Strange Attraction for feedback and live electronics

Composition & Process

Strange Attraction emerges from a questioning approach to the compositional process, although one that does not necessarily have the aim of finding definite answers.

Drawing on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead’s doctrine, reality can be understood as a composition of actual entities: momentary events of experience. The world, in this sense, is not made of fixed things but is continuously unfolding as a process: the becoming of these entities. The principle of process describes this relationship between what something is and how it comes into being. What emerges from a process is not separate from it but is the subject of the process itself.

Actual entities, each a process with its own unique characteristics, are both beings and becomings. Their qualities are formed by their evolution, shaped by the forces implied by their past states and interactions with other actual entities.

Similarly in composer Gottfried Michael Koenig’s essay Composition Processes (Koenig, 1978), a composition is not merely an assemblage of sounds, but a formation structured by a grammar that arises from the composer’s relationship to other actual entities, past works, teachers, traditions, and the music they heard. These entities, too, are themselves processes in becoming. In this sense, the structure that informs a composition does not arise in isolation but is inherited from and entangled with the ongoing becomings of other entities.

Time, Interaction, Transformation

Time, interaction, and transformation are not only central compositional concerns, but also fundamental attributes of the processes themselves. In Strange Attraction, these dimensions shape the music’s unfolding: time structures the evolution of events, interactions define the relationships between sounds and agents, and transformation allows the network of agents to continuously develop, creating a composition that remains in a constant state of becoming.