SEVEN INSTANTIATION STUDIES
2019 – 2020
brass duo & printed media
performance:
07.03.2020 / Tonhalle Maag (foyer), Zürich
performers:
Jens Bracher (trumpet), Stephen Menotti (trombone)
audio (soundcloud)
graphic design (score VI + VII):
Angelo Barbattini
score (pdf)
The realization of a complex mathematical object is enacted seven times in a location. Five of the realizations are
played successively by musicians while two others, printed on paper, are placed close to where the sounds are
produced. What can be considered here as the artwork is not medium-specific: It is a series of arbitrary decisions
resulting in parallel successions of numeric values. The different versions of this mathematical object can then be
understood as equivalent versions of one artwork, regardless of how they appear.
The performed occurrences are composed of the same sonic material. The different components of the ideal object, assigned to different instrumental parameters, are systematically recombined in order to create new sonic results. However, listening here seems to be less the perception of auditory events than an ontological experience in which sounds indicate the virtual presence of their “conceptual” cause. Each sounding study is then better understood as a diachronic “object” than a musical piece.
The term “instantiation” is a technical term in contemporary metaphysics describing the relationship between an universal property and its actualized and perceptible occurrences.
The performed occurrences are composed of the same sonic material. The different components of the ideal object, assigned to different instrumental parameters, are systematically recombined in order to create new sonic results. However, listening here seems to be less the perception of auditory events than an ontological experience in which sounds indicate the virtual presence of their “conceptual” cause. Each sounding study is then better understood as a diachronic “object” than a musical piece.
The term “instantiation” is a technical term in contemporary metaphysics describing the relationship between an universal property and its actualized and perceptible occurrences.