instantiation VII (graphic design Angelo Barbattini)

SEVEN INSTANTIATION STUDIES

2019 – 2020

brass duo & printed media

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. 

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)