News

Live Structures: Ocular Scores™ and Perceptible Musical Architecture

We are super excited to share with you that our resident, Linda Bouchard will be presenting a short talk on Live Structures at the IRCAM Forum Hors Les Murs, taking place in Montreal next April.

 

ABSTRACT

Started in 2017 with a research and composition grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Live Structures explores the interpretation of analytical data into musical parameters. Much of the research took place during an artist residency at Matralab, Concordia University, where designer Joseph Browne and composer Linda Bouchard developed Ocular Scores™, a tool to create graphical scores from the analysis of complex sounds and textures. To date three iterations of Ocular Scores™ have been created, addressing the ability to draw a) shapes and images that are replicable b) transcriptions of a musical performance that reveals musical events c) real-time images which can be manipulated in a live performance and interactive setting. The beta version of this graphical notation platform has been developed in close collaborations with expert performers from Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Zurich. The presentation will demonstrate the musical paradigms offered by Ocular Scores™.

 

BIO

Born in Val d’Or, Québec, Linda lived in New York City from 1979 to 1991 where she was active as a composer, orchestrator, conductor, teacher and producer. She was composer-inresidence with the National Arts Center Orchestra (1992-1995) and has been living in San Francisco since 1997. Her works have received awards in the US and Canada, including a Prix Opus Composer of the Year in Quebec, Fromm Music Foundation Award, Princeton Composition Contest, SOCAN Composition awards and residencies from the Rockefeller Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, Camargo Foundation and others. Bouchard’s music is recorded in Germany on ECM, USA on CRI, and in Canada on Marquis Classics. Since 2010, Linda has been creating multimedia works that have been performed to critical acclaim in North America. In 2017, she received a multiyear grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to develop tools to interpret data into musical parameters. More info: www.livestructures.com.