looongplay was born in 2022 during a Shape+ and Nextones artistic residency in Valdossola, Italy, centered around Babau's nomination as Shape+ artists 2022/23. Initially conceived as a tutorial and tongue-in-cheek artistic text conceived by Babau, looongplay was built with a playful approach to music theory exploring the research on audio, listening and improvisation of scholars and musicians such as Pauline Oliveros, Micah Silver, Jace Clayton and Jem Finer. These speculations were combined with lighthearted inputs from video game habits and Zen philosophy teachings elaborating a practice of improvisation and composition which sees musical interaction as: an exploration conjuring secret places, hidden religions, and/or bonus portions. Music as a way to discover and show places and settings. Of finding out the shape of a given musical architecture as you go, and with that, possible ways to orient yourself in such invisible architectures.

From this residency week of interaction with musician Bienoise (Alberto Ricca) and fashion designer/artist Flora Rabitti (Atelier Florania) and a year of further development, the artists have crafted two long tracks in which they mixed computer music techniques with electroacoustic improvisation and sound manipulations which engage with these ideas.

Influenced by the approaches of computer music pioneers such as David Behrman, Carl Stone and John Bischoff, looongplay #1 & #2 were composed starting from two canons written by means of electronic arpeggios that were later expanded thanks to Max/MSP sound extraction patches. The patches took a portion of the initial audio, generating longer and longer sound patterns. From this initial unpredictable structure, the musicians have included further improvised overdubs including wind instruments (alto saxophone and toleat), field recordings, and additional synth lines. The result is an immersive two-piece work in which the architectures of the composition change continuously at a slow, unpredictable pace.