Violin Partita No. 2: A Journey Through Outer Space

This performance was created from Nikki Pet and her sister, oboist and informatics PhD student Kaitlin Pet, during the lockdown quarantines in 2020 and 2021. While very lucky to be quarantined with fellow musicians, the lack of duet repertoire for clarinet and oboe provided an obstacle--as a result, Kaitlin and Nikki decided to borrow from the violin world, arranging the Chaconne and Sarabande movements for clarinet and oboe duet. The remaining movements, already transcribed for clarinet in Ulysse Delècluse's "Quinze études", are performed solo by Nikki.

The animation, which is based on the idea of travelling from Earth further and further out through space, is a combination of hand-drawn (I-IV) and computer generated (V). The "constellations" featured in the Chaconne are actually computer-generated networks that represent the notes and phrase structure of the music, using NCBot, a software created by Kaitlin Pet as part of her research as an informatics PhD at Indiana University. Each star represents a different note, and each connecting line represents paths between adjacent notes. The overall formation within the constellation is generated from the phrase structures within the piece. Since NCBot was originally created as a visualization tool for MIDI scores, there was a big challenge coordinating the flashing star-notes and live music. By incorporating score-following technology and realtime signaling, a precise match between the animation and the music was able to be generated.