Roman
parkhomenko
MY Reflections
Philosophical aspects that are important to me in the process of creating music.
My thoughts on some of my work.
All photos by Alexandra Golikova (c)
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When I write music I pay a lot of attention to the images that arise in listener’s imagination. Nature is my main source of inspiration.
At present I am researching methods of constructing form, structure and dynamics of a composition. I choose a natural phenomenon, study it and transfer its characteristics into my music.
When composing I rely primarily on my inner, subjective feelings. So it’s vital for me to work in quiet and calm places. I attempt to create the most original music of natural phenomena – music, which is capable to provoke a feeling of liberation from society and civilization. Of course, in my music I bring my subjective perception of what I feel the body, hear and see.
My music is a combination of my immediate physical sensations and the natural sound background of an open space.
“We observe not nature itself, but nature subject to and accessible to our method of investigation”
W. Heisenberg.
One of the main aspects of my music is the lack of human and social overtones in it. Music is an emotionless realm.
I perceive music as a frozen (frozen) picture (picture) that needs to be painted with sounds. I'm trying to create music that is not subject to temporal development. An important figure for me is the square. I want to convey not what I see, but what I feel with my body, being in a certain place. I portray my feelings of presence from the outside.
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Before composing a piece, I try to draw an image of this piece and then convert this picture into sounds. The most important moments when working on an essay for me are the idea and direct work with the instrument.
I think that the recording of sounds in the space of any time period is already a finished piece (that is, it has its own form, structure and logic). Therefore, an important parameter for me is the random sounds that occur during recording. For me, these become an equal part of the work.
ELEMENTS
(2022)
“Elements is my tactile perception of space. During the composition, I avoided the full development of the elements of the piece. Graphically, I see it as a kind of closed square, where the vertical component and horizontal are identical. That is, the development of music in time is undesirable for me, so I try to get rid of it.
The elements of the piece move and combine in different conditions, but they are constant. In Elements, I'm trying to convey the feeling of being in a closed sphere, which is filled with a viscous stagnant fluid and where everything relationships work according to the laws of this space. form itself the sphere is also flexible and changes in waves throughout the piece. Imagine a kind of biological cell with soft walls. Such and the composition of the piece is flexible, but at the same time static.”
NEON NATURE
(2022)
“Neon and nature - in life, these two words are incompatible, since neon light is a sign of the city. Neon nature is the nature of the metaverses, where everything only seems real. You can see everything, but you won’t be able to touch anything.
Neon flowers are swaying from the wind, the whiff of which cannot be felt, but you can see the result of its impact. The neon light is visible, but it does not warm. Neon nature lives by its own rules, which only work for those likes :”her”. Everything alive here is alien.
”
way | light | trees
(2022)
Just as on a sunny day visible rays of light, like some kind of tangible dense plasma, pierce the branches of trees. Nature is full of examples of uncompromising movement.
Overcoming is the meaning of life. The way is the essence of migration.
DIVE
(2021)
DIVE is a multidisciplinary electroacoustic art&science opera. It is based, on the one hand, on the legend of an unstaged Japanese opera, where a girl reconstructs an earthquake that happened once, and on the other hand, research and experiments that were carried out jointly with scientists from various scientific institutions.”
We "plunged" into the bowels of the Earth and studied its seismic activity. It is the processes of this phenomenon with its mysteries, symptoms and paradoxes that lie in the dramatic, musical and visual foundations of the operatic work. The real data of the earthquake - the seismic activity of the Earth, as well as the processes that precede earthquakes - the precursors - are turned into a score and manifest through voices and the objective world.
"Dive" is a story about an attempted reconstruction of an earthquake on a dinner table.
HERALDS
(2021)
I researched the earthquake phenomenon and its
parameters: from the exact numerical values of the seismogram and ending with
more subjective data on the events preceding the earthquake and the consequences of this
natural phenomenon, which the official science still calls into question.
This is a piece about "macro-earthquakes" in the microcosm, as well as what portends
them.
The sound of the composition is deliberately made as if flat, that is, it lacks frequency brilliance, volume and sounds that can cause direct associations and references to something. The visual has its own sound reflection. The listener gets inside the texture, hears it and moves inside it. The presence of overtones and, as it were, “poor-quality” (in the usual sense) sound gives a sense of the reality of the texture. In working with the tools, it was very important to search for new techniques or new combinations of different techniques, correlated with a certain texture quality. Parts of electronics and instruments move in a single stream and are thought of as a single whole.
collision
(2021)
“Collision ” is in some way a next step in the research of my perceptions in the domain
of the natural sounds.
In the process of working on the piece, I researched the earthquake phenomenon and its
parameters: from the exact numerical values of the seismogram (graphs) and ending with more subjective data on the events preceding the earthquake and the consequences of this natural phenomenon, which the official science still calls into question.
Collision is the process of impact of two continental plates, this is the process that gives rise to an earthquake.
mist and light
(2020)
“Mist and Light is a combination of directly my physical tactile sensations and the natural sound background of the space. For me, the sound state of the piece is similar to the visual sensation of a bright light shining into closed eyes.
In Mist and Light, a frozen, emotionless picture is depicted, within which there is a certain movement of layers and elements, but this does not bring any tangible development.
Mist and Light is the perception of nature free from man.”
cosmic dust
(2020)
soon
”
voice of the void
(2019)
In Voice from the Void, I want to portray an echo of the sounds of nature reaching us from afar in
vast open spaces. I wanted to show the appearance of this echo, the overlay of the same sound reflected
at different points; mixing, behavior in time and movement in space reflected sounds.
The idea of this work came to me when I walked in a large wheat field near the forest. There were
people far from me and during their conversation among themselves, I did not hear their voices. I
could only hear how their voices echoed from different places. The same voices was reflected in
different places. These sounds were mixed. This phenomenon created a very interesting
effect. Closing my eyes, it was hard to understand where the sound was coming from. It seemed that
the sound comes from the "emptiness". So the idea came up to write the work Voice from the Void.
horizon of silence
(2019)
"What is silence? This is when you hear any rustling and whiff of the wind. This is
the extreme point of silence, this is its horizon."
peak
(2019)
“The snow is hiding and waiting. Waiting for our oversight. One has only to cut the layer, maybe even shout loudly - and the slope will go out from under the feet. We know how it happens: first a soft crack, then a rustle, and then a roar. Just a second. Before you have time to look back, you will be buried under many meters of cold and heavy snow, like cast iron.''
A. Kuznetsov
