This pair of works is part of a new (April ’23) music and video project.
Dioicus derives from a Greek term meaning “of two houses”.
Our plan is to compose/record/publish movements of this piece on our sites, and play them live. We’re organizing some performances now.
In a previous M/R project Lili had developed some video techniques that she wanted to explore further. In the interim James had become involved in some music/alternative tuning/synthesis work (see this post) and over the past few weeks it became clear that the music he was making and the imagery Lili wanted to create were aligned.
Musically, the individual pieces are Polytonal – i.e, based on relationships between different scales derived from different fundamental tones that occur simultaneously. James’ entry point to scale development was Erv Wilson. He’s currently working with a handful of different scales, not all of which occur together in each piece.
The synth patches have varied degrees of generative capability – meaning they can make some decisions on their own based on input (pitch, expressive gestures, etc.). James’ intention was to develop a responsive system for improvisation.
We’re currently expanding the system to incorporate visuals, so that Lili will be able to similarly improvise with her visual language via a responsive agent.
Stay tuned.