Erik Natanael Gustafsson

Scarda - Of weak forces

"[T]he fabric of reality is composed of two inseparable properties: complexity and fragility." - (Ricard Solé, On Networks and Monsters: The Possible and the Actual in Complex Systems, 2008, p. 255)
Fragility is deeply ingrained in our human condition of mortal beings living in a transient world. By tracing a web of ideas related to fragility through the creation of a digital audiovisual musical instrument and a composition for this instrument, this work explores fragility in a digital audiovisual live performance context using an unusually holistic approach.
In a live performance setting, the experience of fragility cannot be easily pinned down to one specific sound, image or even musical gesture. It always lives in the complex combination of all that makes a performance together with the context in which it is situated, be it a conceptual space, a musical style or other experiences that the audience bring with them. It was therefore important to me that an exploration of fragility was allowed to permeate as deep as possible into every aspect of making the work.
The scarda is a live performance system taking inputs from 24 sensors and transducing the numbers they give into sounds and visuals. Through the mapping between a physical object and digital audiovisual materials a practical implementation of what fragility can be in a digital space is explored. Of weak forces is a composition for the scarda adding compositional ideas related to timbral and metric aspects of fragility to the live performance situation.