Symbiont

Symbiont is a multimedia (sound stereo or 5.1/video) composition, written during an AHRB Sabbatical Leave Award,
2002. It has had 28 international performances, including ICMC, Singapore; Project’son Festival, Marseille; Most Significant
Bytes Festival, USA; Havana Spring, Cuba; Musicacoustica Festival, Beijing; Fylkingen Institute, Sweden; Logos Foundation,
Gent; and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 Hear and Now. The work was a Finalist at the 30th Concours International de
Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges. Portfolio: 1) ‘Schaeffer est mort: long live Schaeffer!’, in the online
proceedings of the EMS Conference, De Montfort University, 2007. 2) Cortex (10'00, stereo/5.1 surround sound/computer
animation), commissioned by INA-GRM for the Présences Électroniques Festival 2005, premiered in the Grande Salle
Messiaen, Radio France, Paris, 17 February 2005 (image by Michael Almond), with 10 further international performances. The
work is released on Mondes Inconnus. 3)Reviews of Mondes Inconnus (which contains all the outputs)from empreintes
DIGITALes website are included. 4) Programmes from prestigious performances are included. Context: The research questions
addressed in both Symbiont and Cortex are concerned with the aesthetic hybridisation between acousmatic music and
electronica. The characteristic elements of rhythmically driven electronica are distilled within an acousmatic frame: a frame in
which vinyl sampling, turntablist techniques and stylistic elements of electronica are treated as source material to be
manipulated and processed as in any other acousmatic work. As a result, the works produce a fluid interplay between these
elements. These ‘elements’ are akin to the memes that Steven Jan identifies in his article ‘Replicating sonorities: towards a
memetics of music’. The paper ‘Schaeffer est mort: long live Schaeffer!’ contextualises this work within an
acousmatic/electronica axis and discusses the application of memetic thinking as a means of identifying common sonic units
within these genres.

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Symbiont was realized in the composer’s studio and in the studios of the Groupe de recherches musicales (Ina-GRM, Paris, France). It was premiered on November 24, 2002 at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK). It was commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Ina-GRM, and the Sonic Arts Network (SAN). The work was a finalist at the 30th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France, 2003). This version was mastered by Dominique Bassal in 2005 in Montréal.

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