N. 35 Holistic notation study III {Lucid interrogations}

Holistic notation study III {Lucid interrogations} is by far the simplest piece I have ever conceived. It only took me a few days to finish the score. It is, however, still up to my standards, because the sonic and visual materials are constantly changing due to complex, self-generated transformations. For the piece, a mirrored room is constructed within a room. This inner room shares some features with interrogation rooms, as two walls of the room are laced with a reflective dielectric coating that does not let the laser beams pass through the glass. Instead, they are reflected by all walls, the floor and the ceiling. However, when a person looks through the dielectric wall into the room, she cannot see the laser lights. The inner room only appears to be lightened by the lights four self-driving robots carry. Moreover, she also cannot hear the sounds that are produced within this space. Yet, they are spectacular: four transmitters emit speeches from trials of autocrats that are received by the robots and played back via the loudspeakers they carry. These speeches are already modified inside the room, as interference is produced by combining four different radio stations transmitting at the very same frequency. Subsequently, the autocrats are completely deprived of their voices: each of the four microphones carries a different chain of effects in order to render the autocrats speechless. Their heavily distorted propaganda is subsequently emitted by loudspeakers mounted on the roof of the inner room. Similarly, the laser light can only be seen by being filmed from inside the room and streamed live to two external screens. The laser images are converted from Kafkaesque movies and the sonic material is taken from the Nuremberg trials and other similar events. Finally, the score also enables the production of a quadraphonic video installation that can be shown independently. The work carries the naive hope that future trials of autocrats will lead to freer times for humanity and autocracies will eventually exist merely as a memory of absurd times. This is the black and white version of the score, but you can access the coloured version on this page.