Machine à écrire

"Typewriter 1" is a self-generating installation consisting of an electro-mechanical piano linked to a computer, two screens and a clock device also connected to a computer networked with the piano. The clock's pendulum delivers a pulse every second to the other elements of the installation. With each pulse, the screen displays a fragment of image chosen at random by the computer. After a few images have been generated, a sentence appears at the bottom of the clock screen, then breaks up into disparate words against the top edge of the screen. The piano begins to play a musical proposition generated by the computer assigned to it. Always different, this music is constructed on the basis of algorithms constrained by conditional rules and random parameters. The pitch and velocity of the notes played by the piano generate an abstract "score" that is projected above the piano.

The aim of "Typewriter 1" is to show and give voice to a process of musical creation and invention. However, the composer is absent. All that remains of him is a mechanism, a method of inspiration, an operating scheme. This is articulated around a memory-image, a written proposal, the tempo of a clock and the image of a score. Chance intervenes in all this, occupying the space left free by the composer. "Typewriter 1" is a complex installation, as is the mechanism of creation. Things work in networks, by wire or by air, algorithms generate numbers transformed into movements, gravity guides the movement of the pendulum to order all this in time. All this complexity is condensed into a single moment in which familiar objects interact: a piano, a clock, a picture on the wall and, of course, the pianist's empty stool, of which all that remains are the circumstances of its creation. It's a question of letting them work.