Contrafactum - ICMC 2024

Contrafactum is a virtual sound installation created for ICMC 2024 by Steven Leffue, Stewart Blackwood and Nicholas Drashner. Inspired by Qi Mengjie's piece Echoes from woodblocks at Peking Opera, Contrafactum is a site-specific, multi-channel, virtual installation synthesized in Pure Data and programmed in Unity. Using data from American wars abroad over the last 20 years, Contrafactum serves as a lens through which to grapple with the scope of destruction, and a space from which to consider the origins and effects of war. A “contrafactum” in choral music is the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music. Similarly, this piece keeps the original idea of sampling limited sources to produce washes of sound and rhythmic gestures while substituting a new expression/topic of examination.