Three states of wax
Jonathan Impett · Middlesex University Research Repository (Middlesex University Of London) · 2020
Three States of Wax is a performance environment for an ensemble of computer-extended instruments. It investigates the nature of musical materials in a live computational environment. Three States of Wax develops ideas from Michel Serres’ early work on the materials of physics. He takes as his example a piece of wax: it has form or figure, however malleable, it can be understood on a molecular level and in terms of the physical laws of propagation, and it bears the traces of its own history – of the feeding habits of the bees, of temperature, of intentional or circumstantial forming. Serres proposes that the interference between different models, theories or modes of representation is the engine of knowledge. A central computer monitors interaction and the dynamics and evolution of the whole, identifying emergent phenomena. The differences between various modes of representation determine its responses of amplifying, inhibiting or contradicting the live behaviours.