5.4 Random (Islands)
In 1977 John Cage1 delivered 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs to his publishers as his contribution to a Waltz Project, later published as Waltzes by 25 Contemporary Composers. Described as ‘standing out jarringly’, Cage’s score was a listing of 147 New York street locations selected, and aggregated, using chance operations and arranged in 49 groups of three, each group sequentially numbered from I to XLIX (Cage, 1978; Gillespie, 2008).2 He also used the street locations as the basis of a graphic artwork of the same name, published in Rolling Stone Magazine (October 6th 1977)—Cage ‘constructed his “waltzes” as a series of forty-nine multi-coloured triangles superimposed on the Hagstrom map of New York City’ (Gillespie, 2008; Gillespie and Friedman, 2008).
Whilst he was eschewing the accepted musical structure of a waltz—three beats to a bar in groupings of 16 bars—it seems reasonable to assume that Cage was drawing on the 1–2–3 dance rhythm of the waltz as the basis of his groupings of addresses into sets of three, an assumption strengthened by his only similar work A Dip in the Lake, which had similar groupings of two for a quickstep, three for a waltz and four for a march (Cage, 1978). So, Cage’s metaphor of a waltz having three locations, three steps, may be leaning more on the dancer than the musician.
In 1979, Waltz IX was realised as a trio of audio recordings, one from each of the three addresses in the Waltz. It wasn’t until 2008 that 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs was realised across all 49 Waltzes—as a video work in which the Waltzes are presented in sequence, each formed of a trio of video recordings, with durations also determined by chance procedures. Each Waltz is presented as a sequence of three clips; the recording then moves on to the next Waltz (Gillespie, 2008; Gillespie and Friedman, 2008).3
Interested in these ideas about identifying place I devised a method shaped by Cage’s approach to these dances and used it in the composition of four works.4 Where Cage used the metaphor of a waltz, as my first composition was based on a Scottish island, I used the metaphor of a reel—a traditional music style of Scotland, notated in simple metre, either as 2/2 or 4/4; I chose to work with the latter. Similarly, for the works based in Northumberland, I used the traditional dance form of the rant, again based on a 4/4 metre. So, eschewing the formal musical structure, one of my metaphorical Reel/Rants would be composed of four steps, realised as four locations. Each work would consist of four Reels or four Rants, reflecting the four beats to the bar structure, and would be composed of a total of 16 locations.5 The duration of recording at each location was also randomly determined and constrained to between one and four minutes (again reflecting the four beats to the bar structure). In each instance the final set of 4x4 locations plus recording durations became a score for the work.
5.4.1 Fair Isle Reels
I made my first random (island) work on Fair Isle.6 Using the method described I produced a score (below).
I visited each site twice. On my first visit (walk 1) I walked the reels and their constituent four steps in numerical sequence (Reel 1 steps 1–4, then Reel 2 steps 1–4, and so on) over two days. I recorded my walking between the sites and made the requisite static sound recording at each site. On my second visit (walk 2) I made a static location recording, as I had done on the first visit, and then made a second static recording, of the same duration, during which I spoke about what I could see and hear around me (a stream of consciousness).7 In addition, at each location I took a photograph of the sky immediately overhead and the ground in front of my feet.
Fair Isle Reels 4x2 (after John Cage)
My first Random (Island) work was first presented as a 28-minute four-channel installation (below). The static recordings of the four steps of a reel (e.g., Reel 1 steps 1–4) played simultaneously, one per channel; the reels playing twice in sequence, Reel 1 to Reel 4.8 A booklet presented the piece and the score and there were four composite images based on maps of the locations.
4 Island Reels (after John Cage)
The next iteration of the ideas was as 4 Island Reels (after John Cage), a looped, 20-minute, four-channel installation. Again, four steps of a reel played together, one step per speaker and the Reels played in sequence, Reel 1 to Reel 4.9 A single 20 min. segment of the recording of my walk 1 walking between locations played throughout the composition.10 I produced an eight-page, A8-size concertina-fold, booklet that contained a title and introduction to the work, the score, and four composite images made up of the sky and land photographs at each step and large-scale maps of the location of each step. In addition, I used the spoken word recordings as the text for a 24-page, hard-bound, A5-size concertina-fold book of prose poems, presented as the steps of the Reels. This was laid out across the floor.
Four Northumbrian Rants
The next work was based in Northumberland and used the metaphor of the traditional Northumberland dance, the Rant. The general methods followed those used for the Fair Isle Reels and these produced a score for the work (below).11
Four Northumbrian Rants
This was presented as a live performance; a 60-minute, four-channel sound work played within two stories of a stairwell (Figure 5.13). Unlike the two earlier Random (Island) works, where all four steps of a Reel played simultaneously, I here experimented with having the same step of each of the Rants playing simultaneously (Rants 1 to 4 step 1, then Rants 1 to 4 step 2 etc.) across the four speakers.12 For each step the recording of my walking from my car to (and from) the site preceded and succeeded the recording. Thus my embodied presence was composed into the work, and on this occasion all of the walk recordings were used, as opposed to the short segment in 4 Island Reels (after John Cage).
Alongside the sound piece I produced a set of seven A8-size cards—their content was a title and introduction, the score (in two parts), and a four-line prose poem per step (using the stream of consciousness recordings as the basis for the poems) (below).
Four Northumbrian rants walkplacedistancetime
The recordings were also presented as a 60-minute radio broadcast on walkplacedistancetime on Resonance Extra in March 2022.
The Fair Isle Reels (and both Alnay and Contención Island, of which more below) present a humanness of scale ... they draw out my human scale, either mapped onto a real island or walking into being an imaginary one (to be presented and discussed below in 5.5 Imagined Islands). This important point was clarified for me through the practice of recording Four Northumbrian Rants. To record each Rant, I had to drive over 100 miles and the idea of how and where to walk (which should have been central to the work) felt lost. I recorded the walk from wherever I parked my car to the site of the Rant and back, usually the closest point on a tarmacked road. A further difference was that on the relatively small scale of Fair Isle, where I had already been for three days by the time of the first recordings, and thereby had a degree of familiarity with the place, the precise locations of the Reel steps were relatively easy to identify and walk to. On the larger scale of the Rants, where all the locations were unfamiliar, they were often more difficult to locate with the same degree of confidence. Thus dawned the realisation that I walk at a certain scale, and that this scale is one that is intimately linked to my bodily capabilities and is a fundamental link between my body and the world. I know the world through having a body; I move on the ground and through the air; how far I move and how much of the world I thus know is a dimension of my embodiment (Merleau-Ponty, 2005, p. 169). I not only know the world through having a body, I know an embodied amount of it. This amount will vary from day to day, season to season - and in this sense, it is the scale of my world—and it is intimately linked to my body.
5.4.3 four rants for the summer solstice (after John Cage, 1977)
After realising the issue of scale and ‘loss of walking’ in 4 Northumbrian Rants, I looked to create a work in a place that I could cover by walking and one that, to some extent, I knew. I chose a small area in north Northumberland.13 I again took the metaphor of the Rant as the basis of the ‘chance process’ that I had used previously.14 This identified the 16 locations within the two-by-four-kilometre area, organised into the four steps of four Rants as shown, along with recording durations, in the score (below).
Walking on the summer solstice 2017, the longest day and the turning point of the year, I recorded my walking between the locations of the Rant steps in sequence (Rant 1 steps 1–4, Rant 2 steps 1–4, and so on) and at each I recorded the sounds of the place.15
four rants for the summer solstice (after John Cage, 1977)
The first presentation of the work was four rants for the summer solstice (after John Cage, 1977) a four-channel, looped, four-hour work that played for 48 hours over the 2019 winter solstice in The Arches on Newcastle University campus. Steps 1–4 of each Rant played simultaneously, and the Rants played in sequence (Rant 1–Rant 4). Each step was composed of its walk recording then place recording; the Rants were synchronized on the start of the place recordings with the four steps each coming from one of four speakers.16
These random (island) works are linked by their method and the latter two were not conceived as islands but became important transition works, steps on my way towards my creation of imagined islands—as I discuss in Alnay below. By the time four rants for the summer solstice was presented, some 18 months after its recording, the idea of an imaginary island had emerged, and was reflected in the accompanying poster presented in a glass fronted cabinet in the space where the work was playing (right and below).
Back Up The Long Wall: four midsummer dances for an imaginary island
The second presentation of the work was as a four-hour, stereo, radio broadcast at Radiophrenia 2020. With an incorporated studio recording of an intro and outro (right) the Rants played in sequence (1–4) and on this occasion the rants were synchronized from the start of the walks of each step. This composition facilitated the incorporation of a studio recording of my reading of my accompanying poetry (right).17
My dances, my locations, their interlinking, their lineage, is offered in the scores for the works, in the list of locations, latitude and longitude made graphic in the display of the linked locations on the maps of Fair Isle and Northumberland. These proto-islands have been formed and shaped from interlinking places chosen by chance procedures. As Cage had, I controlled the process of selecting locations but relinquished control of the outcome (Millar, 2010, p. 17). What happened at any location was not subject to the whims of my artistic interest or judgement. Thus, what I recorded of these places (be it as sound or text) has emerged from the play of chance and is a reflection of the place and offers each site as equally interesting and worthy of attention—an appreciation of the commonplace that reflects the Japanese idea of wabi (Stryk, 1985, p. 10), the ideas of Luc Ferrari’s Presque Rien (Caix and Ferrari, 2013) or Thomas Clark’s statement ‘Everything we meet is equally important or unimportant’ (Clark, 1988). By the time I had presented my fourth random (island) work, I felt I had evolved a more settled way of identifying, recording and presenting sound and text that was my own version of an underlying Cagean idea, and was offering a progression of embodied movement, sound and text translated into a single work. From here it became a small step onto my imagined islands.
On to 5.5 Imagined Islands
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