Serge and Maxine Variations is a musical study on the modes of human-machine interaction at work in analog and digital sound synthesis processes. While learning to generate sound and make music with the GRM’s Serge Modular Synthesizer, a sense of distributed control between human and machine emerged. The usual hierarchy where the human subject controls the non-human object was disrupted and experienced not as fixed, but as fluid. Similarly, my learning of sound programming in the MaxMSP software revealed a blurring of the human-centered dichotomy between subject (human) and object (machine), with influence being shared and expressed by both. How does this extend to everyday social, cultural, and political experience in an increasingly technology-driven world?

Commissioned by INA grm.
Premiere
16 April 2022 at INA grm concert Présences électronique in Paris, France