Robert van Heumen Composer Improvisor Laptop-Instrumentalist Sound-Designer
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HD video from SPARK

In February 2009 I performed a semi-improvised version of the composition Stranger. Now there's an HD video of the whole set online.

From the program notes:

This is a live interpretation of the composition Stranger. The performance is semi-improvised, based upon a pre-conceived structure, exploring the no man's land between a traditional tape piece and free improvisation. The composition Stranger is conceived as an electronic composition as well as a research in the composition process. It started with basic questions of life: How do we control our lives? Does anything matter? What really is empathy? What can it mean to know another person, to understand another life? Is it possible to break free from the bonds of the familiar, from existing concepts and beliefs? Big questions, yes. But similar questions can be applied to the composition process in the choise of sounds and the structure of composition itself: How do we choose sounds and processes out of many? Can those processes be arbitrary, even random, or should every sound and every process be weighted again and again until we know it's right? What does that mean, 'it is right'? What is it to create a piece of music? Should the judgement of others be considered in making a composition? Is it even possible to create a unique piece of music? The obvious metaphor: a composition as a life.
Stranger is inspired by Albert Camus’ L’Étranger, Philip K. Dick’s Do androids dream of electric sheep and as always by L.E.J. Brouwer. A blog is kept about the composition process.