ICLC 2023 Catalogue PROOF VERSION

Vortex: Reresik

Peni Candra Rini, Rangga Purnama Aji, Sen Sewell, Heather Strohschein, J. Simon van der Walt, Bill Whitmer

Was performed at:

Program Notes

This work tries to interpret the existence of garbage that has accumulated physically and its analogy in the conception of the mind. The lyrics in this work try to describe the tightness, confusion, and depression caused by the awareness of the murkiness within the human mind and how the influence of garbage can strongly impact the saturation of this condition.

Abstract


The abstract is displayed here for proof-reading and will only be part of the published proceedings, not of the final version of this web catalogue.

‘Vortex: Reresik’ is a proposal for a performance that will form part of a second phase of the ‘Floating Gold’ collaboration between artists located in Indonesia, Scotland, and the USA.

Between December 2020 and November 2022 the Glasgow-based community group Gamelan Naga Mas worked remotely with two Indonesian musicians, Peni Candra Rini and Rangga Purnama Aji. This musical collaboration was made possible by the Estuary platform, which allowed for real-time livecoded improvisations between locations in Scotland, Indonesia and the USA.

The first phase of the project culminated in November 2022 with the release of eight audiovisual pieces that combine music improvised using the MiniTidal language in Estuary with vocal performances filmed in a range of Javanese locations.

At the time of writing, Floating Gold are planning for a second phase of the project in the spring of 2023 that will explore synchronous improvisation of the vocal parts. We will work with a series of open-form compositional frameworks that have been created by Rangga Purnama Aji, that variously employ instructions, text prompts and graphical scores as a guide to improvisation for both the singer and the coders.

For the performance at ICLC we aim to present the first of these works by Rangga Purnama Aji, entitled ‘Vortex: Reresik’. One member of the ensemble, J Simon van der Walt, will be located physically in Utrecht in order to perform the piece live, with synchronous contributions from the other members of the team, either in code, or, in the case of Peni Candra Rini, streaming in live video and audio from a remote location.