I had been working with physicist Lily Asquith for a couple of years, sonifying data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN, when choreographer Gilles Jobin surprised me by asking me to compose the music for his physics-inspired dance piece QUANTUM (and he requested that I include some of the data-driven sounds I’d been producing for Lily). At that point, I took off my sonification hat and put on a composer’s hat, treating the data-driven sounds as if I had no idea where they had come from. From that moment, the sounds ceased to be a tool for explaining or interpreting data and became the raw materials to be manipulated, transformed, layered, reversed, modified and composed into a flow of experience intended to transport the listener to an alternate universe.
Reviews
Carla Scaletti’s crackling, shimmering score incorporates data from the Large Hadron Collider, CERN’s powerful particle accelerator. — Gina Kourlas New York Times
Under crackling ambient music assembled from supercollider data by the composer Carla Scaletti, they begin to orbit and swarm, pulled by invisible forces like gravity and magnetism. New York Times Preview
[The perspectives opened to Gilles Jobin by particle physics have given a new texture to his dance. Tight but flexible, light but consistent, it propels an unceasing stream redistributed in layers of forms in constant motion. On a stunning score by Carla Scaletti, the circumvolutions are made fresh and compelling.] Les perspectives ouvertes par la physique des particules à Gilles Jobin ont donné une texture nouvelle à sa danse. Serrée mais flexible, légère mais consistante, elle propulse un flux sans cesse redistribué dans un feuilleté de formes en mouvement permanent. Sur une musique épatante de Carla Scaletti, les circonvolutions se font douces et fascinantes. — Rosita Boisseau in Le Monde
[Carla Scaletti’s amazing music rumbles, chirps, or forms a web punctuated only by clicks issuing from real data of particles propelled by the LHC (particle accelerator).] …la musique étonnante de Carla Scaletti gronde, stridule ou se fond dans une nappe seulement ponctuée des clics issues des données réelles de particules propulsées dans le LHC (accélérateur de particules). — Danser: Canal Historique
QUANTUM on Dança Contemporânea
QUANTUM – Teaser- 1mn from Cie Gilles Jobin on Vimeo.