Études: Small Objects / Small Gestures (2020)

During the Covid-19 lockdown of spring 2020, and in advance of my midterm evaluation, I created a lot of documentation of experimental studio practice.  Among the elements that I generated was a series of 13 short videos, in which I improvise with objects, working with just a minimum of sound processing. These are “lockdown” videos: they are rough in their presentation, fragmentary, improvisatory, soloistic, and expose the fact that they were made on Zoom, probably with no one else around. Taken together, I think that some or all of them can be experienced as a singular piece or set of études that address small gestures in correspondence with the small objects I've been working with as instruments, which serve as associative references toward my autoethnography.  

I think of this series of videos as a discrete work. However, if they are études, it has been important for me to consider to what end: that is, what am I studying in this context, and what am I trying to get "better" at?  

It may be that these pieces address or exemplify a starting point for an exploration of  “scale". I also see them in relation to Tim Ingold's discussion of "correspondence", specifically, regarding what is happening between an instrumentalist and his/her materials.⁹  In these videos I've homed in on the performative interaction between my contingent gestures, the objects, and the microphone on my laptop, through which I'm processing sound. At the same time, I am keeping in mind possibilities for extending or expanding the reach of the smaller, more intimate gestures that are necessary to employ with these objects—and of the materials that I am working with—into much more spatially and dynamically expansive performances and fixed-media compositions. 

In relation to this, I consider the work of visual artist Lygia Clark. She works with small objects (matchboxes) and with aintimacy of materials that somehow imagines/implies what these objects/materials could be if expanded into a huge scale. 

Here’s an image of Clark’s Matchbox Structures: 

http://www.multiplode6.com/matchbox-structures-by-lygia-clark-1964/

Clark's work with multiples—the accumulation or repetition of similar, and in this case, small modular objects—builds up structures to form a single consolidated work. It's easy to imagine Matchbox Structures as both tiny and enormous at the same time.   

For the video études, I intended to "stack up" a substantial number of very short pieces to create a larger compositional structure made up of small interchangeable modules. Like Clark's humble matchboxes, the objects that I worked with are fragile, replaceable or even disposable: such as Post-it notes, piles of tissue paper, packing tape, and heaps of little stones. With these "instruments" I recorded not only "small sounds," but also, through the use of my software instrument, sounds that imply a much more expansive sweep of gesture, and which potentially have more impact in terms of dynamics and density.

I've included nine of the original thirteen Small Objects / Small Gestures études on this page. They form an open score for a composer/performer to follow.

One video can be selected, or several, or all of them may be played in any order or simultaneously. The composer/performer has the choice to play the videos only once, or they may be looped.