Société Réaliste: Universal Anthem, performance at the OFF biennale, Budapest, 2015

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  Société Réaliste: Universal Anthem | 2013

In the summer 2013, Société Réaliste in cooperation with computer engineer Frédéric Mauclère, has developed a software calculating average musical notations from MIDI files. The artists used this new software to calculate the average national anthem of the 193 member states of the United Nations. It is known that although the UN is an organization born from the union of nations according to its name, does not have an anthem, a song which is going beyond the nation states self-image and self-definition. The software, of course, carries out the operation by decomposing track by track all these anthems. It means that the very first note is the average of all the 193 first notes, the second note is the average of all the 193 second notes, etc. until the last note of the longest anthem. The universal anthem containing every anthem is born as such, but being rendered only out of machinic algorithms, it remains unplayable by traditional instruments and living people. In December 2013, at the exhibition space tranzit.ro/Cluj, after arranging the algorithmic score with composer Cora Miron, Société Réaliste has attempted the inevitable human interpretation: the Agile orchestra, under conductor Dalma Lidia Kovács, has performed the composition generated for 12 instruments. In the exhibition, besides the Universal Anthem interpreted and performed by the orchestra, the scores written by the computer program for 12 instruments were also on view. The contradiction and incompatibility between the performed and generated universal anthem shows the nature of the project, the instrumentalization of political representation, even orchestral, according to any cultural formations.