WHAT'S HER @?

WHAT’S HER @? started from a conceptual connection with #sweetjane, a project by Andrea Bowers that explores multiple perspectives regarding a 2021 case in Steubenville, Ohio, in which several young athletes sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl; the incident was shared and celebrated by the perpetrators on social media. Similarly, this piece denounces the February 2025 case of sexual assault — followed by the similar digital sharing and celebration — by three Portuguese influencers.

In the foreground there’s an instrumental metaphor: the string trio represents the aggressors and the clarinet represents the victim, as the wind instrument is constantly out of sync, overshadowed, and/or separated from the trio. On a connotative level, the micro- and macrostructures are governed by alphanumeric sequences relating to the TikTok accounts and personal usernames of the influencers, transposed to music parameters using cryptographic techniques, as well as Morse and Binary code.

Following the thematic exploration of this digital toxicity – generated by and resulting from the dominance of social media and influencer culture among young people – part of the musical material was also generated by ChatGPT, using prompts and inputs such as: “rewrite me this feminine chord progression to better reflect my alpha nature”, “not that sensible shit, remember I'm an alpha”, or “again and again”. There are also several quotations throughout the score – for example, in the opening sections, with technical and timbral references to Black Angels by George Crumb, or in the “the panic” / “the vomit” sections, with both melodic and poetic quotations from Radiohead’s Exit Music. Lastly, the title is another allusion to toxic masculinity in the social media universe, while reflecting a pursuit and objectification by digital users towards a population that is (almost) exclusively female.

premiere • 2025-07-25 @ COMPLEJO CULTURAL SAN FRANCISCO, PLASENCIA/ES •

event • KLEXOS NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL •

SPÓŁDZIELNIA MUZYCZNA CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE

bass clarinet • TOMASZ SOWA •

violin • BARBARA MGLEJ •

viola • PAULINA WOŚ •

cello • JAKUB GUCIK •