Additive/disintegration for large ensemble and live electronics – Pablo Garretón 2022
Premiered at the Gaudeamus Festival 2022 in Utrecht, Netherlands IEMA Ensemble
This piece was commissioned by the Ensemble Modern in the context of the International Ensemble Modern Academy. The piece explores the contrast between accumulation and disintegration in the digital world. It is about personal data accumulation and the singularity of identity that disintegrates into zeros and ones, bits, fragments and codes to be stored. The accumulation of information in databases attempts to predict our behaviour through artificial intelligence algorithms that adapt to the particularity of each user. It has been demonstrated that they also have the power to produce social and political disintegration. Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch of the Metaverse platform that he was trying to bring people closer together to communicate in this virtual space through immersive Virtual Reality glasses. Connecting people by isolating them from the real world. Immersing into an environment where all that you can see and hear is a digital product, trying to connect with others while you are disconnecting from your reality.A shocking contradiction.This isolation where people would live in digital bubbles is also a form of disintegration. Through the use of algorithms and transcription of conducted improvisations with the ensemble, this piece aims to explore the dichotomy between the accumulative digital maelstrom and the human subjective heterogeneity. In this piece, where grains and particles are contrasted with the accumulative animus of big data, the ensemble is treated as one collective meta-instrument.