title: mechanical entanglement
type: live electroacoustic composition for 3 virtually connected custom made haptic faders
year: June 2016
author/composer: oneContinuousLab (Odysseas Klissouras / Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos) & George Sioros
first performance: M.A.D.E Gallery, Cardiff, UK, June 2016
Mechanical Entanglement is a musical composition-improvisation for three performers, composed and programmed by the Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos, George Sioros and Odysseus Kleisouras. Three haptic devices each containing two haptic faders are mutually coupled between them using virtual linear springs and dampers. During the composition, the performers feel each other's gestures and collaboratively process the music material.
The physical modelling parameters of the interaction are modified during the five sections of the composition. A time-stretching algorithm, developed specifically to simultaneously process three stereo channels, is stretching in an out-of-sync- three copies of the same music clip. The performers are playing with the stretching algorithm and an amplitude modulation effect which are both mapped to the haptic physical model and are applied to recognisable classical and contemporary music compositions. Each of them is substantially time stretching the same music clip and simultaneously affects subtly or often abruptly the gestural behaviour of the other performers.
At various points in the composition, the music becomes gradually in sync and the performers realign their gestures. This phasing "game" between gestures and sound, creates tension and emphasises the physicality of the performance. The modelling coefficients often take values impossible to occur in nature such as negative damping between the interaction of the performers, thus creating very unfamiliar interaction sensation. Moreover, instabilities that occur due to the long feedback control delays makes the gestural and sonic dialogue very difficult and quite often unpredictable.
An audio example from the live perfmormance at MADE gallery in Cardiff can be listened below. The authors are manipulating haptically an audio sample from J. S. Bach.
Another audio example from the same live perfmormance. The performers are manipulating haptically an audio sample from Steve Reich.