Associative Memories - Victor Shepardson

"In this piece, a Notochord MIDI model (1) elaborates what I play on the keyboard, refracting my spontaneous gestures through 100,000 musical arrangements (2) to play the 5 manuals of the Hallgrímskirkja organ. The sound of the organ is also transformed into mutterings of voices from the Ísmús folklore archive (3) by a RAVE neural synthesis model (4). With fingertips, I probe cautiously into the vastness of machinic and cultural memories."

This video was shot at the Organic Intelligence concert at Hallgrímskirkja on February 24th 2023.

The Hallgrímskirkja Klais organ has 4 keyboards and a pedalboard, 72 voices and 5275 pipes that can all be controlled by a computer via MIDI. The organ is 15 metres high, weighs about 25 tons, and the largest pipes are about 10 metres high.

Concert Assistance: Nicola Privato, Áki Ásgeirsson, Victor Shepardson,
Jack Armitage, Sean O'Brien, Halldór Úlfarsson, Thor Magnusson