2013
PUNTO: Gustavo Matamoros and Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz
Eight-point-source sound installation | 10′23″
Continuous loop
Featured image: Flow. Drawing by Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz, created for the Listening Gallery presentation, 2013.
LISTEN
Flow (2013) | 4′47″ excerpt
Stereo mix of the eight-channel source audio created for the Listening Gallery installation.
Flow is an eight-channel sound structure created from overdubbed improvisations by Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz and Gustavo Matamoros. Its instrumental sources include kemenche, psaltery, bagpipe chanter, percussion, and acoustic and electric guitars.
The composition follows a strategy we call Scattered Unison. Armando first performed a single predetermined melody on the kemenche. That melody was known only to him. Seven additional parts were then recorded through a process resembling “follow the leader”: each performer attempted to imitate the unfolding melody immediately, without knowing where it would go next.
The purpose was not to reproduce the melody accurately. The inevitable delays, differences in instrumental character and imperfect predictions became the composition. Eight performances attempted to occupy the same musical thought but could never fully coincide. Together they formed a complex unison scattered across time, timbre and space.
Each recorded part was assigned to one stationary channel of the Listening Gallery system. As elsewhere in the Listening Gallery, the eight channels were duplicated across the Lincoln Road and Meridian Avenue façades. The parts did not travel between speakers; their separation was produced by their fixed positions along the architecture. From any one location, listeners encountered a different combination of attempts to follow the same melodic path.
The installation began as an independent Listening Gallery presentation on February 13, 2013. It was subsequently incorporated into Unpredictable Patterns of Behavior, curated by Ombretta Agró Andruff, when the gallery exhibition opened on June 12. Flow continued to operate throughout the exhibition, which closed July 28, 2013.
PERFORMANCE VERSION
A performance version of Flow places live musicians over the original eight-channel installation. The performers follow the same principle used to construct the fixed media: they listen to the given melodic activity and attempt to join it through immediate imitation. The accumulated differences produce another, continually changing layer of scattered unison.
The performance version premiered on November 14, 2013, during PUNTO’s Vanishing Point concert at the Audiotheque. It was performed again on February 13, 2014, as part of Point of Sure Return. For that presentation, Gustavo Matamoros played electric guitar, Armando Rodriguez played kemenche, chanter and bagpipe, and Julio Roloff played percussion.
ABOUT PUNTO
PUNTO is a composer-based ensemble founded in 1990 by Gustavo Matamoros and Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz to perform conceptual and experimental works. Julio Roloff later joined as a core member. Active throughout the 1990s and revived in 2013 with Flow, the ensemble combines acoustic instruments, electronics and other media in performances centered on unusual scores, extended techniques and collective listening.
Read more about PUNTO
PRESENTATION HISTORY
February 13–June 11, 2013 | World premiere
Independent Listening Gallery presentation
Listening Gallery, ArtCenter/South Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
June 12–July 28, 2013
Unpredictable Patterns of Behavior
Curated by Ombretta Agró Andruff
Listening Gallery and ArtCenter/South Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
November 14, 2013 | Performance-version premiere
PUNTO: Vanishing Point
Gustavo Matamoros, Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz and Julio Roloff
Audiotheque, ArtCenter/South Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
February 13, 2014
PUNTO: Point of Sure Return
Gustavo Matamoros, electric guitar
Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz, kemenche, chanter and bagpipe
Julio Roloff, percussion
Audiotheque, ArtCenter/South Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
CREDITS
Concept and composition: Gustavo Matamoros and Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz
Performed and recorded by: Gustavo Matamoros and Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz
Performance photograph: Stephen Malagodi
Featured drawing: Armando Rodriguez Ruidiaz
Point of Sure Return promotional image: Gustavo Matamoros
Listening Gallery conceived and directed by Gustavo Matamoros