VS : Improvising with Vibrating Virtual Entities
Abstract
In this performance, two guitar players improvise using electro-acoustic guitars equipped with actuators that can hit each of the strings. By moving through virtual shapes placed around them with their guitars and bodies, they can control the actuators. By using minimal modifications of the instrument and subtly extending existing playing techniques, the setup aims at preserving the technical and cultural heritage of the acoustic instrument. During the performance, the two musicians combine elements of traditional playing with rhythmical interventions that complements the interaction with the shapes. In particular, the shapes allow them to generate stable rhythmical overlapped sequences. The improvisation then develops according to the musicians' inspiration with the shapes integrated in their playing.
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Codex Saqqara FRANCESCO ARDAN DAL RÌ, Conservatory of Music F. A. Bonporti, Italy FRANCESCA ZANGHELLINI, Conservatory of Music C. Monteverdi, Italy Additional Key Words and Phrases: live coding, performance ecosystem, shared agency ACM Reference Format: 1 PROGRAM NOTES Codex Saqqara is a cycle of five semi-improvised musical pieces for live coding and electric violin. Here, for duration reasons, we present a short excerpt. The interaction between the two performers takes place through a system that allows the violinist to record and overdub up to five samples in real-time, which are then processed and organized into structures by the live coder. In this way, the two musicians interact with each other’s musical space, taking on different musical roles during the performance, such as soloists, orchestrators or accompanists. Given its extemporaneous nature, the piece is composed from-scratch, following a series of macro-structures determined beforehand. This submission accompanies a paper regarding the system used, along with some reflections that emerged during the rehearsals for this performance. Fig. 1. A snippet of the performance. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Copyright remains with the author(s). Francesco Ardan Dal Rì and Francesca Zanghellini. 2023. Codex Saqqara. 1, 1 (June 2023), 2 pages. Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression NIME’23, May 31 - June 2, 2023, Mexico City, Mexico
2 Francesco Ardan Dal Rì and Francesca Zanghellini 2 PROJECT DESCRIPTION This project is formed by Francesco Ardan Dal Rì - Return_Nihil (live coding) and Francesca Zanghellini (electric violin). Both musicians have a strong background in contemporary music and they are used to performing together in live electronics and improvisational contexts. With this project, they would like to further explore both the possibilities of co-creation and shared agency offered by novel technological means, both the possible interactions between two different musical practices. As such, the interactive ecosystem used in this performance has been developed through various rehearsals, exploring different musical situations, at the end of which they discussed their perspective, their performative strategies, and the affordances/constraints of the ecosystem. 3 PERFORMANCE NOTES Unfortunately, we will not be able to attend the in-presence conference due to geographical distance and lack of funding. As such, in the next section, we provide a video of our performance. 4 MEDIA LINKS •Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeXHBE2wFgg&feature=youtu.be ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Raul Masu for the constant help, the TOPLAP Italia community for support, and Luca Porcelluzzi for filming our performance. ETHICAL STANDARDS The systems used in this submission have been developed using FLOSS. The code is open-source and freely available at https://github.com/return-nihil/Live_Coding/tree/main/Duo and can be easily adapted for anyone to use it, without the explicit need of buying specific hardware or operating complex mods on traditional musical instruments. Furthermore, we declare no conflict of interest.