Marko Ciciliani on his work “11 Rooms”
Read my interview with new music composer Marko Ciciliani on his work “11 Rooms”. It is a piece for saxophone quartet and a multimedia performer. It was commissioned by KLEXOS, a group from Spain consisting of four saxophone players and a multimedia performer. Originally KLEXOS was a saxophone quartet, but later they were joined by a multimedia performer who works with electronics and visuals. This change in the setting also meant that the group would work towards developing a repertoire that focused on the use of saxophones in combination with theatrical elements, visuals and/or electronic sound production.
In 2021, Ciciliani was invited to teach at a summer workshop organized by KLEXOS in Plasencia, Spain, for which occasion they commissioned the new work. As part of this workshop, “11 Rooms” was premiered in July 2021. A second performance took place in March 2022 in Graz, Austria that was recorded and which can be viewed bellow.
Text version of interview was created by Armands Stefans Sargsuns.
How many instruments did you use and what is the overall setup of the piece?
I use four saxophones — soprano, alto, tenor and baritone (played by Pablo González, Javier Juanals, Jesús Gallardo and Carlos Tena) and a multimedia performer (Pedro González) who handles the interactive visuals. In response to the interactions between the instrumentalists and the interactive visuals, digital sounds are created that can be considered a fifth instrument. The visuals show the inside of a house that I built as a virtual 3D environment, in which the multimedia performer has to navigate with an avatar, similar to navigating through a computer game. He has to hide from virtual surveillance cameras distributed throughout the house, which are controlled by the play of the four performers who are positioned around the audience in the physical performance space. So the performers have an influence on how the multimedia performer has to move through the space, but what happens in the virtual space also gives cues to the performers to play certain materials. That’s how the main part of the piece progresses through a series of sections.
This ‘main part’ of the piece is bracketed by an introductory and a concluding section. The former takes place outside the auditorium, where the audience gathers before being allowed to take their seats. In this part, the four saxophonists mingle with the audience and begin to perform unannounced, using only tablets and the mouthpieces of their instruments. The tablets show videos of everyday scenes recorded by the saxophonists in their homes, such as how they are cleaning their houses, doing their laundry or preparing coffee. As the saxophonists produce sustained notes or slaps with their mouthpieces, additional sounds come from the videos on the tablets. The intention of this section was to begin the piece outside of the concert hall from within the audience and thereby to lead the visitors to the auditorium.
Similarly, the final section leads to a dissolution of the performance situation and the separation between performer and audience. A QR code appears on the main projection screen, which the audience is invited to read with their mobile phones. This QR code loads video clips of everyday scenes of the saxophonists in their homes, similar to those shown in the introductory section. This time, the soundtrack of the videos consists of a pulsating pitch. Each time an audience member reads the QR code, a different short film with a different pulsating pitch is loaded. This creates a rich harmonic and rhythmic texture, and as the musicians’ playing fades into the background, the audience becomes the sole source of distributed sounds and images. This is how the performance ends.
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What is the main message of the piece?
I am not interested in conveying specific messages with my works, but they usually have very concrete reference points and areas of interest. What “11 Rooms” addresses is the relationship between private and public space. I composed the piece in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when the dissolution of the boundaries between the private and the public became standard. The lockdowns forced us to stay in our homes, our private spaces, which also became our work and meeting spaces through online meetings, conferences, or rehearsals. In that sense our homes were also public spaces or at least our homes took on the functions that in pre-pandemic times belonged to the public space. However, this piece is more than just a contemplation of the situation of the pandemic. The relationship between the private and the public and its ongoing redefinition is something that is very characteristic of our time and which raises many ethical issues.
A core visual element of this piece is the 3D house I built. The design of the individual rooms is based on some of the rooms in which the saxophone players actually live. I mentioned earlier that there are a large number of surveillance cameras throughout the virtual house, and what the audience sees are the views of these cameras looking into simplified imitations of the private rooms of the individual members of the ensemble. What adds an intricate dynamic to the performance is that the multimedia player has to move through this building trying to avoid the surveillance cameras. However, it is impossible to remain completely invisible to them. Once the avatar of the multimedia performer is seen on one of the cameras — the avatar consists of a swarm of butterflies — the other musicians can act in certain ways. This maintains an interactive relationship and also creates a very direct connection and interdependence between the virtual space and the musicians in the physical space.
As mentioned above, in the first and last sections of the piece we see short videos of the musicians in their homes. The virtual house refers to those videos in which we see the musicians going about their daily routines in their personal homes.
Why is the piece called “11 Rooms”?
It’s just the sum of the physical and virtual spaces used in the piece: There are nine rooms in the virtual house. Then there is the concert hall, which is the tenth room, plus the room outside the concert hall where the performance begins, which is the eleventh room.
What kind of experience did you want to create during the piece?
The three parts of the piece explore different ways in which the audience encounters the musicians and the piece. In the first part when the audience waits outside to enter the concert hall and then the musicians suddenly start playing with the tablets and mouthpieces, I wanted to bring the audience and the musicians together without separating them into a stage area and an auditorium. This is different in the second part, which is more like a standard concert situation where musicians and audience are separated, although in this setup, the musicians are surrounding the audience in a U-shape. The hierarchy between performers and audience dissolves again at the end of the piece.
In my understanding the difference between private and public is reflected in the different proximities between audience and musicians, which varies throughout the performance, as well as their changing agencies. Overall, what the audience experiences in this piece is a multitude of sonic and visual elements at varying distances. Even though everything is tightly organized, I think the piece feels very layered and partly fragmented. This piece elicited very different reactions from the audience. Some told me that the piece fell apart for them and they could not make sense of it, while others were completely immersed and mesmerized by it. “11 Rooms” was not intended to be a cohesive whole, but rather to present the audience with a spectrum of sensations that must be put together by the individual viewer.
What were the reasons why you created the dramaturgy in this specific order?
What I found important is that the audience is gradually introduced to the different sorts of material used in the piece. As I said earlier, the idea of private and public place was important to me. The first the audience sees before entering the concert hall is the musicians playing video-clips of themselves following their daily routines, in other words: they are showing their private and intimate spaces in a performance in public space. This immediately sets the theme and from this point on the performance unfolds and complexifies into different levels.
What softwares did you use to create the piece?
I used Blender and Unity to create the virtual space and SuperCollider for all the electronic sounds. The interactivity is also written in SuperCollider, which also controls the virtual scenes running in Unity.
What were the principles to create the sound of this piece?
First of all, I use the original sound from the video-clips the musicians provided for me. I also asked them to record themselves practising, so I also had those little films where they are just practising the saxophone in conventional ways. I used those sounds in addition to a variety of purely synthesised sounds which I created in Super Collider. And then there are the sounds that are produced live by the saxophonists.
The saxophonists never played the saxophones in conventional ways, they are using their instruments as resonators. Instead of attaching a mouthpiece to the instruments, tubes coming from talk-boxes are connected to them. The talk-boxes are effect pedals that were developed for electric guitars in the 1960s. It’s basically a small amplifier, but with a special built-in speaker, which projects the sound into a tube. Traditionally you would put this tube in your mouth and by shaping the cavity of your mouth you would create a sort of wahwah or vocoder effect. This was very popular in the late 60s. In my case, instead of putting the tube into the mouth, it was attached to the saxophone by putting it where the mouthpiece of the saxophone would go. So instead of shaping the mouth in order to produce filterings of the sound, the saxophonists changed fingerings of the saxophone and the instrument served as a resonating chamber.
During the performance different synthetic sounds are played through the talk-boxes which are then manipulated in their timbre by the performers. In addition, they used only their mouthpieces to play slap tongs as percussive sounds and they played sustained pitches in high registers.
I should also mention that I am not using standard speakers in the piece. Apart from the talk-boxes, four very small battery-powered guitar amps are used. These four small amplifiers are also in the playing positions of the four saxophone players. Altogether, I wanted to create a piece without any kind of fancy audio system but with sound sources that have very specific characteristics.
Could you imagine this as a sound-only piece?
Essential aspects of the piece would be missing if you would hear the sound only, without the visuals. The whole project is based on how the music relates to everything else that is happening. It wouldn’t make sense to only hear the sounds without seeing the visuals and the relationships between the performers and this whole setup with the use of space, and the role of the audience.
Could you imagine this piece without the sound?
Even less. While visuals play an important part in this project, it is still a music-based event. Already for many years my work as a composer is mainly audiovisual. In the last few years this has expanded to include even more diverse media and practices, for example when I’m using space in particular ways or additional technologies. Wile I saw myself as an audiovisual composer for quite some time, now I think it’s more appropriate to say that I’m an inter- and transmedia composer, because it’s not only about video and audio anymore, but also the use of other technologies or types of storytelling.
Could this piece be perceived if it was uploaded on YouTube?
I think it’s needless to say that a video can never replace the experience of a performance, especially in such a setting. However, in the documentation of the piece I tried as much as possible to make the role of the space understandable and how it changes throughout the piece. I do think that by watching the video you understand what’s going on, and you get a good impression of the aesthetic experience of the event.
How did your collaboration with the ensemble shape the piece?
It was a very nice experience to work with KLEXOS and we worked on the piece quite intensely. There were many details that we worked out in detail during the rehearsal, regarding articulation, how to set the pacing of certain sections, or regarding the filterings they performed with the saxophone. There were quite a large number of smaller details that emerged during the rehearsal process some of which we fixed as integral parts of the piece.
How long did it take to create the piece?
About half a year.
What stages did you go through during the process of composing this piece?
I remember that the composition process was often difficult and I felt stuck several times. At a certain point I had already developed quite a lot of the piece — I had built the virtual house, I knew how the interactions between the saxophonists and the multimedia performer would work, and I had the virtual surveillance cameras all programmed and working. Much of it was there and functioning but together it just didn’t make sense.
What led to the breakthrough at this point was something extremely banal. When the multimedia player navigates through the house the avatar is a group of butterflies. In the very beginning I didn’t have butterflies, instead I had a wolf as the avatar. I chose a wolf in analogy to the idea of the ‘lonely wolf’ — the person or in this case the classical musician who always has to stay at home and practice, practice, practice. In an earlier stage I had all the navigation worked out, but instead of having the butterflies flying around I had a wolf walking through the building. Finally, I realised that the wolf was the wrong choice and I decided to replace it with butterflies, without knowing why, but somehow I knew that the butterflies were the right choice. Once I replaced the wolf with the butterflies the whole piece started making sense, everything fell into the right place and was then able to finish the composition.
How was the process of rehearsing organised?
The rehearsals took place in Plasencia, where we were also busy with the workshop. We didn’t have much time to rehearse, but it was very efficient to work with the Klexos guys. On the first day we had to sort out some technical issues and decide on the placement of the musicians. But soon we were able to start working on the music, which was very satisfying.
Name one thing that you learned from the piece?
I already described the problem I had with the avatar. What I find interesting is that the choice of the right avatar seemed to be just a visual detail. However, it clogged up the creative process on all levels. Solving the avatar problem also solved the musical issues I was struggling with, even though you might think the two things are unrelated. What I learned from this is that my way of working is truly interdisciplinary, in the sense that the different media are so closely intertwined that a problem on one level spreads out to all the other levels as well. It just doesn’t make sense to think of the different media as separate layers where a problem like the one with the avatar remains just a local problem. It radiates into all the other aspects of a work and you have to consider the entire assemblage of media as an interrelated network of players.
What would you suggest to a composer that wants to work with game elements?
It is of course possible to use game elements as an extramusical reference, a hint to a particular aesthetic usually associated with popular culture. But I think it gets more interesting when game elements are used in order to organize relationships between performers or how musical material can be shaped. That is when game elements really become part of a process and a performance. My advice would be that when working with game elements, don’t think of games as something outside of music. Rules, or goals or strategies can have unique and immediate musical effects that can’t be obtained otherwise.
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Marko Ciciliani is a multimedia music composer and performer based in Austria. Interactive video, light design, and laser graphics often play an integral part in his compositions. His works have been programmed by festivals for post-avantgarde music such as Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern, Ultraschall Berlin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, or Maerzmusik. He is a Professor for Computer Music Composition and Sound Design at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
