for solo MANO.

9 Gardens was commissioned by ZKM as a result of the GIGA-HERTZ-PREIS 2010. The first version was composed throughout 2011 and 2012, in residence at ZKM in June 2012, and premiered Nov. 26, 2012 in the ZKM Kubus. This work is performed live with the MANO Controller. Over the years, I have performed newer versions and it continues to transform until today, providing testimony of its evolution.

Download the latest patch for 9gardens/MANO.

The 2012 version :

A recent (2015) version @ Open ICE in Chicago:

and another version in Krakow @ Audio Art Festival:

Program notes:

A garden may be a personal space, a refuge, a sanctuary, our personal enactment of nature, our own personal wild, or simply the outside. But a garden provides us with a powerful metaphor. We provide a fertile ground, we plant seeds, we water, we trim; we shape, but we are not in control: we set a process in motion, see things grow, evolve and can only do so much.

A garden needs time.

As it will be evident, these are not ordinary gardens. They do not consist of animals and plants, but are environments of the body and the mind; of processes of thought set in motion and our ways of being in them.

9 Gardens is a work in progress by definition. This does not mean it is unfinished, but that it will transform, change and re-combine. As these 9 sections and their multiple manifestations emerge, the MANO controller and the interactive systems it controls evolve too. The medium is the message.

These sections are all based on complementing beliefs of what an instrument is: a timbre, a system, an object, a source of sonic unity. These instruments exist in the liminal space between composition and instrument design. They work as open scores that bound the space of sonic action.