The processes for the five pieces that make up reconstruction i-v are a continuous flow of work, involving workshops with different ensembles and musicians, the development of other works, the collection of machine sounds and the exploration of notational challenges. In what follows I will explore these themes in more detail.
The start
The first work reconstruction i/landscape with machines was developed along two ideas or tracks: the first being my fascination for textile machines and the second the collaboration with Berlin based Ensemble Zwischentöne. It was also a commission to the closing of Leonard Richard's exhibition at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in 2015 and it was his use of machines in his pictures that put me on the textile machine track. Before the commission I had already started to collect sound from textile machines. The recordings from the weaving mill at Grinakervev at Ringerike in Norway became the basis for both the samples and the rhythmical patterns the musicians are playing.
The workshops with Ensemble Zwischentöne made me reflect on how to notate and include the machine rhythms in the work. Because each machine has its own tempo and rhythm the score could easily become complicated to read. The ensemble was made up of musicians from various backgrounds and with different experiences of reading music. And finally I didn’t want the work to be conducted but be possible to play without a timekeeper. I ended up with letting the machines themselves give the tempo for the mechanical musical figures. For instance the first machine will sound through the loudspeaker and then the musicians try to play together with the sounding machine. This way I could get precise shifts from for instance tempo 93 to tempo 132 to tempo 116 an so forth with the help of the sounding machines: see video example 1.
Developing the piece I also started to overlay machine rhythms in groups of instruments independent of the samples so that for instance the strings would play machine x in tempo a at the same time as accordion, el-guitar and flute would play machine y in tempo b and piano machine z in tempo c: see video example 2.
Another idea I got for reconstruction i was to include an orchestra of sewing machines and this turned out to be a very important entry to the next works and their development.
reconstruction i/landscape with machines was premiered in 2015 and I had no idea at the time to continue this into a work series.
Recording machines for other works
I kept on recording and working with textile machines in other works and particularly in the installation Østfolds tapte lydbilder (The lost soundscapes of Østfold) (2017).
The starting point for this installation was my home county of Østfold, one of Norway’s densest areas for industry, both textile and otherwise. My home town of Halden (population 26600 in the 1970s when the industry started to decline) had in the 1950s a cotton mill (the first mechanical textile factory in Norway est. 1815), a large wood processing industry (still one of the largest in Norway), a sugar factory, a weaving mill, no less than three shoe factories and a collection of other smaller manufacturers. The rest of Østfold county had similar industrial complexes. In the mid 1970s, however, industry began to move to other parts of the world with cheaper labour, less union influence and closer proximity to the raw materials leaving the small towns of Østfold bereft of their former employment opportunities and soundscapes.
In Østfolds tapte lydbilder I searched for former industrial spaces in the five towns in Østfold. My idea was to bring the soundscapes back into the industrial halls not by installing machines but by learning to play the machines sounds and rhythms myself and recording this personal version of the machines in the different spaces: see video example 3. This process influenced my work with the work series reconstruction i-v.
Gradually the idea of continuing the work I had started in reconstruction i grew and in 2018 I began to sketch out the components of the series of works as a whole. By then I was also composing the work SKIN (2019) for the percussionists Jennifer Torrence and Bonnie Whyte where I for the first time worked with an embroidered score: see photo of embroidered score.
The Textile Factory
reconstruction ii/the textile factory is the largest work of the series both in length (62 min) and material and it was by far the most complex to write. I wanted to create a multimedia work that really transports the audience into the textile factory and surrounds them with layers of sound, visual impressions and long duration. In this work the visual aspect of the instruments is also very important and I ended on using three bass clarinets doubling contrabass clarinet, one bassoon, one contrabassoon and a double bass in addition to piano trio. I divided the instruments into three groups.
The work process has included three workshop days with Alpaca Ensemble in desember 2021 where I worked with combinations of strictly notated material, material passed on by listening and learning and material based on easy to learn structures that created complex structures when combined. In this way I could experiment in real time with the material combining the different approaches in various ways and adjust according to what I could hear. This process gave me new ideas for how to combine the material and also how the pace through contrasting material could be. The third movement of reconstruction ii, At Night, was in large parts constructed in this way.
Notation
reconstruction ii/the textile factory also presented an abundance of possibilities and problems when it came to the notation of the work. The material is repetitious (the material is based on machines) and the timing of the score needed to be very precise since the whole work is accompanied by a video and sound file. So I needed to figure out in which way this situation would be easiest to read for the conductor and the musicians.
Another challenge was the fact that the different parts of the work (it is divided into five attaca movements) had dissimilar ways of working in relation to the sound file and the video. For instance the first movement, The Machine, consists of tutti instrumental repetitive machines but in movement two, Build, and four, Shadows, groups or solo instruments make up layers in a superimposed musical situation. And the third movement, At Night, is a long development where the three instrument groups make independent machines with their own pace and logic to a great extent based on guided improvisation. In other words, the score consists of contrasting notational paradigms depending on the musical situation.
The most challenging movement to notate was paradoxically the third, At Night, with the most open task for the musicians to perform. I wanted a situation where the instruments started with one element and gradually included another over time always bringing the material they already where playing with them. I also wanted the instruments to be divided into three groups, creating three individual machines with their own pace and logic. The first group consisted of three contrabass clarinets, the second of the piano trio and the third of bassoon, contrabassoon and double bass.
In the workshop situation with Alpaca Ensemble I investigated the construction of the third movement by giving oral instructions in real time and this worked quite well. But for the performance I wanted to be able not to interfere too much with the situation but rather give simple global signals. For the first performance I had a notation consisting of boxes with text with arrows between them but this notation worked counter to the idea of perpetual gradual transformation. I had to tell the musicians to keep material going from one box to the next and it was hard to get to the point where this was internalised. For the next performance I constructed a notation based on one line pr material and arrows indicating for how long the material was going to be continued: see the two different versions of the score.
Another element which was hard to convey was the independence of the instrument groups. I wanted the dynamics to work counter to each other so one group could have a crescendo nearing a top, while another group had just passed the top and was doing decrescendo and the third had not jet begun to ascend dynamically. Even though the third movement looks easy to play it needs the most practice time to get the independence of the layers and the timing right.
The fifth movement, The Textile Factory, is a loud and noisy depiction of an industrial working hall.
Instrumental shadows
The sound file that runs through reconstruction ii consists of machine sounds and instrumental shadows. Instrumental shadows are components that can be fused with the original machine sound to create a kind of hybrid between an instrument and a machine. The instrumentalist react spontaneously to the recording of a machine and I recorded that reaction. This constituted a component that is connected to the machine but has a unique quality of an acoustic instrument. By mixing the original machine sound and the instrumental sound in various ways, I achive a kind of continuum from all machine sound to all instrumental sound.
In reconstruction ii I did this with all the instruments. The sound in the sound file goes from all machine to all instrumental over the duration of the work.
Machines and instruments in the video
The video consists of footage of several looms, a spinning machine, a carding machine, a fabric knitting machine, lace-making machines, a stocking knitting machine, a glove knitting machine, a spooling machine, a ribbon twisting machine and of close-up footage of the mechanics of the instruments in the ensemble. I try to combine the footage of the machines and the instruments in the same way as I do with the instrumental shadows of the machines. The video evolves from clear or superimposed footage of the machines to the gradual incorporation of the instrumental mechanics into the machines, creating a visual hybrid between the instrumental mechanics and the machine. In some parts of the work the instruments have completely taken over and I have constructed visual machines based solely on the mechanics of the instruments: see video example 4.
Embroidered score
reconstruction iii/portrait of a city with sewing machines was developed from the idea of an embroidered score big enough for both the musicians and the audience to look at at the same time.
We live in a culture where everything is accessible and documented and where everything can be distributed and multiplied. I wanted to find out what can happen when the score is a unique object that cannot easily be copied. I've embroidered the score on a large piece of cloth four by three meters big. It was exciting for me to create a clear and distinct score in such an alien form. At the same time, embroidery provides opportunities that are rarely used in traditional scores. I worked with colour codes, for example, to show dynamics: see photos of embroidered score.
In addition to the embroidered score reconstruction iii has a conventional score and three stations with sewing machines. The alternation between strictly notated rhythmic machines and the more open interpretation of the embroidered score combined with the sound of sewing machines performing one task (sewing on and removing a pocket) creates a musical situation unlike the more strictly rhythmic situations in reconstruction i and ii. Although the machines are still rigid, they are almost always combined with less predictable material, improvised sections and the sound of the sewing machines, which changes from performance to performance.
Finally the performance situation itself, with the musicians and sewing machines are scattered around the room and the audience in between, all facing the embroidery, makes the experience unique for both the individual performers and the individual audience member.
The small spaces
reconstruction iv/intimate measures investigates the sewing machine as instrument and is meant to be performed in a space where the trio is in close proximity to the audience. Behind the trio a close up live video of the sewing machine is displayed. I wanted the situation to be intimate in many ways focusing on the sewing machine as a tool dealing with intimate relations between customer and seamstress. You have to be close to the customer, take close measures, often the work is done at home or in a small room.
I based the material on my own sewing machine (a Husquarna Viking), which can make 9 different types of stitch. The patterns of the stitches are part of the score for the musicians. My sewing machines fundamental is a kind of g and by sewing at various speeds you can get a spectrum of pitches out of the machine. In one part of the piece the sewing machine plays a little solo melody: see video example 5.
reconstruction v/shadows of machines explores the idea of instrumental shadows. I composed this piece at the same time as I was working on reconstruction ii and I experimented with this concept in reconstruction v. Similarly, in reconstruction v, I allowed the instrumental sounds to merge more and more with the machine sound, so that in the last part of the piece you hear a hybrid machine rather than the pure machine sound of the first part of the piece. In this work the visual artist Jeremy Welsh created the video based on mine and his recordings.
Alpaca Ensemble
Alpaca Ensemble and Michael Francis Duch have been instrumental in my composing of this series of works giving me the opportunity to work with them in workshops and creating possibilities for performances of the works. This is a real gift when working with new and experimental material. In particular, the opportunity to revise and re-perform the works has allowed me to expand and explore my interest in industrial machines and sounds.
The video and sound material was recorded at:
Arbetets museum, Norrköping
Science and Industry Museum, Manchester
Grinakervev, Hadeland