From the liner notes:
Universes of multiple independent nows, each with its own synthesized past and projected future—perhaps this might be a useful way to imagine the grainy fabric of existence.
Nows are the places where actions are initiated.
This musical project is a collection of convergences created through a
unique collaborative process: co-creative sound correspondences. Propelled by Sarah Belle Reid’s and David Rosenboom’s history of concurrent investigations into the origins of multiple times, conceptual spaces and notations, adaptive instrument interfaces, sonic imaging and improvisation, and subtle perspectives on lived musical nows, Reid and Rosenboom were in the process of developing ideas for duo performance and recording projects, when, unexpectedly, our world was confronted by radical challenges brought on by nature’s ability to catch humanity off guard. A pandemic dematerialized the primacy of events. Gatherings were exchanged for remote interactions.
New questions began to emerge: what is the meaning of co-presence, if only experienced in isolation? How can we cultivate, consider, and collect spontaneous, shared nows, without being temporally or spatially co-present?
NOWS emerged from an innovative answer, a new musical co-process.