Ballet Stochastique, 2025
Adaptation, Composition, Improvisation and Poetry
Ballet Stochastique is a transmedia experiment that realises a living dialogue between past and
present by adapting Geroge Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique — a landmark work of industrial-era
automated music — through analogue and digital circuits. Here, a player piano’s internal suction —
its very ‘breathing’ — becomes an active participant, shaping and reshaping the score through a
network of stochastic processes. The composition is improvisational, meaning it resists fixed form,
unfolding as an interplay of chance and control that mirrors the entanglement of historical
automation and contemporary generative systems. Situated within a posthuman framework, Ballet
Stochastique gestures towards the spectral presence of machines exploring how automation
resonates with cultural histories of disembodiment and displacement.
Ballet Stochastique is in Collaboration with Ruth Clemens
Dr. Clemen’s project ‘Posthuman Music Machines’ studies literature and culture from the age of the player piano (1896-1929) in order to understand how literary engagements with this new media technology shaped and were shaped by the wider cultural attitudes to automated music.
Dr. Clemen’s project ‘Posthuman Music Machines’ studies literature and culture from the age of the player piano (1896-1929) in order to understand how literary engagements with this new media technology shaped and were shaped by the wider cultural attitudes to automated music.
Impresion
Ballet Stochastique, 2025
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Ballet Stochastique, 2025
Impression
Ballet Stochastique, 2025
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Ballet Stochastique, 2025
Impression
Ballet Stochastique, 2025
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Ballet Stochastique, 2025
