Truisms is a setting of selected quotations from Jenny Holzer's Truisms, a collection of 272 terse statements that were first postered around the streets of New York in 1977. The statements are a commentary on contemporary society, rife with sarcasm, contradiction and poignance.

This work uses the computer to follow the spoken texts and illuminate the musical qualities of language. The computer records the music that is generated as accompaniment to the reader and then creates a conversation with the statements. With the exception of the slow chords played underneath each statement, all the music is generated in real-time by the computer, including the form, meaning which statements are read and the times that they are read.

Jenny Holzer's Truisms appears in Blasted Allegories, Brian Wallis, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, pp. 103-111.

Performed by:
Ian Miceal Gallagher (premiere)