Appendix 3 – Other Related Works
Throughout the whole time frame of the PhD I was conscious to allow the reflections and learnings from all of my artistic activities relating to opera creation and performance, to influence the subsequent work I produced. The impact of the COVID restrictions right at the beginning of my data collection stage also meant that I had to seek to broaden the kind of work I was producing, so as to be able to work within the lockdown restrictions. This meant that I became involved in some projects which will not be used as key case studies in this PhD, but which nevertheless contributed greatly to the ongoing development of my method and understanding of the efficacy of my creative process and aims.
AP 3.2 In Response to Naum Gabo’s Linear Construction in Space No. 1
The creation of the mini operatic performance on the work of Naum Gabo for the Barber Institute in March 2020 also impacted on choices I made for future works. Philosophically, researching Gabo’s work and manifesto led me to rethink my own approach to science and the presentation of knowledge to an audience through theatre. The libretto for this work can be seen below.
Thinking about Gabo in relation to Aristotle’s concept of form helped me to consider the way in which I can manipulate elements of form to create the right overall impression in my work. In this I mean experimenting with ways to impart information to the form of the work without overwhelming the work with too much or too little detail (e.g. information of each and every brick making up the whole wall or a blurry image of what might be a brick wall but could equally be a barrier of any other form). By working in a multimedia artform with collaborators such as a visual artist a composer I am dealing with expanded elements of form that can store the information. This compounds the necessity to maintain frequent direct contact with all collaborators, so that we can maintain as clear an understanding of the information we are conveying as possible.
Parts of the Gabo manifesto also highlight the inefficacy of superficial elements to really inform the perceiver of the essence of an object. For example the first statement of the realist manifesto:
Thence in painting we renounce colour as a pictorial element, colour is the idealized optical surface of objects; an exterior and superficial impression of them; colour is accidental and it has nothing in common with the innermost essence of a thing.
We affirm that the tone of a substance, i.e. its light-absorbing material body is its only pictorial reality.
(N Gabo & A Pevsner 1920)
This highlighted to me the importance of going beyond the surface level interpretation of the science I am working with. For example, I had initially experimented with creating poetic metre based on the data and sequences generated from the telescopes. Upon further reflection and having found the metre created to be highly complex, I decided that it is far more important to seek to embed the principles behind the data collection, and processing, rather than embedding the data itself.
Both of these works influence how I would begin to construct the libretto for The Flowering Desert, the details of which can be found in following sections. The positive feedback from the use of narration also impacted how I would work with the libretto for Lipote: An Interconnected Journey, which involves a narrative voice which is entirely external to the action.
