Program note

Dry Choices exists as an independent work, but was composed as part of the soundtrack for the collaborative multimedia work "Dry Solace", directed overall by Martin Wesley-Smith. The visuals for this work are slides of Somalia taken by George Gittoes while he accompanied the Australian Army peacekeeping operations there. The slides were sequenced by Jon Drummond. The music was provided by half-a-dozen composers and improvisers.

Dry Choices is based on a small number of "dry" sounds (scrapes and rustles). These were transferred to computer and processed by being passed through digital versions of state-variable filters and wave-guide resonators (implemented by computer programs written by the composer). The resulting sound fragments were then arranged in a random fashion, making use of the Poisson distribution from statistics. This distribution applies to natural events such as floods and droughts, and also to things such as the occurrence of military casualties and the distribution of bomb hits.

The piece was realised on a Sun workstation belonging to the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney.

Performances, etc

• "Synaesthetica" Conference, Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology (subsequently renamed the Centre for New Media Arts), Australian National University, Canberra, 2 July 1994;
• Third International Conference on Religion, Literature and the Arts, Sancta Sophia College, University of Sydney, 20 January 1996.
  
• The audio-visual work "Dry Solace" was presented in Sydney, Canberra and Townsville (October 1993 and March 1994) under the auspices of watt.
   
  
• Dry Choices is on the CD "Assembly", ACMA CD Vol 2 (1995), available through the Australian Computer Music Association. (Also available through the composer.)

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© Gordon Monro 2001-6.       Last modified: June 1, 2006.
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