Leon Eckard

Cybernetic Reverie

performance for Belafon and SuperGuitar

Cybernetic Reverie is an evolving series of performances featuring self-built and modified instruments. The current setup includes the Belafon, a modified Balafon equipped with a Bela computer running SuperCollider, a coding environment for audio processing, and the SuperGuitar, an electric guitar similarly modified with SuperCollider. Intuitive musical fragments and single acoustic sounds are fed into the algorithms and transformed into polyphonic soundscapes. Drawing from a jazz-guitar background, the performance is highly improvised, blending tonal and atonal layers.

Cybernetic Reverie seeks to merge algorithmic and acoustic elements, bringing them into resonance while traversing an ever-accelerating world that fragments our minds into a multitude of virtual spaces, thoughts, and relations. By extending our senses and cognitive functions onto machines and algorithms, the performance explores the possibilities of human-machine collaboration and the complex interactions between technology and artistic expression.
The word "cybernetic" is often used to describe the relationship between a system or organism and its environment, where information is exchanged and processed to achieve some kind of goal or function. In the context of the performance, the use of technology and algorithms to modify acoustic sounds and create new musical landscapes can be seen as a cybernetic process. The modified instruments and software work together in a feedback loop, exchanging information, also through the performer and creating a hybrid form of music. The term "cybernetic" in the title "Cybernetic Reverie" reflects this merging of technology and music, suggesting a dreamlike state that is both organic and machine-driven.