Memoriam (2019)

English:
Memoriam is a reflection on the nature of memories and experiences, particularly their fragility. The assertion that our brains are machines driven by electrochemical processes is a well-worn analogy often used to draw equivalences to informatics mechanisms. However, it is an imperfect and perhaps naïve reduction: vaguely illustrative but ultimately flat, like a matte painting used as a backdrop for the stage.

Records stored either mechanically or digitally do not change when they are accessed and read, and the fidelity of data stored in this way is contingent only on the durability of the medium upon which it was encoded. By contrast, memories are both pliable and ephemeral: a memory changes every time it is accessed, the neural pathways fade if it is not accessed, and thus any attempts to preserve the original memory of an event are hopelessly futile. Data can be read, copied, pasted, and propagated to multiple discrete locations, bit-for-bit. Each person's identity is the complex sum of conscious memories, physiology, genetics, instincts, and experiences, all woven together and bound only to itself. Upon death, only incomplete impressions of that identity can exist in records and in the equally-imperfect memories of others. We cannot survive beyond the life of our last survivor.

Memoriam's musical materials are subject to a similar fate, both in their treatment and in how they are perceived. As the piece progresses, isolated gestures, sounds, and rhythms are stated in sequence; we draw meaning from both these components and the wider context in which we experience them. The original idea is constantly subjected to shifts, transposition, inversion, and reconfiguration, but it never exactly repeats. As time progresses, so too does our memory of the original warp, twist, and coalesce until only the imperfect impression remains.