San Francisco Tape 

Music Festival

9:30p Saturday January 11, 2025

Marco Dibeltulu

Due atomi di idrogeno e uno di ossigeno (2024)

9’10” Stereo

The piece, commissioned by the cultural association Tramedarte, was composed for World Water Day and performed on 22 March 2024 in the Acquamontana event at Organica, the Museum of Environmental Art located in Curadureddu, Limbara Park, Sardinia.The theme of the event was water. The origin of this precious resource is not certain; in fact, many theories have been formulated. One of these claims that it is of interstellar origin and arrived on Earth thanks to meteorites that brought it here. Other theories state that it could have formed from the organic matter that gave rise to the solar system. However, it is certainly at the origin of our existence, but we do not know how it is distributed in the universe.

The title, with clear reference to chemistry, refers to the activity of the electroacoustic composer who studies, analyzes and combines harmonious sounds, accomplishing the synthesis of sound, as the chemist does with molecules, atoms, etc.

The piece, composed from a series of environmental recordings made at the Ea Buddha fountain, which flows into the Riu Pagg Jolu, and at the Di Li Frati fountain, on Mount Limbara, has a three-part structure and aims to lead the listener through three different sections with a narrative intent. The first part is made up of rhythmically slow synthetic sound bands, which evoke the origin of this element in an indefinite space and in an ancient time before arriving on our planet. The second part is composed of concrete sound objects, where the infinite timbral nuances of water emerge. However, there is no shortage of sound processing, which coincides with the human presence on Earth, and which sometimes dangerously alters the balance of ecosystems.

Finally, the piece concludes with a section of synthetic sounds, different from those present in the first part, which this time evoke the passage of water from the Earth to larger spaces and unknown places, perhaps the same ones in which it was formed and perhaps where it will return when its stay on our planet is no longer possible.

Marco Dibeltulu (Alghero, Sardinia, 1971) studied at the Conservatory of Cagliari Composition, Choral Music and Electronic Music (with Francesco Giomi, Sylviane Sapir and Elio Martusciello). He also graduated in Music Didactics at the Conservatory of Sassari. He teaches Musical Technologies at the Liceo Musicale “D. A. Azuni” of Sassari. His compositions have been selected in many competitions including the 24th International Electronic Music Competition “Luigi Russolo” – Varese, 6th International Computer Music Competition “Pierre Schaeffer” 2007 (1st Prize) – Pescara, NYCEMF 2014, 2015 – New York City, and Soundcinema Düsseldorf 2022 (1st Prize). He performed at numerous festivals including Synthèse – Bourges; Zeppelin 2008 – Barcelona; Raum-Musik - Musiksaal, University of Colognec AKOUSMA XV - AKOUSMA_INTERNATIONAL – Montréal, and Audio Art 2021 (CIME Concert) – Kraków.

David Piazza

L'arène aux songes (2023)

18’00” 16 Channels

L'arène aux songes (dream arena) shapes a space where objects and their colours slowly dance on the periphery of the real. The transformation and resynthesis of a single material over the duration of the piece evoke its reconstitution by the sleeping mind, and the effects of the swaying that occurs between memory and imagination. The dream here is the invention of a suspended world as the impetus of the musical impulse.

David Piazza is a composer and performer of electroacoustic music based in Montreal. As an undergraduate student at the Faculty of music of Université de Montréal, he studied composition with Dominic Thibault and undertook research in the field of concatenative synthesis. His research interests lie in composition, spatialization and machine learning approaches to sound synthesis and control.

Charles Deluga

Ecospherical: The Flood (2023)

15’55” Octophonic

Ecospherical is an ambisonic work immersing listeners in natural and hybrid soundscapes of California and the Pacific Northwest. This project is based on extensive field recordings taken with a third-order ambisonic microphone array, documenting diverse ecosystems in the face of a rapidly changing climate. The spherical soundfields captured with this technology are decoded to multichannel speaker systems to acoustically transport listeners to these remote locales teeming with life. In collaboration with performers at UC San Diego, instrumental improvisations have been spatialized to become integral parts of these soundscapes, communicating in the cadences of their surroundings. Using custom, multichannel convolutions, environment and performance merge to envelop listeners in surreal, textural worlds.

“The Flood” is an excerpt featuring soundscapes from California’s Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, alongside contributions from percussionist Kosuke Matsuda and vocalist Natalia Merlano Gómez. This project functions as both an experiment in the creative potential of spatial field recording and an effort in soundscape preservation, with an online archive in progress to make the raw recordings available to environmentalists and artists. Ecospherical aims to bring awareness to the character and fragility of the ecosystems around us by exploring their unique musicality.

Charles Deluga is a composer, field recordist, installation artist, and systems designer exploring the translation of signals across sensory domains. His creative practice brings together spatial audio, acoustic ecology, synthesis, and sound-modulated light to produce immersive contexts for experiencing the intersection of nature and math. Charles has designed and produced A/V systems for architectural media installations across North America, including the Statue of Liberty Museum and MoMA PS1. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Music at UC San Diego after studying music at New York University and the University of Virginia.

Yannick Dauby

Other Topographics (2023)

26’11” Stereo

This work could be the soundtrack to an unrealizable documentary, scripted to take us

between Taipei and Tokyo. Or a tribute to harbors and suburban areas. A

phenomenological essay on Habitat, an editing problem, an exploration of a sound

archive. A photographic film based on Presque Rien or another Usage du Monde.

Commissioned by GRM for Le Mans Sonore 2023.

Yannick Dauby lives and works in Taiwan. When he's not practicing phonography, he places sound objects on scenes and sequences and tinkers with levels to create auditory spaces.

Laurie Spiegel

Patchwork (Dec 1974/Apr 1975/Mar 1976)

9’46” Stereo

The 4-voice piece Patchwork consists of relationships among four short melodic motives and four rhythmic patterns. In the interactive program I wrote to compose this piece, I programmed the computer to read the buttons on a standard telephone-style 4-by-4 keypad so that the keys switched between 4 melodic motives, 4 rhythms (4 different sequences of 4 loudness levels) and to toggle some standard compositional manipulations on and off (retrograde, inversion, augmentation, and diminution), while other computer input devices allowed me to control reverb mix, low pass filtration and envelope decay rate. I composed each of the 4 voices in the piece independently, laying down the set of time functions that define it one voice at a time as a pitch-and-amplitude pair. This multitrack-like method was unusual for me, as I almost always through-compose, developing all voices simultaneously from the start to the end of a piece.

Patchwork was inspired by the structure of the isorhythmic motet and the spirit and modality of banjo music. During the period when I composed it, the post-Webernite atonal pointillist aesthetic was dominant in contemporary concert music. So I composed this piece in reaction against an overdose of arhythmic, non-melodic, often academic sounding, overly cognitive “contemporary music”, and against the way it often feels to get up in the morning.

Laurie Spiegel is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse. She is also a guitarist and lutenist.

Spiegel's musical interpretation of Johannes Kepler's Harmonices Mundi appeared on "Sounds of Earth" section of the Voyager Golden Record.[3] Her 1972 piece Sediment was included in the 2012 film The Hunger Games. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.