Divine the Rest

In "Divine the Rest" I try to generate serendipity through the interweaving of human expression and computer operations. NOW Ensemble plays minimally notated pitch material –– single notes, dyads, chords, but no notated rhythms –– according to a variety of strategies I describe in prose instructions. Their playing responds to the ever-changing sonic environments the computer creates through the manipulation of field recording samples, drones, fleeting sine-tone melodies, and fragments of spoken text. The texts themselves are generative: I recorded hundreds of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (most culled from an essay by Miguel de Unamuno) that the computer assembles into extemporaneous utterances according to certain grammatical rules. The multivalent title "Divine the Rest" was itself derived from this vocabulary.

Duke Scholars