to scale development was Erv Wilson. I’m currently working with a handful of different scales, not all of which occur together in each piece. Maybe I’ll write more about my methods.
The synth patches have varied degrees of generative capability – meaning they can make some decisions on their own based on input (pitch, expressive gestures, etc.). My intention was to develop a responsive system for improvisation. We’re currently expanding the system to incorporate visuals, so that Lili will be able to similarly improvise with her visual language via a responsive agent.
Stay tuned.