Vanishing Points was first performed by Nicholas Brown (clavichord) at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent as part of the inaugural Open Circuit event of live sound art in September 2017. The work was subsequently performed at Sonorities Festival, Belfast in April 2018.
In 1781, C.P.E. Bach sold his Silbermann clavichord to Dietrich Ewald von Grotthuss. To mark the sale, Bach wrote a ‘farewell’ rondo, Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Claviere. Bach’s rondo makes extensive use of bebung, an expressive feature of the clavichord that allows the player to vary the pitch of a note by varying the pressure of a finger on a key. Bebung can therefore be seen as a curative method of prolongation––a way of modulating the bloom and decay of a tone.
Vanishing Points (2017) was based on an analysis of Bach’s Abschied, with particular reference to the notes accorded a bebung marking in Bach’s score. Electronic sounds are distributed live through the mobile devices of audience members, using the web audio technology developed at IRCAM (CoSiMa Nü Soundworks). This transition from the domain of fixed loudspeakers to mobile devices makes another kind of bebung, which is marked by a change in frequency response and accordingly, by the modulation of electronic sound as it is distributed to individual listening spaces.
This piece uses web audio technology (IRCAM/CoSiMa software, Nü Soundworks) to distribute and spatialize audio sounds via the mobile phones of the audience. Audience members access a jpgage with their mobile devices.