Betsey Biggs

For laptop, custom software, geo-tagged audio, and live vocals; premiered as part of New Music Gathering at Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA. 10 minutes.

Blurred Portal is a composition and performance for laptop, custom software, geo-tagged audio, and live vocals. The performance uses geo-tagged field recordings (all from the same randomly selected 50km radius somewhere in the world), generative electronic music created from the sounds themselves, and improvised vocals. Since the pandemic began, August Black and I have collaborated on the web-based project, We Are Here FM, which skips randomly around the world, exploring our conceptions of place by using geo-tagged images and sounds and generative music to create ever-shifting imaginary situations.

I am fascinated by the ways musical intervention into generative systems can blur the liminal area between serendipity and intention, and Blurred Portal offered me an opportunity to more intentionally juxtapose imagined and real sounds to evoke my interior sense of sonic place, in which the sounds I hear outside are mixed and modified by my sonic imagination.

CREDITS

composer and performer: Betsey Biggs

PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITIONS

2023: “New Music Gathering,” Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA.