Vicky Chow

Vicky Chow: “Surface Image” by Tristan Perich

“I am interested in the threshold between the abstract world of computation and the physical world around us. Scored for traditional instrumentation combined with on-stage speakers, my compositions with 1-bit electronics are duets between musicians and code, exploring an interest in foundations of electronic sound. The simplest electronic tones can be created by sending on and off pulses of electricity to a speaker, creating an oscillation at the desired pitch. These pulses are represented digitally in binary as 1-bit information, where a 1 or 0 signifies the corresponding electrical state. When working with 1-bit waveforms, data is equivalent to sound; no higher-level translation is needed.