Music From Other Minds

Program 741: Interactive Electronic Music

KALW Broadcast Date: May 14, 2023 | Host: Joseph Bohigian

Electronics pervade the performance of music in the 21st century. The use of electronic elements are common across many genres of music, and composers today are searching for new and interactive ways to incorporate them into live performance. The composers on this program take a variety of approaches to the use of interactive electronics, from the combination of acoustic instruments and voices and electronic processing to the creation of new electronic instruments using motion sensors and game controllers. In pieces by Mari Kimura and Paul Leary, the composers turn everyday objects into instruments. In KISMET, Kimura embeds her self-designed MUGIC sensor inside a rubber dog toy, which responds to the performers’ movements. In Monolith, Leary maps the controls of a joystick onto musical parameters such as pitch and timbre. Two duo improvisations for voice and electronics follow, by Kate Soper/Sam Pluta and Pamela Z/Paula Matthusen, and a solo performance for violin and live electronic processing by Thea Farhadian. We close with a selection from Anne Hege’s The Furies, the first-ever “laptopera,” Lei Liang‘s sonification of Huang Binhong’s landscape paintings in Hearing Landscapes, a recent performance by Bora Yoon at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York, and a short track from Caroline Polachek’s Drawing the Target Around the Arrow.

Program Audio

30-Second Spot