all my friends are gone

‘all my friends are gone’ is a dynamic graphic score for piano and live-looping performed over zoom by Tokyo Gen’On Project members Aki Kuroda (piano) and Sumihisa Arima (electronics). The dynamic graphic score was made using p5js. In the graphic score, words from a text randomly appear on different quadrants on the screen. The position, color and size of the words is associated with musical phrases and other musical parameters, directing the performance of the pianist. The performers have a set of instructions that is used to interpret the words as they appear on the screen. The live-looping happens in specific time intervals. The live-looping incorporates the glitches and artifacts derived from Zoom’s noise reduction algorithm, contributing to a sense of disintegration which resonates with the hopelessesns of the original text and its scattered presentation.

The words used, were taken from a passage from the novel Severance by Chinese-American author Ling Ma: “The future is more exponentially exploding rents. The future is more condo buildings, more luxury housing bought by shell companies of the global wealthy elite. The future is more Whole Foods, aisles of refrigerated cut fruit packaged in plastic containers. The future is more Urban Outiftters, more Sephoras, more Chipotles. The future just wants more consumers. The future is more newly arrived college grads and tourists in some fruitless search for authenticity. The future is more overpriced Pabsts at dive-bar simulacrums. Something something Rousseau something. Manhattan is sinking.”