Enrico Malatesta performs Eliane Radigue’s 'Occam Ocean - Occam XXVI' - London, 2023.3.1

Enrico Malatesta
performs Eliane Radigue’s 'Occam Ocean - Occam XXVI'
(originally written for him)
2023.3.1
Cafe OTO, London
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www.enricomala...
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OCCAM OCÉAN
This piece was inspired by a large mural diagram like an emakimono, discovered by chance in 1973 at the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles. It showed the „spectrum of electromagnetic waves“ moving from the largest measurable to the smallest of known wavelengths, one vertiginously beyond 1011 the distance of the earth to the sun, and one below 108 THz of a Gamma ray. Out of this large spectrum, there exists a miniscule zone from slightly less than 100 Hz to slightly more than 10 KHz that the ears of certain species populating the planet earth, have transformed into „sounds“. Beyond this, are wavelengths perceived as „light“ and others, adapted into numerous highly useful applications integrated into our daily life. It was copied on site onto several pieces of paper, perhaps with mistakes, and later graciously transcribed by Marie-Agnes Blond and Stephane Roux’s skilled hands for an article that appeared in the Leonardo Music Journal, giving me the opportunity to bring it up-to-date and mould it into the „spirit“ of this new work.
Next, came an interesting resonance with several of my current reflections, somewhat dissociated from their theological basis, on William of Ockham and his famous analysis called „Ockham’s Razor“. Expressed most succinctly in his own words: „The simplest, the best“, it has been adapted and used by numerous artist-creators.
Finally, was the distant recollection of a science fiction story I read ages ago concerning the existence of a mythical ocean. Only the title remains etched in my memory, „Occam’s Razor“, thus explaining the origin of the spelling adopted in the end. It seems in fact that the Ocean with its multiple waves can allow us to get, symbolically, closer to a rather large spectrum of vibrating undulations, reaching from the great deep swells to the wavelets of beautiful summer days. This explains the „structure“ of the overall project.
Our personal work mode is also based on an individual „image“ illustrated and evoked within each solo. This provides the essential, projecting an „image“ that allows us through words and what they evoke, to establish a system of communication as the work is being elaborated and to direct its meaning through an intuitive-instinctive mode touched with reason, to the very nature of music, there where no system of musical notation can be applied.
--- Éliane Radigue, 2012

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