Leeching


This collaboration with writer Lizzie Lloyd explored the parasitic opportunities available when hijacking a Zoom feed. Part of the On Edge symposium in October 2020, organised by Young In Hong, Leeching drew materials from the artworks and discussions of other practitioners, rendering them anew as improvised text and reconfigured sound.


Built in Max, Leeching firstly presented live text input – a live, improvised, response to the material and ideas presented in the symposium. It also took live audio from the Zoom meeting and granulated it. Each grain was then used to excite its own Karplus Strong synthesis engine, to greater or lesser effect depending on the speaker. The sound processing also took cues from the live typing. Whenever Lizzie used particular characters, they would generate changes in the granulator or the Karplus Strong resonators.

For me, this piece further explores my interest in a kind of parasitic composition. It could be called sonification, but the focus is not on an increased understanding of any extra-audio phenomenon. It is instead on the continuing question of how I can get other things – people, objects, situations, phenomena – to make my music for me.

For Lizzie it’s probably more like a bunch of annoying noises.