Description
Marko Ciciliani · 2017
A multisensory work for two performers and a game system, about fifteen minutes long, first performed by Barbara Lüneburg and the composer. The sound sources are nine materials with very different surfaces — three kinds of cardboard, three textiles, three grades of sandpaper — and most of the sound is made by rubbing two samples of the same material against each other. Each audience member is handed an envelope containing one of the materials, so the surfaces can be felt as well as heard.
Underneath the sound runs a competitive game. Each performer has to recognise which material the other has just used and respond according to the rules; a computer follows the performance, judges the accuracy of those responses and assigns points. The performers read the game’s state from tablets, which serve as their score.
The audience is not shown any of it. Ciciliani deliberately keeps the scoring invisible — a visible score would pull attention away from the material and its sound — and compares the effect on the players to chamber music, where “the opponent’s actions are carefully followed and reacted upon.”
video: Tympanic Touch, complete performance (16:42) — Marko Ciciliani, Vimeo
source — the composer’s page for the work · described in Turowski, Fukuda & Hutchinson, Gameful Compositions in Interactive Computer Music, Springer, pp. 65–66
The nine materials. Each audience member is given one of them in an envelope.
image: Marko Ciciliani, ciciliani.com