CONCLUSIONS

With  Powerlines I began to transpose compositional techniques of multitracking, counterpoint and rhythm to film.  I am interested in working in greater detail with rhythm as an energy system through the soundtrack for this film.  I hope to find a way to work with rhythm that defies gravity, creating a rhythmic structure whose centre cannot be fixed—just as the rhythm of breathing in and out formed with structural basis of Circuits, and an image of kinetic energy formed the starting point of Rites of Decimation, setting up an original impetus and sending it through transformations.  Tonality has a sense of a loss of gravity when a harmonic structure is missing the fundamental pitch, and I would like to create a sense of a loss of gravity with rhythmic structures that emphasize the beat while transcending it.

 BODY WEATHER

My next project is  Body Weather, a multidisciplinary piece for which I will create music entirely from computer-generated and sampled sound sources.  The music will be combined with digitally-processed images and a sound system that completely surrounds the audience to create a form of multisensory experience.  This experience will create a sense of disintegration by surrounding the audience with fast, dense, rhythmic music and images resulting in a matrix where the boundaries of the self do not apply.

The theme of  Body Weather is disintegration—the positive aspects of the loss of the boundaries between the individual and the environment, of the breakdown of the immune system and the loss of an ego-based sense of individuality.  The theme is based on my experience of the disintegration of the boundaries between myself and the environment, caused by my environmental hypersensitivity.  This experience resonates with one of the basic tenets of systems theory, which describes the boundaries between the individual and the environment as being very fluid.

The positive aspects of such an experience are that we become aware that we are an integral part of a system much larger than ourselves and that the more integrated we are with this larger system, the more differentiated we become.  This disintegration of boundaries then extends to boundaries between races, genders and sexual orientations and so on.

The theme will be expressed in the music and images used and, through a close relationship between the performers and audience, created in part with interactive computer systems.  The images and music will be synchronized in dense, fast patterns based on dance rhythms.