With Flying Colors ft. Anita Chandavarkar "Tree Tones (Variation I)" (2025)

by Timothy ‘ill poetic’ Gmeiner, Ben Guerrette & Anita Chandavarkar

“Tree Tones (Variation I)” is an electroacoustic multimedia piece that aims to compose a journey through surrealist worlds of natural elements in which spatialized resonating 'raindrops' and noise-filtered 'wind' engage with improvisational bansuri flute and visual projection to explore the subtle beauties in human-nature-technology relationships. In it's employment of sound-manipulation, spatialization and real-time audiovisual mapping, this journey embraces the brilliance of technology as not an adversary, but a medium in which to prioritize humans' coexistence with the vastness of nature.

In this electroacoustic piece, resonators are randomly generated across 32 channels of spatial audio and simultaneously mapped to visual raindrops of the same randomized coordinates. As the resonating notes increase decay, they become more melodic, allowing for variations in pitch and noise harmonics. These musical qualities are in dialog with various parameters of a concentric circle to alters it's shape piece by piece pending note decay, noise filtering and melodic movements. This improvisation is joined by the flutist Anita Chandavarkar on bansuri, who dialogs directly with the electronic resonators. Essentially, the flute, electronics and visual elements are all informing each other in real-time. Visuals by Ben Guerrette.

Performance: This performance debuted on April 17, 2025 at UC-San Diego’s Experimental Theater. It was performed using a 32-channel soundsystem and full back wall projection screen. Real-time audio from vocal, acoustic and electronic elements were used to generate spatial and visual components of the performance. Conversely, visual projections informed performative aspects of the electronic music elements. With the goal of creating a truly dynamic and immersive experience, all multimodal aspects of this performance directly influenced the others in real-time.

This piece also operates as a stand-alone installation, available in 5.1, 7.1, octophonic, and 3HOA Ambisonic. It has been featured in the NIME Spatial Audio Gathering Conference 2026 in Leeds, UK and Calabria, Italy’s NOIS//E Festival 2025. Read more about the technical approach to spatialization and audiovisual mapping below:

Personnel: Timothy “ill poetic” Gmeiner - vocals, electronics // Ben Guerrette - visual director, visual designer // Anita Chandavarkar - flute

Contact: Timothy Gmeiner: tgmeiner@ucsd.edu | Ben Guerrette: ben.guerrette@gmail.com