Musique instrumentale d'ensemble (Ensemble instrumental mixte de 10 à 25 instruments)

In this piece, for 11 musicians, difference, sound-symmetry, tactility, repetition and the nexus of unity and multiplicity is explored. Objects are unities and yet they always comprise multiple parts, as well as constitute to another multiplicity. There are two properties of objects: extensive and intensive. On the microscale there is repetition, a simultaneous repetition or a static/vertical repetition (intensity), and on the timescale there is difference being repeated (extensity). Furthermore there is a tactile approach to these objects by the means of imaginative touch-sound, the hand becoming the ear, i.e. how their surfaces are encountered, or touched, through the ear - surfaces because that is the realm of the hand, thus not their inner-dimensions (which remain unknown as such). Depth is therefore transferred to the temporal dimension, meaning that distance becomes juxtaposition in time, a through-movement. Hierarchy of surfaces is unstable from this viewpoint and even eliminated. This instability of foreground without background is the haptic encounter. Perspectives are taken but without distance, meaning that another perspective on an object gives us a different arrangement in time, a different through-movement. There is also an inversion of the perspective point; the point which is changeable becomes stationary and what is being perceived is in motion and moved through that point, in quantifiable portions. In this way the instruments become receivers of information/energy.

The title refers to the plural form of the smallest unit of any physical entity (quantum) involved in an interaction. Quantum is the beginning of quantization, separation, distinction and therefore difference. At this scale everything is repeated in order to be solid, and yet, if you increase the resolution of the senses everything becomes insubstantial.