Söderberg Quin, Beata: In the Web

The seed for In the Web began growing in my mind during the pandemic, when disinformation on social media exploded into a full-blown societal crisis. I was struck by how this rapid-fire circulation of short, often false or brutally oversimplified snippets spread like wildfire. Complex matters of politics, science and

religion were reduced to soundbites that confused people, sparked aggressive conflict between groups, and even severed bonds between friends and families.
I started writing the first movement of In the Web as a kind of dark, confusing yet seductive Tarantella, with a wink to the anonymous spiders spinning their threads across the internet.

As I composed (using my notation software), I began to think about all the curious functions that define our computerized existence. I saved files ‘in the cloud’, obediently accepted all cookies, lost documents in the jungle of icons cluttering my desktop, and, after a bug incident, had to reinstall new software.
The possibilities unlocked by computer programmers with these brilliant functions far outweigh the frustrations that inevitably arise when they’re handled by a twentieth-century dinosaur like me!

I love all the witty and quirky ways that old words are repurposed for new functions in the computer world. That’s why, in my imagination, each movement was inspired equally by the old and the new meaning of the words of its title.
I believe that each listener will spin their own images and feelings out of what they hear – will weave their own meaning ‘into the web’.
Music, after all, is a space where no algorithms determine what we should think or feel, where we’re free to create our own connections – our own webs of understanding.
//Beata Söderberg Quin