November 02, 2023
AIL Open Seminars #003
We’re excited to announce the third edition of our open seminar series, that will be live-streamed on our YouTube Channel.
For this seminar, Iran Sanadzadeh will be joining us from Monash University (Australia). Iran is a composer, performer and the designer of the Terpsichora pressure-sensitive Floors. She is the Convenor of Composition and Music Technology at Monash University. Her work focuses on new possibilities of expression that an extended relationship with newly designed instruments can offer. Iran performs primarily on her set of floors, developed initially from the study of the pioneering work of Australian dancer Philippa Cullen. She has been continuing the development of the Floors since 2015 in collaboration with composer Sebastian Collen. The Floors were a finalist in the 2023 Guthman Prize for Musical Instruments. Her music explores sculpting manifold parameters of sound with few levers of control. In slowly evolving music that marries synthesised round tones with manipulated sample control, her music shapes a textural evolution that invites deep listening to subtle sonic changes. Trade-offs made in performance with instruments, in negotiating limits of movement and materials shapes the slow evolution of soft sounds in Iran’s work.
Title: Living with a Digital Musical Instrument: Interface - Instrument - Practice - Pathway
Time: 11am, Friday, November 17th
URL: YouTube Livestream
If you are in London and would like to join in-person please email t.pelinskiramos at qmul.ac.uk
Abstract
Iran Sanadzadeh reflects on the shape of an ongoing musical practice on a digital musical instrument, through the lens of her Floors. The Terpsichora pressure-sensitive Floors are wooden platforms with sensors, with which Iran performs electronic music. As an instrument, the Floors are designed to allow many possibilities using few sensors, and encourage focused movements of the whole body in performance. She has recently released a solo album on the instrument; Ocean, Again, (PEOPLE SOUND June 2023) explores perception shift and control of small sonic changes in electronic music using movement. This presentation of the album as an LP, acousmatic and static, reveals the sonic practice of this instrument outside of the visual metaphor, instilling the movement into the sound and removing the interface. In this session, Iran examines the development of the Floors and the practice around them; she outlines the process of reshaping a performance away from an instrument based on the internalised physical relationship developed with it, and the two-way development of traditions and designs. She suspects that with enough perspectives considered, recorded music can show the physical processes behind its making and at a glance, before it is used for sound, the depth of an electronic instrument’s world is possible to glimpse.
