Technological and Computer-based Projects
Telescope Variations
Work in progress
Using: Actionscript, Flash, Logic Pro
[sound plays on click]
A new approach to variation form which goes beyond allowing user input to shape the development of a composition: Telescope Variations requires user input to proceed.
Inspired initially by Joe Davis' lovely and elegant telescopictext.com, I've realized while writing the piece that the experience of visiting this site (for the final delivery format of this piece will be via URL, as opposed to a score or a recording)
will simulate a hybrid of hearing a theme and variations, where each variation expands on the last— and also stepping into my "composer mind" as I explore different options and embellishments that could be taken on by one musical idea.
The four-note melody (seen in the image below) greets visitors as the page loads. A single note begins to glow, beckoning to be clicked. The click transforms the melody into an ever-so-slightly more complex version of the original, and the music plays again.
Soon, there are multiple clickable options, and the future of the piece will not necessarily follow a single track. Possibilities abound, and a single listening (or is it "performance"?) of the piece will not exhaust the possible shapes the variations can take.
Eventually, though, certain choices preclude or require certain other choices. In the current conception of the work, all roads "lead to Rome" as the final variation becomes inevitable.
A fascinating, though much more complex, undertaking would be to compose a follow-up piece in which the "final variation" is not only not predetermined, but in some sense indeterminate: in a complex enough piece, or one with fine-grained-enough control,
there could be final states to the piece that I, as the composer, could not predict or would not necessarily be aware of, until an explorer/performer/audience member discovered/created them.
Update: As I work on this piece, I'm noticing that the variations are also establishing something like "A Brief History of Music"... as the phrase expands and grows more florid, it starts to sound less Classical and more Romantic, and then Late Romantic. Something to further explore...
Alpha demo here.