Skip to page content

At-A-Glance

Listen to audio:

About this Piece

I am interested in the threshold between the abstract world of computation and the physical world around us. Works scored for traditional instrumentation combined with 1-bit electronics are duets between musicians and code, exploring an interest in the foundations of electronic sound. The simplest electronic tones can be created by sending on and off pulses of electricity to a speaker, creating an oscillation at the desired pitch. These pulses are represented digitally in binary as 1-bit information, where a 1 or 0 signifies the corresponding electrical state. When working with 1-bit waveforms, data is equivalent to sound; no higher-level translation is needed.

Formations, for solo cello and six-channel 1-bit electronics, was premiered by Mariel Roberts at the Shiny Toys Festival in Mulheim an der Ruhr, Germany, in September 2011. 

—Tristan Perich