Alva Noto

The first volume, published in 2021, was originally commissioned for Oval, a choreography directed by Richard Siegal and performed by the Staatsballett Berlin. However, this composition goes beyond the strictly choreographic by drawing inspiration from astrophysics, science fiction and cinema. Noto proposes differences in scale through sound, as suggested by the very titles of the pieces themselves, whose references range from minuscule physics phenomena, such as hadrons, subatomic particles formed by quarks, to incommensurable phenomena like black holes. All these allusions are articulated by notions of spatiality and gravity. The first volume of HYbr:ID includes deep bass, dilated rhythmic foundations, dark sounds and a production that tends to create vast spatialities. In this way, it works as a starting point for an aural conception that allows both for a display of movement and meditative introspection. 

In the second volume, published in 2023, this dialectic between movement and meditation finds its course in the concepts of resonance and elasticity that Noto draws from the four-dimensional spacetime models of mathematician Hermann Minkowski. Somber spaces become intricate and structured through elaborate synthetic processes and complex rhythmic patterns that range from clicks to percussions with a metallic timbre. HYbr:ID II was commissioned for Ectopia, a choreography also directed by Richard Siegal and performed by the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. This staging includes the piece Shooting into the Corner (2008–2009) by Anish Kapoor. As such, it shares the multi-disciplinary logic of the first volume, synthesized in sounds of digital minimalism.

The third and most recent installment, HYbr:ID III, inspired by Noh, a form of lyrical drama that arose in fourteenth-century Japan. Noh, which dates back to the Muromachi period (1333–1573), emerged as a series of practices during peasant rituals and dances, usually held outdoors or near Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. In this volume, the presence of Noh emerges as an evocation that is not merely the disarticulation of its sonic elements, but an exploration of the more subtle aspects that constitute the theatrical staging.

In the first pieces, titled “Noh Talk,” “Sync Dark” and “Noh Human,” there’s the feeling of an overture, evoking that time the shite (or lead actors) spends in the katagami-no-ma, the mirrored room where they prepare their masks and costumes before crossing the bridge that takes them to the stage. This mirror is not merely a space where they observe their reflections, but a place to cast off the self in order to become another: an old man, a noblewoman, a demon. This transition seems to be announced through the sharp flashes and percussive patterns that reverberate in the deepest and most enveloping thickness of the bass. Noto’s electronic production creates precise assemblages that evoke sensations of integration and disintegration. The subsequent pieces situate us in those moments of changing nature, in that precise instant a sound mutates or dilates to become something else; an interlude that appears as an iridescence, a nebula, a tunnel.

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Through a notation system created by the artist, the compositions of the three volumes of HYbr:ID become diagrams that, like maps, orient or disorient those listening. Electronic music utilizes ranges that are unclassifiable within the paradigm of classical notation structures. The systems developed by the artist do not solely provide a technical reading of these compositions, they have also imbued them with a poetic dimension. In each codification, we can find images that create enveloping narratives, ascending or descending but never linear. Moments of saturation and dispersion are represented in different ways: spheres of steam rising diagonally to become a haze of reverb, a sailboat drifting off into the night, basslines in reverse. The images that arise in HYbr:ID are detached from what originated them, and the mysteries they hold are spatialized, creating disorientations between inside and outside, between the technical and the spectral.

HYbr:ID I, 2021
1. HYbr:ID oval hadron I, 2’ 40’’
2. HYbr:ID oval hadron II, 4’ 48’’
3. HYbr:ID oval blackhole, 7’ 29’’
4. HYbr:ID oval random, 2’ 59’’
5. HYbr:ID oval spin, 7’ 08’’
6. HYbr:ID oval asimoo, 5’ 26’’
7. HYbr:ID oval collider, 6’ 19’’
8. HYbr:ID oval p-dance, 4’ 16’’
9. HYbr:ID oval noise, 4’ 00’’

HYbr:ID II, 2023
1. HYbr:ID Ectopia Environment, 11’ 44’’
2. HYbr:ID Ectopia Elastic 1, 8’ 16’’
3. HYbr:ID Ectopia Quarks Minus, 6’ 55’’
4. HYbr:ID Ectopia Removing Infinities, 6’ 03’’
5. HYbr:ID Ectopia Elastic 2, 7’ 54’’
6. HYbr:ID Ectopia Interacting, 8’ 25’’
7. HYbr:ID Ectopia Radiation Mechanics, 10’ 43’’
8. HYbr:ID Ectopia Field 1, 4’ 05’’
9. HYbr:ID Ectopia Singularity, 10’ 00’’
10. HYbr:ID Ectopia Gravitation, 3’ 29’’

HYbr:ID III, 2024
1. HYbr:ID Noh Talk, 6’ 31’’
2. HYbr:ID Sync Dark, 4’56’’
3. HYbr:ID Noh Human, 8’19’’
4. HYbr:ID Sync Inter, 5’ 32’’
5. HYbr:ID Collective Open, 5’19’’
6. HYbr:ID Obsessive Behaviour Day, 4’ 30’’
7. HYbr:ID Obsessive Behaviour Night, 5’ 17’’
8. HYbr:ID Para Contamination, 5’ 08’’
9. HYbr:ID Script Solitude, 6’ 26’’
10.  HYbr:ID Script Sacre Drone, 4’ 36’’
11.  HYbr:ID Script Broken Conversation, 3’56’’
12.  HYbr:ID Rehuman, 4’ 42’’
13.  HYbr:ID Épilogue, 2’ 53’’

Looped multichannel sound installation 
190’

Artist: Alva Noto
Curators: Guillermo García Pérez, Mariel Vela García
Spatialization: Tobías Álvarez