Drip sound

For flute in C, tape and electronic transformations (SPX Yamaha, LXP 15 Lexicon)

*1994*
Duration : 17′

Dripping is the pictorial technic used by Jackson Pollock which consists in letting a more or less fluid liquid (ink or paint) drip onto a plane surface, and then making it run over this surface, thus creating a network of lines.

This process seemed to me apt to treat an instrument like the flute on a media created by electronic transformations.
The Tongue-ram, pizz, key noises, sorts of impact of sound on the surface of silence, starts the run of melodic lines, which evolve, mix in, or emerge from the depth of space.

The electronic treatments of the flute, on tape and live, allowed me to escape from the linear restriction of a monodical instrument, creating depths of field, masses, reflections and halos : drawing into painting.
Pollock, in certain works, would allow a line to run on a paint not yet dry, thereby making it fused more intimately with the matter.

The sound of the flute live, which draws itself into a spacial, temporal or spectral transformation, ceates the same effect of transparence and fusion of the object into matter, of the surface on the background.

Printed at Questions de Tempéraments N° 162

and on CD Octandre N°1

Christian ELOY