This performance was created by the composer improvising with custom software and by tapping on a microphone.
It uses a generative performance environment I named after Einstein’s paper introducing the special theory of relativity Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies). Normally, the software performs with an acoustic performer by capturing and transforming sounds from the soloist.
In contrast, in Tappatappatappa, I feed the audio output to its own input. In a sense, the sound emerges from no source, as if from nothing. The audio output, you see, is never perfectly silent: ambient noise in the room, small irregularities, or electrical interference introduced by the analog electronics create the material from which rich and varied material can bloom, like a pearl forms around a grain of sand. In this way, the feedback performance, which I call Tappatappatappa (its musical result is a distinct work deserving a different name), erodes the human element in performance and allows the technology to find its own voice, which I only coax in one direction or another by tapping, scraping, or moving the microphone within the performance space. In performances of Tappatappatappa, certain resonances emerge that are unique to the room and the moment, some physical positions in space produce certain sonic responses so reliably that the space is almost tangibly marked by its sonic response to my moving the microphone through the space.
