Uncertainty: Presence/Absence - "Missing" - Memorialising
I had become interested in memorials and mourning objects following a visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. I attended the Said Adrus: Without an Empire Symposium at Chelsea CA. This explored themes of commemoration and mourning and ghosting the archive, with a cultural emphasis (TrAIN) research centre. These were influences when I was starting to make "Raptio" in Unit the ritual refolding of dresses of the lost girls of Chibok.
Presence and absence - and "Missing": uncertainty, the area between two states, or rather, two states coexisting:
Moving to sound
Uncertainty, the area between two states, or rather, two states coexisting. I started exploring the power of sound to express the "complex moment" (David Toop) and the imaginative space as described in the collaged audio journeys of Janet Cardiff. In Park15 I used sound to express this feeling in the outdoor setting, where the sound of voices could be at once familiar (children playing, stories being told, rain and birdsong) and unfamiliar Ethiopian choral singing in Cannizaro Park.
However, in more recent months I have also become interested in using sound in Park 16 (It is the rain's moments I borrow for this listening) in a more formalistic way ("composing") in pitch and rhythm influenced by modern composers but using domestic objects - coffee mugs/cups.
The contemporary composer Jonty Harrison produced a piece called “Klang” in which he used the sounds of domestic saucepans and casseroles. Composer Michael Gatt used the sounds of church bells from different village churches around Leicestershire in his piece “Les Cloches”. Nils Frahm’s album Felt used the quiet damped down sounds of a piano with its hammers muffled by felt.
I also recently experienced Susan Phillipsz’s “War Damaged Musical Instruments” in the Duveen Galleries where real mourning was heard.
Steve Reich Drumming Into/out of phase influenced me the most - he has drumming going in and out of phase, and I used this idea by overlaying tracks of limited numbers of tones obtained from groups of 3 mugs.
I am intrigued by the physical effect this has. Steve Reich also says "Listen to your instrument" i.s. if it's mugs you are using, listen to them.
Canons: Repetitions and multiples
Composer Jurg Frey's discussion of canons is fascinating and also pointed me towards the idea that an ancient structure can still be going and have considerable resonance: : Frey uses silences as part of a canon:"...as I walked through the streets, I saw canon structures everywhere in daily life - it's not just a musical phenomenon. And I started to research the possibilities between openness and strict writing". I thought of the tea break routine as a kind of canon in "It is the rain's moments I borrow for this listening".
Also this was a more intimate piece of work using objects from the personal objects of the library staff, and followed from the more personal voice of Let me have this dust's resin embedded objects. I am interested in developing further work in sound.