Sebastian Adams

Complete works

All materials are freely available, except where I don't own the necessary permissions. Provided as is, please report bugs or mistakes. Feel free to get in touch with questions or to let me know you're interested in my work!

Fluxkit Transcriptions

(2024)  

open instrumentation, including typist (premiere: flute, horn, keyboard, cello, typist)

A typist transcribes texts contained in a Fluxkit into musical notation, which is displayed to performers (and audience). The music notation, along with the typed text, is then used as a framework for improvising by a group of performers. 



To play this piece, you also need to get or make a Fluxkit. A Fluxkit is a collection of event scores stored in a container (e.g. Water Yam by George Brecht). I made the piece with the Fluxkits Kirkos created in 2016 in mind, and used one of these to play the premiere. If you don’t have access to a Fluxkit, you could make one, for example by cutting up parts of the Fluxus Workbook (freely available online e.g. on the Monoskop website) and placing them in a box.

The first performance of this piece was played by Lina Andonovska, Hannah Miller, Adam Collins and Yseult Cooper Stockdale (as Kirkos) on 25.06.24 as part of an Irish Composers’ Collective concert in Unit 44, Dublin. I was the typist for the performance.

The software used for this performance (ChatMusic) is currently only available by request. Please get in touch if you're interested.

ghost box

(2023)  

generative website installation (with web radio)

Inspired by an idea of Anaïs Fontanges, this is a web page that emulates ghost-hunting radio scanners as used by paranormal investigators. This idea sparked a period of fanatacism about radio and particularly about how the weird romance of the ephemerality radio somehow holds on even when you carry it into the digital domain (where the ephemerality is a little bit faked...)

It basically cycles randomly through a range of French and Irish web radio stations, with white noise faking a transition between stations! But sure the REAL ghost boxes are fakes too, aren't they....>>??????

Freed Sounds Instrument

(2022)  

audience with internet-connected mobile phones

Chat Music (collab. with Carl Ludwig Hübsch) [WIP]

(2022)  

any instruments, Twitch stream, audience

500 Minutes of Music for Microtonal Piano

(2022)   [500]

piano or MIDI piano

Deciphering

(2018)  

generative notation system, seven performers

Turing Test: TypeWorks2 - 4

(2017)  

generative notation system, performers

Turing Test: TypeWork1

(2016)  

generative notation system, performers

Programme Note:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yq5j3wk2qcpwj2n/Turing%20Test%20Text%20to%20Music%201%20May%202016.docx?dl=0

Workings from Work for Harpsichord

(2014)  

generative notation system, three performers

Turing Test No. 1

(2014)  

generative notation system, performer