Real Time is a software for installations that plays selected MIDI scores by capturing ambient sounds in real time from geographically distant devices. It executes the silent notes of the track by replacing them with the closest acoustic frequencies in tone.
The project, conceived by Alessio de Girolamo, has been welcomed by LIM (Laboratory of Musical Informatics at the University of Milan) and developed by the Department in collaboration with Jacopo Silvestri on the occasion of his Bachelor's Thesis.
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The project is in an experimental phase due to its innovative nature and is continuously being improved.
The Problem of Time as a Number
The experience of sound unfolding in time seems to flow beyond the very notion of number. It moves naturally within a hypothetical unicum, governed by an obscure and elusive system. Listening occurs in the moment in which it creatively generates itself within us, each time as if for the first time. It is an event that never truly repeats, even when listening in a loop to an old recording played back through any analog or digital device. The mere fact that the experience takes place hic et nunc makes it an original event, inseparably bound to the listener and to the environment that hosts it, “reproducing” the track each time under new conditions. Whether one agrees with this perspective or not, it remains undeniable that a scientific difference exists between analog
and digital. This difference is categorical, and it is precisely where technique and philosophy converge in what might be called a “sense of continuity.”
Alan Turing marks a conceptual threshold at which the real enters the domain of discrete computation, enabling a transformation of experience from continuous flow into computable sequence. At times, when observing certain works of interactive generative music, I find myself experiencing the illusion of not perceiving the gap introduced by algorithmic calculation, as if immersed in a form of reactivity that appears analog only on the surface. One example is a work by the Chinese artist Feng Chen, in which thermal sensors detect the presence and movement of bodies within the exhibition space, translating them into variations in the speed and structure of sonic patterns. As a direct witness, I observed how the stimulation of bodily presence effectively generates a flow of exchange with the algorithm designed by the artist. At the same time, however, it seemed to me that the very process of pattern generation introduced a new distance between the sonic trace and the listener, understood here also as a co-author of the experience. In other words, a computation oriented toward a predetermined compositional outcome, even at the level of execution, tends to call into question the perception of a full “fusion” between listener and sound, bringing to the surface a sense of inadequacy of the individual as a device for capture and direct relation with sonic material.
What would happen, instead, if the computational dimension were aimed simply at creating the conditions for a sonic incident in which space, time, and listener themselves become the sonic material?
How could a calculation suspend the very idea of number, in order to enable a fusion between person, landscape, and time?
The Incident
Imagine, if it has not already happened to you, finding yourself in the countryside early in the morning and opening the window of your room. Birds singing, the sound of a stream, a neighbour splitting wood. Many other sounds may suddenly emerge; it only takes a little imagination. In such a situation, the soundscape seems to take the place of an orchestra meant to offer you a welcoming homage that very morning. Since it is an homage, one might think of a specific piece of music, perhaps belonging to a local band tradition, or, in the case of a renowned composer, a recognisable aria of one’s own.
A question nevertheless remains open: how could a soundscape arrange itself to perform tuned frequencies while maintaining a temporal articulation coherent with a musical score? How can a chance constellation of sounds, freely unfolding in the surrounding reality, enter into relation with an ordered and codified system of notes unfolding in parallel time? To respond through a deliberately bizarre and analogical image, one might imagine a gigantic punched paper roll from a music box sliding across reality, waiting for its gaps to be intercepted by sounds from the landscape at precisely that moment. If, for instance, when the hole corresponding to a B-flat passes by, no environmental frequency approaches that pitch, the execution simply does not occur. From this perspective, a recognisable result appears to depend on the frequency of sonic coincidences capable of activating the score, reducing moments of acoustic void as much as possible.
Approaching the Real Time program, it is possible to trace a logic similar to this example. Through microphone capture, the software intercepts the frequencies present in the landscape and continuously relates them to the notes of a score that silently unfolds in MIDI format.
If one shifts imaginatively from the countryside to an urban square, certain differences become evident. At night, in the absence of specific events, the chances of meaningful encounters between environmental sounds and the notes of the score appear limited. During the day, by contrast, the intensification of human, animal, mechanical, and natural presences expands the sonic spectrum, increasing the occasions in which the execution may emerge. The presence or absence of bodies, elements, and activities seems to directly affect the quality of the audio feedback, making the score more or less recognisable. In this context, the incident may be understood as the suspension of waiting time through a fortuitous occurrence—a collision between a codified language and the continuous acoustic flow of the landscape.
From here, categories such as “beautiful” or “ugly,” as well as ideas of “success” or “failure,” struggle to find relevance in Real Time. What instead takes precedence is coincidence, considered both in its occurrence and in its absence. The overlap between the expectation inscribed in the written sign and the natural event may take the form of a fusion, capable of placing the listener within the flow of time while simultaneously making its disjunction perceptible. Listening to the results developed together with the LIM ultimately leads to a further consideration: entrusting musical execution to the landscape produces an unpredictable outcome, one that in
Alessio de Girolamo
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