2014

Composition for amplified string quartet, laptop, sensor instruments (eye tracking glasses, brainwave sensor, motion sensor), wireless camera, and video; in five movements, 63 mins

Composed for and premiered by the MIVOS Quartet, programming support by YY Kira Yeung

”The Anatomy of a String Quartet is a study of the potentials of media as tools for augmenting, extending and reconfiguring the musician’s body. It also questions how the process of mediation, and the perception of such processes, could alter the definition of ‘liveness’ in electronic music. The Anatomy of a String Quartet, at its core, is an audio-visual performance with/through a ‘prosthetically amplified’ string quartet. Each member of the quartet is monitored by a multitude of sensing apparatus, from eye tracking glasses to brainwave sensors. The bio-sensory data generated by the quartet in-performance become materials for the laptop musician's audio-visual improvisation - these data are translated into parameters for a set of physically-modelled virtual instruments. The piece unfolds in five ‘situations.’ Each situation is a reconfiguration of the relationship between the quartet on the one hand, and the laptop musician on the other.”