~plicity (2009)

~plicity is a 24-minute audiovisual work created by localStyle. The specific instrumental ensemble can be variable as long as it minimally includes four live musicians plus one veejay. The musicians must play a combination of instruments that cover the ranges given in the score. The work was written first for the Tel Aviv-based ensemble Musica Nova, and subsequently received its US premiere in December 2010 by the dal niente ensemble in Chicago.

Two tectonic plates — the North American (moving to the west) and the Eurasian (moving to the east) — form the Icelandic Rift; they are separating at the rate of approximately two millimeters annually.
The underlying theme of ~plicity is that of inexorable forces (such as psychological/social/political turbulence and plate tectonics) pulling people (and continents) apart, counterbalanced by a reciprocal yearning to keep pulling together, build bridges across divides, and to strengthen community.

The title is an indication of the complexity of these relationships and of the strategies for addressing them: implicit, explicit, complicit, duplicity, multiplicity, implication, duplication, replication, etcetera.

The score itself is a template for contingency, presenting the performers with recurrent windows of opportunity to assess and reassess their relationships with each other, shift allegiances, and to map out a course through changing terrain.

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