“I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.”
― John Cage

INSTANCES is a conceptual project about the presumed correctness in the use of computer programmes and the way we comply with it as users. In a world where the technology we depend on is designed to be as toned down, generic and inoffensive as possible, Sabrina Rodríguez cuts through the surface of the digital experience and exposes what’s truly inside.

This is the age where the currency we pay with is our own data. We deliberately ignore its possible impact and the threats behind it, in exchange for a comfortable use of an array of tools that, without a real understanding of its possible repercussions, are defining us as users who merely obey specific guidelines. INSTANCES is a project about disobedience.

The sound pieces that shape this album were made with free music production software, however not in the way it is intended to be used. Sabrina starts this complex process by taking the raw data from the executable files of those programmes, and transforming it into sound through databending processes. This is followed by the conversion of those sounds to MIDI to finally, backed by the use of piano samples and sound effects, editing and producing them on a DAW. The result is an impossible avant-garde piano music experience that goes beyond human capacity, reminiscent of random music compositions made by experimental music pioneers such as John Cage.

Sabrina moves forward in her creative process by producing a brand-new and different sound of her glitch music. In her own words, “glitch art is not just an aesthetic, but a set of principles for practice and experimentation, where we deliberately break the rules by doing things in ways that, while some might consider erroneous, take us to unexpected and unexplored territories”. The premise is the conception of piano pieces that seem as aleatory as possible, avoiding the recreation of typical human compositions; creating brand-new sounds out of data inputs. While, as an audience, we might inevitably believe we are listening to an organic human-made piece, this is the result of our natural sense to recognise familiar patterns that give us comfort. The desperate search for meaning in the chaos that surrounds us.

INSTANCES challenges both the pre-established rules of instruction manuals, established guidelines, conventions, terms of use… and that false security blanket feeling of the already known when obeying to the algorithm. INSTANCES deliberately embraces glitch and error as a reliable source of creative freedom.

Información en español: www.sabrinarguez.com/post/instances