ANTIPHON

In a darkened room, fourteen speakers play recordings of a string quintet and resonant objects captured with microphones capable of recording frequencies beyond the range of human hearing.

During the recording process at Studio Richter Mahr in September 2025, each instrument was routed through a variety of resonators — cymbals, gongs, drums, guitars, piano strings, and sheets of metal and paper — creating an expanded “orchestra of objects”.

The recordings were then dramatically slowed and pitch-shifted to bring the ultrasonic into the audible range. Familiar musical gestures become extended and monumental: a bow stroke stretches from seconds into minutes, mechanical noise and room tone expand into audible atmosphere, and details normally below the threshold of attention become the foreground.

I then wrote a generative program to navigate a timbral map of all the recordings, producing an ever-shifting journey through related sonic events, layering segments I particularly liked into a final piece. Chords and composed sequences emerge periodically. Every so often, the sound fades to a brief silence before beginning again.

Above is a stereo recording of the full multichannel piece.