The first and very clear premise was that the project had to focus on live performances, since this is where the difference between music created by humans and music created by machines is most evident. At the same time, it was clear to me that electronic music – with all its more or less inscrutable technical equipment – could naturally trigger uncertainties and doubts as to whether the music was actually being played in that moment, or whether, and if so how much, pre-produced material was simply being played back.

For me, the only solution was to take the concept of live electronic music to a level I had never before pursued so consistently in a solo project, and this initially led to a fundamental overhaul of my live setup. So I added not only multisensory controllers to the computer – with quite a few virtual instruments and sound processing tools – but also a semi-analog modular synthesizer system, with all its physical connectors and knobs etc...

So much for the technical aspects of the system that is now my new instrument, its playability, and the sound generation. But what about the musical structure? It was clear to me that it wouldn’t be enough to simply memorize and perform a piece I’d composed, possibly in the same way over and over again. Instead, the interaction with the audience – the mood in the space, the atmosphere in the audience, and how that makes me feel – should play an important role. At the same time, however, as a composer, I’m someone for whom a constructive approach and carefully crafted structures are important. While working on this project, I have therefore also struggled with the old musical challenge of squaring the circle by interweaving improvisation and composition. The result is a kind of musical mobile in which entire structural elements come into motion, swap places, and flow into one another in constantly shifting configurations, creating space to deviate from the given plan and leaving room for the unpredictable and for spontaneous ideas, all while remaining true to the structured approach of the music. 

A quick note on the title of the piece, “NOIR-O12”: It’s a play on words and numbers. If you read the title in French and treat the “O” after the hyphen as a zero, you get “Noir-012” (whatever 012 may mean). So, in a way, it seems to be about blackness or darkness. However, if you actually read the O after the hyphen as the letter O and reverse the sequence of letters, you get “Orion,” the name of the constellation I love most – though I far prefer the Egyptian interpretation, which deals with life after death and rebirth (i.e., renewal) by far to the more martial, mythological interpretation of the Greeks. But let’s return to Noir-012 and consider 012. It actually stands for 0.12, which is the magnitude of "Rigel”, the brightest star in Orion. And so the piece is about the encounter between darkness and light, renewal and a new beginning.

May 28, 2026