Score created by Dami Jung + Emelie M Lundstrom
Music composed and performed by Sammy Chien (Chimerik似不像)
Artist Statement – Sammy Chien
“an architecture in a warm and bubbly dream somewhere in the cosmos”
My phenomenological response to this graphic score began with: dream like qualities, distinct lines/shapes and the subtle textures beneath them. I sensed these 3 planes and worked with 3 layers of sound composition: ambient texture with subtle timbral change, micro-rhythmic layer and more distinctive lines and shapes.
Through the process of creating sonic materials, I’ve set up a complex system which allowed me to generate the score more performatively. I’ve engaged the ambient layer with programming specific notes from the Major scale to retain this ambient layer to more harmonic, warm and hopeful sounding. These notes that were specifically programmed in the software were triggered by Wiimote with aleatoric algorithms, so the patterns of the notes are undetermined, to retain the dreamlike quality and shift away from more melodic structure.
In response to the prominent lines and shapes in the graphic score, I’ve implemented a real-time gestural control with a touch pad and Wiimote which allows me to draw out sound parameters in a 2D space while having the agency to trigger notes with various velocities—in here I was able to perform the graphic score by following it’s architecture very specifically–a very visual process.
The last layer of the micro-rhythm, as response to the bubbly layer of the image. I’ve programmed my own drum-machine in Isadora software from scratch, using simple mathematical calculation and random algorithms to create a rhythmic pattern that is always changing and unpredictable.
Finally, when I conjured all the sonic material together, I felt a sense of a journey. My own creative soul started to partake this journey, almost in a way to share its sentiment in this tumultuous time on earth—I sense that we’re in the process of profound transformations, this journey will take the time it needs. Even in a warm and bubbly dream there ought to be storms that help build this cosmos as a whole. I’ve been looking for joy, light and love as a human who has committed their life making art, yet sometimes I may forget that the warmest and brightest light may reside in the dark shadows of the storm. The journey will continue, we just need to trust them that they will.
This edition of the One-Page Score Project was led by Giorgio Magnanensi as a collaboration between Vancouver New Music and students in Keith Langergraber’s online ECUAD Foundation 165: Core Interdisciplinary Studio course that took place in summer 2020.
