system

Premiere: February 27, 2021, Montréal / Nouvelles Musiques 2021: La Grande Nuit 2021 — Au-delà de la notation, Montréal (Québec)

Sans retour is a generative composition written with Max/MSP between November and December 2020. It emerges from a long-term thought process on the mechanics of memory, and, more broadly, on natural entropy. The unpredictability of past, remembered mirages, their imprecision and the degradation over time of their mental projections are centerpiece to the images and metaphors conveyed through each of the piece’s various sound layers, whether they be synthesized or processed from original recordings. The result, different on each performance, appears in a virtual, mid-air continuum; a flow of blurry memories, reconstructed but never quite crystal clear; familiar yet foreign; impermanent.