Join us in this performance by Three-Body Problem, as part of the NI Science Festival. 

Three-Body Problem is an international trio of improvising musicians, consisting of Adam Pultz Melbye, Paul Stapleton and John Bowers. They work with new and traditional instruments (synthesizers, percussion, and double bass), self-made acoustic and electronic constructions, and bespoke software to transform sound live. They are particularly interested in how these very varied materials and forms of technology can be brought together to create dynamic, exciting and detailed soundworlds through collective improvisation.

Three-Body Problem is a new group who have had to grapple right from the start with the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected musicians - particularly those who perform live. As improvisers, they are used to sharing the space within which they play but, over the last year, they have begun to explore strategies for playing together at a distance. Their work treats the delays, distortions, and dropouts of live streaming technologies as part of the creative challenge they face making music and which, as improvisers, they must react to in the moment. Connecting Berlin, Belfast, and Newcastle, Three-Body Problem will stream sound between their studios as well as to the festival. In this way, they will improvise a web of sound with an uncertain emergent outcome - as Isaac Newton recognised happens whenever three bodies are on the scene together. Adam, Paul and John are linked through the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), Queen’s University Belfast where they are PhD candidate, Professor and Visiting Professor respectively.