Lenition
An alternation between two exciters that never quite settle into one another — falling water, punctual and ametric, and bowed metal, continuous and without attack — with Somax2 changing what it listens for as they trade places.
- 2026
- AI & Machine Listening
- Live human–machine performance, stereo
- 7:23
Lenition unfolds as an alternation between two exciters that never quite settle into one another: falling water, punctual and ametric, and bowed metal, continuous and without attack.
Guided by continuous machine listening, Somax2 navigates and recombines a corpus of bowed crotales, bowed cymbals and synthesized hammered strings without reproducing its original sequence. Where the exciter is punctual, the system tracks attack and pitch; where it turns continuous, no attacks remain and navigation proceeds on timbre alone. The work moves between these two regimes of listening rather than resolving them.
Individual fragments gradually lose their identity and become part of an extended electroacoustic morphology: a form maintained through repetition, deviation and continuous renewal.
The work was realised as a live human–machine performance. Its larger trajectory, system parameters and interventions were shaped in real time by the composer.
Corpus and exciter sources
arseniiv (#587724), cmorris035 (#254346, #254350, #254345) and be-steele (#132332, #132333, #132334, #132335, #132336). All source recordings were edited, reorganised and transformed within the corpus and the exciter.
be-steele’s recordings are used under CC BY 4.0 — freesound.org/people/be-steele/packs/8326/. All other sources are CC0.