Moments of Affinity (Live Album) 2022 (~ 49 minutes) When all social interaction and community are digitally facilitated, how does nuance prevail? What role can spontaneity or chance play in encounters that must be intentional? How present are we with the people we only see through a screen?

As the world moves more and more online-either all at once due to public safety, or, gradually, as humans integrate with technology-the ways we are with and know others change. The voices we hear and the faces we see, the methods with which we build our communities, the methods with which we build our relationships, all are made binary. The threshold between presence and absence is no longer mysterious. It is pixels-discrete, small, and absolute. Between being together and being alone, between isolation and the onslaught of classmates and coworkers, there is nothing. Accepting a call, ending a call-it is perfectly binary.

The performance follows a day of digital connections and disconnections. It seeks, finds, and amplifies the impressions the connections leave behind. These impressions accumulate and slowly change the context of the bedroom in which we find ourselves upon disconnection. The solitude is first accompanied by fleeting memories-past interactions, individual people, specific things they did. But, after the last connection, the themes of solitude are forgotten in the lasting impressions of companions or are recontextualized, in harmony with the life to which the room is now host.

The musical execution of these ideas starts with the composition of the pieces performed. The most authentic memories or impressions I could imagine within the scope of this performance were themes or motifs created by my musicians. The first rehearsals I held were one-on-one improvisations around the concepts of this project. An idea was landed on in each rehearsal, which I then composed a piece around. That idea was recorded as it appeared in the composition-prior to the performance-and was integrated into the electronics so it could continue after the live performance of the piece had ended. The first piece in the performance was a solo improvisation by myself in which I tried to channel extreme solitude. As with the other pieces, a main motif was established and recorded that was used as the foundation of an ambiance representing the bedroom. This ambiance reappeared after the end of every musical interlude with the new motivic additions from each piece respectively. Finally, the recordings from the last piece in the set replaced the original foundation of the ambiance, recontextualizing all previous additions with new harmonic cohesion and consonance. All previously disparate and fleeting ideas then clicked into place.

I based many of the compositions around an instrument I created in Max MSP. The instrument is a polyphonic resynthesizer that takes the sound from a microphone or other audio input and analyzes the sound profile so that it can be actively recreated at any pitch (determined by a midi keyboard). This instrument provides a new texture and set of rules to compose with. Due to its dynamic nature, the resynthesizer can only make sound as long as there is sound being fed into it. I only used voice and saxophone, thus the resynthesizer only existed as long as our breath support did. Seeing as all other instruments in the performance were monophonic-minus one brief organ appearance-it meant that most live sounds only existed in breaths, similar to the representation of the motifs in the ambiance. The other reason I chose to integrate this instrument to such a degree was that I saw it as similar to the technology that afforded us being together when physical distance was necessary. Technologies for calling, messaging, and social posting do not exist without at least two people. Likewise, this instrument does not function without some form of collaboration between the keyboardist and the musician on the microphone.

Moments of Affinity refers to the fact that despite such sterile and distanced forms of communion, the nuance that defines how we socialize and know others adapts. Affinity is a timeless and immediate way of knowing someone. However, with this new technological structure it is easier to see different states of knowing through affinity. In this performance I try to feature the way that affinity outlives its afforded moment.

It takes a day of extremes for my solitude

To be the site of our touch.

Tracing what arcs from me to you

And back, your light stops short.

Is it only against the camera,

Against the microphone,

As I am against the wall behind me,

That we win out over time and space and all

The bits — also ourselves and also each other —

And do something very old very differently?

- Sam McVicker

World Premiere recorded at Bard College // Chapel of Holy Innocents // April 29, 2022

Keys / Voice - Tobias Hess

Violin - Mina DeVore

Voice - Madeline Moneypenny

Electronics - Jake Smith

Saxophone - Jonah Knapp-Wilson

Recording Engineer - Matt Macari, Josh Huang

Video / Art - Chaeli Knapp-Wilson