Fadeferra V.2 is a video game piece. It is a first artifact of my ongoing research/creation project on using a video game as a vehicle for musical performance. It brings together many ideas that have been a result of my own experience with live performances and installations utilizing a computer, my interest in conveying information in the context of musical improvisation, graphical music scores, designing interactive artworks that are simple to approach while providing a rich aesthetic experience.

Fadeferra is a 20 - 30 minutes (sliding scale, adaptable to context of presentation) video game piece, loosely inspired by the concept of game pieces. It consists of a performance in which I interact with a video game via an electric guitar where the interaction shapes the unfolding of the audio-visual experience. The video game is inspired by asemic writing, (animated) graphic scores and a video games genre called "walking simulatiors". The visual environment acts, in some way, as a graphic score, it allows me to orient myself in the piece. Musical gestures cause interactions between various virtual elements which, in turn, produce synthetic sound or process the live guitar. The piece unfolds in front of the audience's eyes and ears.

Here's a (a little dated now…) video from my residency at Matralab:

And a little more recent audio recording:

• Fadeferra(august 2019)

Why V.2? I started working on this piece in the fall/winter of 2017. In the meantime, I was invited to participate in a compilation of drone pieces and by that time I already had most of the grunt work done, both in terms of programming, synthesis, and composition foundation. So I used the early prototype of the video game piece to record the submitted track. Since then, the software, the "game" mechanics and overall piece evolved but it's still a Fadeferra.

A more recent version of the performance is here.

The original VR room might be still alive here: https://hubs.mozilla.com/2SHM5yd/complex-splendid-barbecue

Performance of Fadeferra requires the following elements:

• at minimum a stereo sound system. However, the piece scales up to an arbitrary number of speakers.
• some means of displaying the piece, i.e. a beamer and a suitable surface to project on.

This piece uses the following open source technologies:

• Blender
• Godot game engine
• OSC communication plugin for Godot
• SATIE (Spatial Audio Toolkit for Immersive Environments) (my dayjob)

• Audio Art Festival 2020 in Kraków, November 13, 2020, 6PM (UTC+1) (It can still be experienced in Hubs space or as video)
• March 24, 2019, 8:00PM - Linux Audio Conference 2019 - CCRMA (Stanford, CA)
• March 28, 2019, 7:30PM - C1 - Portland, OR
• March 31, 2019, 9:00PM - Substation, Seattle, WA
• August 22-25, Ottawa, ON at the 21st century guitar symposium