Tipping Points
Project | Acoustic Instruments
(2026)
For the Black Page Orchestra (percussion, piano, cello, violin, bassoon, saxophone, tuba), and a live-generated audio score.
When does a system collapse? Do we even notice it anymore, or have we, as a society, already passed various tipping points and are now merely feeling the consequences? And why, then, are we surprised by this, do we feel powerless, and are we unwilling to put a stop to it?
Tipping Points is another composition that employs the method of a live-generated audio score. I have been developing this method since 2011, and it has taken shape in the Virus series with compositions ranging from solo to orchestral settings. The musicians, distributed throughout the space, are asked to imitate or interpret the electronic sounds generated live by the composer on their respective instruments simultaneously and as precisely as possible. As part of SaS (Sound as Score), analytical recordings were made with the performers in collaboration with psychoacousticians Piotr Majdak and Katharina Pollak; these now also serve as the basis for the composition Tipping Points.
We also experience different tipping points in our perception of sound: At what point can we perceive a change in timbre? At what pitch difference between two sounds do we actually perceive them as two distinct sounds? At what level of complexity do patterns become too complex for us to perceive them as a single unit? At what pitch difference between two or more sounds do we begin to segment them into different frequency bands and perceive them as separate sound structures?
On the one hand, Tipping Points explores these breaks and transitions in the perception of sound; on the other hand, it challenges musicians to push their instruments to the limit, while also leaving it up to them to decide when to pull back before reaching the tipping point.
read more
