Dear Supercollider specialists,
In 2002 (still on Mac OS9), I composed a piece on Supercollider with the technical help of the sadly deceased Thomas Seelig for the « 2003 Inventionen festival in Berlin ».
The idea behind “Soliloque sur … » was to create a « meta-composition” in which the computer listens to and analyzes other pieces (electroacoustic or instrumental) played at the same concert, and composes a new long piece inspired by them (because of the technical challenge: inspired by 6 short samples of them of 10 sec.). Both the sounds and the score come from the six short samples of the other pieces and their analysis. There are no random (if you push the « play » with the same samples and the same analysis, it will be the same piece). A sort of meta-composition before AI…
More details, the software, and different audio-interpretations here:
https://www.fabienlevy.net/compositions-2/soliloque-sur-x-x-x-et-x-en/
The piece had many technical challenges back then: on the one hand, the CPU crashed very quickly on OS9 with the number of calculations necessary (we had to use a lot of tricks to limit calculations without reducing perceptual complexity, like for instance vuza canons), the movements in space (I used double trigonometry to obtain interesting movements with few calculations and a possible diverse number of speakers for each interpretation), and the evolutions of OS and Supercollider. And of course a musical challenge: from 6 small samples (10 to 20 sec.) obtaining a piece of 12 to 15 min. which has to work…
However, the piece has always worked and has been performed many times, also in big venues, Thanks in particular to the porting to OS10 by Frédéric Roskam and to OS11 by Julian Rohrhuber.
The piece unfortunately no longer works on OS12. I heard that the necessary modifications are not big (the code is very long, but only the beginning and the end are about the technical set up, the rest is about the « score » with always the same 5 similar transformations), but I am not a specialist. So I’m looking for someone who would be interested in adapting. It can be a master’s job, or if too much work I can possibly pay something for the job.
Let me know if you are interested! Thanks.
Fabien