Poly-Free, 2022, Eurorack modular synthesizer, Western Electric 15A Replica, power amplifier
MAAT Museum, Lisbon
"Every sound was created by Carminho singing the Harry Partch scale note by note using different “articulations” (aaaahs, taaaaas, eeeehs, etc.). I broke all of the notes down individually and it left me with a kit of one-shots that I used for this piece.
— João Pimenta Gomes on his work Doppelgänger (with Carminho and Harry Partch), 2021
“João Pimenta Gomes renders music through synthesizers that he programmes himself, also using them to decompose the human voice. He creates scores that define rules but which also allow successive moments of improvisation, while simultaneously creating self-regulated programmes that allow him to prolong his performances infinitely.
His work inserts us into a different time and space to that we traditionally devise for the production and listening of music. They are defined by the desire to think about his pieces in terms of spaces that precede them (and whose conditions he has no intention to change – thus they cannot be regarded as sound works) and for ambiguous time limited by the duration of each performance, but released from these limits by the “generative” solution that outlives them (as the memory of images outlives the moment of immediate contemplation). In other words, space and time are marked by his experience in the field of the visual and plastic arts.”
Excerpt of Real Sound by João Pinharanda
Photos: Vasco Stocker de Vilhena
