The final presentation format at RMC for this artistic research programme is a concert with a duration of 60 minutes.
I chose to play a solo concert. At the beginning of my research programme I had originally intended to focus on playing in various constellations to explore how some of the approaches I was investigating at the time might work in different situations. Then came Covid-19, and I fairly quickly decided that I would focus on working solo for the remainder of the course, since all the unknowns of how the virus would affect our lives and for how long, didn't make it easy to plan for working with several new constellations. So, for the final concert, I chose to play solo as well.
The music was partly improvised and partly composed. I created an overall structure for the 60 minute duration of the concert, a graphic score with a number of fixed structural pivot points, similar to a graphic score I made for one of the presentations at RMC. The aim was to play 60 minutes of music with no breaks. As for the pacing of the musical development during the concert, I had decided to allow spurs of silences to occur, if they happened to occur, and to do my best to make them the kind that keeps the audience focused and enjoy the fragility of the silence together. And well, if it breaks it breaks, the silence.
As I have discussed in the part of my exposition concerning Sound and Space, I’m interested in decentralising the performative space. I aim to open up the space in a manner that invites the audience to explore the space sonically and visually as the concert is unfolding. Explore by moving around, if they wish to do so, or maybe to just find their own preferred place in the space to enjoy the concert, if they prefer that. Specifically, I wish to depart from the classic scenario of a seated audience facing the performer on a stage and a stereo speaker front producing the sound picture.
By using the omni-directional speaker set up I’ve been working with and making the room itself play a part in the music by exploring it’s inherent architectural sonic qualities, it's free for the audience to choose their own listening direction and position. Moving around in the space during the concert could enhance the experience of the contribution of the space, of the space becoming tactile. But it is up to each individual member of the audience how they wish to place themselves in the performance space. In order to decentralize the space visually, I made use of the glass prism videos I described in the part of this exposition called Working Methods. I had 6 videos projected on to screens suspended asymmetrically from the ceiling, in a pattern that offered no singular visual direction. You would have to look around to get a view of all the screens, you couldn't see them all at once. Each projection had their own specific color, and these colors were the only light source in the room, so the color of the room would change depending on the direction your eyes were looking. I set up my instrument on the floor and thus was in eye height level with the audience, with the omni-directional speaker on a stand at 2.20 meters height.
To underline the frame provided by RMC for the final presentation, a concert with a duration of 60 minutes, I put a large hour glass timed to exactly 60 minutes on the table along with my musical objects, lit up by a small lamp. As the audience had entered the room and settled in I bid them welcome and turned the hour glass. The last grain of sand ran through the hour glass exactly as the last note I had played died out. I also made use of a reel to reel two-track tape recorder, with 60 minutes of sound that I recorded in the depth of a forest during the first Covid-19 lockdown periodon track 1, and a compilation of audio from recorded interviews with artists I took inspiration from during my research (Conlon Nancarrow, Nicolas Slonimsky, Laurie Anderson, Morton Feldman, William Borroughs and Henry Chopin made it onto the tape) on track 2. I pressed start on the tape recorder just after turning the hour glass, and via a small mixer I had the option of blending sound from it into the music I was performing at any time. The visual aspect of turning the hour glass and starting the tape recorder was done in a manner as to give the audience members a feeling of experiencing a ritual that was about to start.
The concert took place June 21st 2021, so while the Covid-19 pandemic was still an issue. It was out of the question to have a completely open space for the audience to move around in due the Covid-19 regulations at the time, so it was therefore decided to put chairs in a semi-circle around my setup on the floor, in order to allow members of the audience to sit with the proper distance between them according to the Covid-19 regulations. This somewhat compromised the full experience of the performance space i had envisioned, but as an improvising performer and human being, I of course adapted to the situation and the music transcended the situation.
Below is the technical rider I provided for the concert, pictured here to give a clear visual impressions of the spatialisation of the room.
1. Me and my instrument.
2. Omni-directional speaker.
3. Small mixer to control subs.
4. Amplifier.
5. 4 video projectors.
6. 4 screens.
7. Mirrors on stands.
8. Lamps. Subtle lighting probably in red. The videos ought to produce enough light in itself, so are optional, in case the projectors provided are not powerful enough for the task at hand. We will find out for certain during the production rehearsal.
The dots represent the arrangement in which the audience will be seated, but not the number of them…
