ELSA PARK

Desert’ is a musical piece that delineates a sense of loneliness, building upon the poem ‘Desert’ by Hortense Vlou as a basic conception and number-based musical system utilising numerical data of the words in the poem.

Thus, the piece forms an interesting shape and phenomena of loneliness, resting on the different musical devices – a sense-based musical conception from the poem and an algorithmic musical approach at the same time.

In detail, this piece is started with the idea that loneliness is the utmost sense of pain as well as common feeling during lives. Also, this sentiment is often faded away over times, but also people intend to be in solitude sometimes.

In this regard, I consider that the poem ‘Desert’ encapsulates the presence of loneliness;

hence, I postulated it as a motive of this music.

Based on the conceptual prototype of the poem, on the other hand, I designed a numerical-based musical system through the process of reshaping a selection of words from the poem into a duodecimal system to construct 12 tone base harmonic structure.

Then again, such numerical data are reified through supercollider pattern function that generates sound data for notes, rhythms, and octave figure.

Moreover, a series of everyday sounds, for instance, groaning, skin-rubbing, kiss, running sounds are used in the music as modulated forms to manifest a straightforward and figurative manners of a state of loneliness.

Thus, throughout the musical systems, ranging from a sentimental-based approach to numeric and cryptogram-based musical devices, the purpose of this piece is to show and acknowledge the presence of loneliness by laying out stages and places of the desert in mind - loneliness: depression, imagination, hallucination, wake-up.

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Composed by Elsa Jaeyoung Park 

Mixed & Mastered by Minchang Han