Meet the Composer

The proposed project, Tractus, is an audio visual concert / installation involving the live performance of newly invented instruments and two large paintbots (mural painting robots), designed by Douglas Repetto, that do live painting in response to the music performed by the ensemble, composed by Victor Adan, thus creating a lasting physical representation of the ephemeral sonic experience. Tractus is written for four performers playing a combination of traditional instruments (piano, violin, viola, and percussion) alongside the newly invented ones. The instruments are simple yet versatile, providing a wide variety of colors and nuances; as mechanical devices, they will naturally inherit the rich acoustic properties of the physical world. The idea of the visual element of the piece is that of the trace, the physical representation of the aural experience, hence the title of the piece. The paintbots respond to the music, converting the sounds into drawings. The paintbots do not just record the sounds like a phonograph, but rather interpret and encode the sounds as a variety of gestural shapes, much like humans interpret and encode music in the form of symbolic notation.

World premiere: October 2011