Tele-Harmonium

Tele-Harmonium for piano and virtual performer was given its premiere performance at the Polytechnica de Bovisa, Milano Italy as part of the 2010 Milano-Torino (MiTo) Festival.

Tele-Harmonium was the first piece realized using UDKOSC to map in-game motion and action to real-time synthesis and spatialization processes. OSC Messages encapsulating client and projectile positioning coordinates are sent over UDP to a multi-channel sound engine written in a SuperCollider and used to control procedural sound and music generation code. Messages from OSC generating software analyzing microphone amplitude and input signal frequency as well as external controller data sent from a custom iPad application are sent into UDKOSC via a thread running in the DLL, and used to control a variety of UDK parameters including system gravity, game speed, and projectile homing target location.

Thematically, Tele-Harmonium tracks a lone avatar tasked with the maintenance of a mechanical instrument-building known as the Tele-Harmonium. At the instrument's core is a representation of a keyboard with the player missing; when the Tele-Harmonium is booted up, that player appears in the form of a live pianist. While never disclosed directly, one can sense a prior relationship between the avatar and absent-player, made apparrent through the work's appropriation of Scarlatti's Sonata For Keyboard in D Minor, K.213 (L.108) "The Lover" as a central theme, both through direct quotation and through modification.