Spring of 2020 was a greatly challenging time, a period of intense confusion and anxiety. The severe lockdown measures taken in Spain and my hometown of Madrid due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forbid non-essential workers from leaving their homes, forced me into a period of profound self-reflection. With the world stopped in its tracks and with live music indefinitely on hold, the idea of writing music for the concert hall as I was then doing did not make sense to me anymore. I pushed away my ongoing projects and, after a period of creative block, I started envisioning the creation of a new work, an interactive sonic environment which, despite lockdown and its limitations, despite the distance and closed borders, could be explored by people from their own homes through their electronic devices.

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Coming across Northern Irish bassoonist Olivia Palmer-Baker’s fascinating explorations of her instrument inspired me to use her magical sounds at the very core of my work. The first attempt at realizing this idea resulted in the electronic stereo piece A landscape for Olivia (2020), an approximation project that provided me some valuable insight on the soundworld I wished to work with. Some months after the completion of A landscape, having gained some basic knowledge of Processing and having received new sounds from Olivia, I set myself the goal of building a prototype of my intended interactive environment. The result of this was A garden for Olivia (2021), an interactive audiovisual project intended to be experienced and explored from people’s own laptops; a sort of virtual installation or, one could say, a software instrument in which the pressing of different keys by the user generates visual and sonic content.