Drawing Restraints

For tablet, joystick, and voices

Named after a series of conceptual performance works by Matthew Barney, this piece was conceived as an semi-improvisatory work for custom electronics using joysticks and pen tablets as input devices. The original synthesis engine was built using Supercollider and the performer was invited to improvise using the prompts of a graphical score. Full realization of this work would also include SATB voices with similar notation, indicating a framework for improvisation.

There is a conductor application that runs and delivers figures to the players via a laptop or tablets on a network. For each figure, on the left hand side, is a “mode” indication that determines, in part, how the figure is to be understood by the performers. These modes are specific to the instrument or part that is being performed and provides constraints specific to the instrument.

Instrument Samples:

These are samples of the sounds made by the custom instruments, not a performance of the score itself.