Saundaryalahari 3 (v.1) 2020

for solo violoncello and audio-visual electronics performance

Nicola Baroni - Violoncello

Yati Durant - audio-visual electronics

Saundaryalahari 3 (v.1) for solo violoncello and audiovisual electronics performance is part of the Saundaryalahari audio-visual sound art compositions series. The performance uses signal modified electronics and interactive video-synthesised visuals utilising hardware and software to translate image into sound and back again – providing the opportunity for the music to have a “feed forward” loop to regenerate musical materials within the performance.

Inspiration for the works are based on an 8th Century Indian literary work in Sanskrit written by Adi Shankara called the Soundarya Lahari or Saundaryalahari (Sanskrit: सौन्दर्यलहरी) meaning "Waves Of Beauty” and are performed as a mediation on the spiritual/graphic formation of the Sricakra, which defines and arranges the verses from outside to inside and include aspects of universal social- and spirituality that affects many things, especially sources of creativity.

The Saundaryalahari project involves researching audiovisuality using important synonyms that are meant to be understood, as much as possible, using non-verbal methods. Music and moving image (film) provide the most complete possible communication to achieve this, especially as they are synesthetically co-related within the creative media arts. It is representative within our contemporary society that a great deal of the population is now focussed on online audio/visual communication. This is leading to inequities of excessive miscommunication (i.e. social media, “fake news”, etc.) and is often due to overly prolific verbal/text-based communication in media. Music and sound in combination with moving image media (film), therefore, may play a significant role in transcending these problems.

As such, these audio-visual compositions explore how a conscientious focus on the reciprocity of music and sound within images might potentially inspire others to think about the positive benefits of non-verbal communication.

A research blog outlining the current research progress can be found here: http://www.yatidurant.com/saundaryalahari-blog. Many thanks to Creative Scotland for their support in enabling this compositional research.