Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Cycles of Creation (Srsti ke chakra) for Theremin, String Orchestra, Electronics and Visuals utilizes a series of astronomical images by Chilean conductor, violist and aspiring astronomer Luis José Recart as interactive visual projections: a selection of nebulae (star clusters) or cosmic objects encompassing giant clouds of dust and gas in space, namely 'The Eastern Veil Nebula' (NGC 6992 - "a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus"), 'The Rossete Nebula' (NGC2244, Caldwell 49 - "a vast emission nebula located near a large molecular cloud in the constellation Monoceros"), and 'The Trifid Nebula' (NGC 6514, Messier 20 - "an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula located in the constellation Sagittarius") - in order to create a musical interpretation of these cosmological cycles (facilitated by not only live electronics injecting colours of cyberpunk, psytrance, futurism, strange new worlds and dystopian futures into contemporary classical 'new music' modernism, but also by an interactive visual synthesizer that transforms the images (assembled as a 1'24" video loop) in 'real time' (allowing the user to trigger, change and modulate parameters from both audio and MIDI sources) in juxtaposition with tone cluster music theory, extended harmony, polyrhythmic textures and algorithmic composition) so as to take the listener into a virtual tour of Hinduism's fourteen realms of space: "the fourteen lokas that encompass seven higher worlds (heavens) and seven lower ones (underworlds),"

Work Details

Year: 2024

Instrumentation: Theremin, string orchestra, electronics, visuals.

Duration: 14 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

Commission note: Commissioned by Luis José Recart and the Orquesta Marga Marga (Valparaíso, Chile)