Program note

ChamberDestroy (AKA ChamberVania, FKA ChamberKill) explores ephemera, idioms, and connotations of early video game culture. The 8-bit world infiltrates the chamber ensemble world as instruments assume 8-bit and pixelated characteristics. Sections of the work are duel/battle-based music: ensemble vs ensemble. Puzzles need to be completed, levels are attained, 2D and 3D music are both expressed on screen via graphics and in the ensemble writing and alterations to instruments. The ensemble performs on custom-made instruments to evoke the infiltration through the 4th/5th wall into the chamber music world. 

Aspects of the piece are structured as a quasi percussion concerto for two percussionists where the concerto aspect is expressed using video game character behaviour. The percussionists physically play each other as instruments and, during a cadenza, engage in an ‘acoustic video game’ where the idioms of game culture are at their most primordial: sprite vs. sprite.

The piece celebrates the notion of ‘abandonware’. The games, sprites and avatars are not functional; they are error prone, flawed and half finished. This references the origins of video game creation and grieves their ‘un-usefulness’ in the digital age - they are now in landfills, lost, and forgotten. Nonfunctional in the consumer sense but functional exclusively as art.

-Nicole Lizée