Engram
For Saxophone, Electronics, and Video
2022
Artist-in-Residence, Composer at Taiwan Sound Lab at C-Lab* (Contemporary Culture Lab, an area for development of technology, academic research and contemporary creation, collaborating with IRCAM since 2018.) (Apr. to Sept. 2022)
Saxophonist: Chun-Hao Ku
This work is entitled Engram, which is a term used by psychologists to explain the process of learning, memorizing, and forgetting. The work draws on the shaping of reality by memory and the nature of memory as a collection of traces of the past, as Marcel Proust explored in his novels. The intricate workings of engram, therefore, are the inspiration for the work, which aims to further explore the relationship between time, memory, and space.
With Engram, the composer sees the performer as the “trigger” that allows the physical space to be “performed” by the real-time composition of electronic sounds. The “triggered” electronic sounds, in turn, allow multiple temporalities to simultaneously flow in the acoustic space. Each temporality has its procession, which takes place in different parts of the physical space. The interference enacted by visual works, in the meantime, serves as another flow of time and as an expression of the stream of consciousness. The continuous and discontinuous flows of the temporalities in the spaces thus become a significant concept of this work.