Inventions For Radio

The piece was created with his ‘Sonic Shuffle’ app, a composing and remixing tool where each composition can be endlessly transformed with real time actions and choices or with algorithmic automation or with a combination of both.
"Transcade" 2014 dur. 59’57” (World Premiere)
In "Transcade" the Sonic Shuffle application software is fed with pre-recorded material derived from manipulations and generation of synthetic sonic processes and filed recordings captured in Sicily (Italy), African deserts and coasts, Thailand and Malaysia. The author has then interacted with the software in order to compose and orchestrate such material giving shape to Transcade, a one hour long aural experience.

This composition has been designed with ‘Sonic Shuffle The App’, an interactive application entirely conceived and programmed by Sciajno; a composing and remixing tool where each composition can be endlessly transformed with real time actions and choices or with algorithmic automation or with a combination of both. This application software has been available (it is now sold out) as a music and software release in a limited edition of 50 specially designed USB memory supports. All details about the project and the release can be found at www.sonicshuffle.net  
This application software is itself derived from an original composition by the author titled Sonic Shuffle. It consists of a conducted graphic score based on a specially designed deck of cards for an ensemble of laptop computers or other portable electronic/digital equipment. The substantial difference between the original score and ‘The App’ is that the sonic processes defined in the score are not interpreted live, but have been pre-recorded and created ‘a priori’. Another difference is that all the functions physically controlled by the conductor of the original score are left to the composer and orchestrator, who can operate through the specific software interface.
Here is how Sciajno explains his idea:
“I transformed my Sonic Shuffle score into a software application, an interface that actually allows the user to act as the ‘conductor’ of the original score to perform and control it in real time by composing and orchestrating the pre-recorded material. Due to the way I conceived the score and therefore the application, the organization of the recordings is also subjected to a probabilistic and aleatoric process. The diversity of organization and distribution of the parts in every performance will strongly impact the shape and the character of the composition.”
=Domenico Sciajno=
Born in Torino, Italy, now based in Palermo, Sicily Domenico Sciajno studied ‘Instrumental and Electronic Composition’ and Double bass in the ‘Royal Conservatory’ of Den Haag in Holland.
Since 2004 he has been teaching Electronic Music in italian Conservatories of music (Trapani, Roma, Torino).
Sciajno is a long-lasting experimentalist involved in the world of digital music and arts. His interest for improvisation combined with the influences of an academic education brought his research to the creative possibilities for interaction between acoustic instruments, indeterminacy factors and their live processing by electronic devices or computers. The wide spectrum of his experience brings him very close to the concept of performance, where he uses texts and electronics in combination with a choreographic use of the scene space and the projection of visuals made by himself.
His audiovisual compositions and performances bring visual and sonic material together using a completely personal and innovative perspective. In Sciajno’s language, field recording and computer-generated processes coexist in synergetic relations, opening the doorway to an imaginary world where complexity and simplicity alternate and combine in a mesmerizing and abstract symbiosis.
From 1992 he has been present as interpreter, improviser and composer in major international music and media arts festivals like, among others, Ars Electronica (Linz), Transmediale (Berlin), Donaueshingen Miziktagen (Germany), Musique Action (Nancy), Experimental Intermedia (New York), Electrofringe (Newcastle-Australia), Gaudeamus Music (Amsterdam), CalArts Festival (Los Angeles).
He gave lectures and workshops in some of the most renowed and qualified faculties/institutions worldwide, among others: Ecole des beaux arts (Nantes), D.A.M.S. (Torino), Polytechnic Institute (Troy NY), Harvestwork (New York), SAIC art school (Chicago), Sidney Conservatorium, RMIT Univ. (Melbourne), Royal College of Art (London), DMARK Univ. (Limerick), CalArts (Los Angeles).
www.sciajno.net
www.sonicshuffle.net