a bird flying leaves no mark of its passage

— Zhuang Zhou

Small fragments of an endlessly pulsating universe: arising, subsiding… A cloud in the sky, a leaf in the wind; the eternal movement of waves in the sea, the slowly changing colours of the northern sun…

All the sounds in pulse were produced by a Buchla 200 modular analog synthesizer.

[vii-16]

pulse was realized in March and April 2010 at EMS (Stockholm, Sweden), in April 2011, July 2011, November and December 2013, and December 2015 at the Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC, Sweden), and in December 2014 and January 2015 at GRM (Paris, France). pulse premiered on March 8, 2015 during the Présences «électronique» festival at Centquatre (Paris, France). The piece was commissioned by the Ina-GRM. Thanks to Jesper Elén, Mirjam Tally, Ramon Anthin, Sten Melin, Mats Lindström, Isabel Thomson, and Christian Zanési.

Composition

• March – April 2010, Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), Stockholm (Sweden)
• April 2011, Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC), Visby (Sweden)
• July 2011, Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC), Visby (Sweden)
• November – December 2013, Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC), Visby (Sweden)
• December 2014 – January 2015, Groupe de recherches musicales – Institut national de l’audiovisuel (Ina-GRM), Paris (France)
• December 2015, Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC), Visby (Sweden)

Premiere

• March 8, 2015, Présences «électronique»: Concert, Salle 400 — Centquatre-Paris, Paris (France)