Cycles 1 & 2 (2016)

 In spring of 2016 I gave a faculty recital at Santa Clara University where I was teaching at the time. This would be my last quarter at SCU as I was soon moving to Charlottesville, VA to begin my PhD. I composed completely new pieces for this recital, all of which had themes of departure and return (departure from space, place, era, role and return to role of a student). Cycles 1 & 2 are about departing and returning in a slightly modified form. Now, I think of these themes in terms of translation, transformation, and imprinting (à la actor-network theory). In Cycles 1 & 2 realize these themes through processing/re-processing and feedback. For Cycles 1, this is a routing and re-routing through the ins and outs of audio software (heard most heavily in moments of dense feedback). In Cycles 2, this takes the form of digital control of a serge analog modular synthesizer (Max being used to send CV out a motu ultralite) as well as some digital processing of analog signal.

The digital and the analog leave imprints on each other. I imagine this process as the signals “showing their age” and wearing their experiences on their own surfaces. I thought I would return to California, but I may not.