I am an artistic researcher with a background both in music and the visual arts. My primary material has been sound, and my projects mostly reside within the contexts of music improvisation, spatial fixed-media composition, and intermedia performance and installation.  I’m drawing upon knowledge I have developed through my work with interactive electronics and generative processes, my somatic experience as an acoustic musician, visceral engagement with materials, and responsiveness to site and space.

Over time, I’ve worked to develop a gestural approach as a composer/performer, focusing on the dynamics of tenuous states: moments of accident and chance, and entropy’s role in compositional process. I’m interested in those awkward moments when one is up against the limits of one’s own virtuosity, when the performance or enactment of sound might “fall apart” in real time. I’ve sought to explore tensions between the concrete and the ephemeral, and slippages from phenomenological experience into memory, and into the poetic, or perhaps the uncanny. Within installation, composition and performance, I’m aiming to build and layer systems and structures that point to these shifting states, and ultimately relationships between object, gesture, site, meaning, and being.

For the past 15 years, my primary projects have been spatialized performances and installations featuring acousmatic sound, or material that is created through my manipulation of amplified objects, as well as sonic textures and feedback from acoustic and electronic instruments.

These elements are processed through what has become my primary tool for composition and performance: a custom-designed software instrument that was originally inspired both by George E. Lewis’ Voyager, as an machine-based improvising partner,  and Rube Goldberg’s machines, with their convoluted approach to achieving a simple task. 

Built into my instrument’s programming is the possibility for intentional relinquishment of my control as a composer/performer, utilizing what appear to be “randomized” sonic events to highlight and/or alter specific frequencies and densities, with emphasis on repetitions and interruptions, and moments of stasis, glitch and gap: with the goal of arriving at an indeterminate sonic outcome. (so for example, there might be surprise glissandi, a few too many delays, outbursts of unpredictable electronic feedback, and even no sonic response at all, just when I was sure I’d set something  into motion.) Of course, such an instrument promotes an interaction with me as a improviser that is highly dynamic; my response to such unforeseen sonic events can create a fast-moving exchange between me and the instrument, as sound sources are morphed and incorporated into a structure from which compositional “sense” can be made in real time.

As a composer/performer, I seek to connect physical gesture to acoustic space to sonic result. I want to maintain a gestural language that derives from the physical experience of acoustic instrumental performance. However, I often compose or perform with multiple instruments in simultaneity, and experience myself in this context as physically awkward, or clumsy, or that my instruments and processes may suddenly – and literally – exceed my grasp.

I want to retain that precariousness or the feeling that something easily can – but doesn’t quite – collapse. So, as an improviser, I set out to manifest a compositional decision-making process  emphasizing idiosyncrasy, fragile states of being and sounding, and even total disintegration.

My relationship to gesture is rooted in my background as an acoustic pianist, and my awareness of sound production and articulation through bodily shifts of weight and movement. And now, working with processing software, I notice the effort (my) body must make in order to employ my instruments, and how  I  experience that an immediate sonic gesture “back at me” can thwart this effort: reversing intention yet creating new and unanticipated ways to make sound and to listen.

I find pleasure and engagement in systems and structures, but also in their misfiring:  as a means of exploring tensions/interactions between the body and mind of the performer/composer.

In recent years, I’ve been exploring theory by philosopher and psychoanalytic  feminist thinker Julia Kristeva -- specifically her concept of “abjection”  - to see if it can address this experience of psychophysical intention and enactment within my performances and installations.   

Literary scholar Dino Felluga writes that for Kristeva, “The abject refers to the human reaction … to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other.”  So “Abjection,” in the context of a performance or composition that features the kind of misfiring I am talking about, and which attracts me, might imply the moving, encumbered body of the performer, and the potential for its physical control or articulation to lose fluency, or even to fail. This interests me as a site of creative potential; here, abjection might be, as Kristeva writes: “… something rejected”, but (also) something from which “one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself.”

The gesture might fall flat. That is to say,  the sounding body might be sapped and not able to continue, or the sonic dialogue – between improviser and instrument – might  be moving so fast that the performer ceases to understand what is actually happening in real time. That dialogue – between the artist and her materials/instruments, between a performer and others, between the subject and her own understanding of herself as a sonic generator – breaks down. I think: here a place where something new might happen, instead.

Kristeva finds the abject in poetry, as “a place where boundaries begin to break down.”  But at the same time, in poetry she finds the sublime. Thinking about poetry, which engages not only with lingustic structures and metaphorical meaning,  as well as the implication of sound and sensation  --  as a site where abjection and the sublime are in uneasy balance with each other,  I’m exploring the potential for my own work in sound to ride that precarious line.

Context: 

In my work in sound. I want to consider my awareness of subjectivity as a body moving in a space, extending musical gesture into physical space (beyond my body), and moving past mastery to get to something else: the implication of gesture, presence  - what is here and what is there, and absence: the ghost in the next room.

To that end,  I maintain a daily studio practice, experimenting with process, through which I’m looking at my embodied interaction with my software instrument along with other sonic materials.  For me, this exploration builds a kind of tacit body knowledge, which informs how I ultimately realize my works.

As a performer I’m most often working with my electronically processed accordion that I run through a Fender tube amplifier;  a set of objects that I’ve collected over the years, which I amplify and live process;  as well as my samples and field recordings from which I’m selecting fragments, and processing in real time. 

 I’m also making long form fixed-media compositions  whose realization are dependent or responsive to the sites in which they are located.  

Studio Practice:

Within my PhD project, I have developed a body of performances, performances films, and fixed media compositions; as well as an intermedia installation comprised of drawing, video and sound.

However, the Covid 19-related lockdown of 2020/2021 brought me to an interesting challenge – how to create the projects I want to make, which hinge upon sound and presence as embodied experence, not only for me,  but also listeners. That work somehow moved along, and I think to some degree because  I chose to use this time as an opportunity to dig into research on my experience of embodiment, in relation to my materials, sound and space, working at home and documenting what I do. 

Among the elements that I made: were a series of short videos, in which I improvise with small objects, working with just a minimum of sound processing  They are rough in their presentation, fragmentary, improvisatory, soloistic. Some of them expose the fact that they were made on Zoom; yet imply that no one else was around.   I think of them as a set of Études that focus on my small and articulated performative gestures in correspondence with the small indexical objects I’ve been working with as instruments. 

I am interested in how these pieces address or exemplify one end of my exploration of  “scale". That is: my body’s performative interaction or correspondence with objects and instruments, and my desire to extend or expand or explode the scale of my more intimate gestures as a performer  — in conjunction with my materials -  into larger scale spatial performances or fixed-media works.

During my PhD program,  I engaged with Authentic Movement as an element of my research. Authentic movement is a practice that helps develop sensory awareness and proprioception -- important for me to address in my understanding of (my) body in space within performance, and in fixed media works in which my body isn’t present, but which might hold the implication that some other body is present as an instigator of sound. The structure fo the practice offers timed sessions in which  one moves with their eyes shut, while witnessed by another, who later reflects and reports back what they observe in the movement. Throughout my PhD project, I met online with Oslo-based movement artist Olive Bieringa who was my partner in this process. For some time, I moved only in an empty room. 

Then, later I began moving with the addition of big sheets of heavy paper and large swathes of fabric, again with sound processing from my software instrument. This was both intended to build in more physical challenge for myself – as I strive to do -  and also as a way to extend my body  -- with the paper and fabric --  in order to sense , to listen for - where the edges of the room might be.

More recently, Olive and I extended the practice so that I included everyday, household objects that were again  -purposely difficult for me to interact with -  and again which included my software instrument's sound processing.   I used these elements in conjunction with the difficult acoustics in my home studio understanding (and wlecoming) the potential for my software instrument to sonically explode at exactly the right moment — that is, when I don’t expect it. 

In this instance, I developed a deeper understanding of my physical interaction with objects-as-instruments, how I work with physical and acoustic space, and the role that listening has in this practice. This is research that seems to be moving toward a form of performance that’s situated in intimacy, perhaps as has been suggested to me by my external supervisor Trond Lossiues, just for an audience of one or two persons,  whom I would invite to my home to witness what I’m doing.

While there were specific pieces I’m developing now, this evening I sought to share with you some rough and noisy research addressing correspondences I’m discovering, between the body, my materials, sound, space, and situation.

The focus of my research during my fellowship has been on the body’s relation to materiality, sound, space, site and situation.  Through creation, documentation, and reflection I’ve been working toward a deeper understanding of my own sonic and embodied “tacit knowledge”, considering the potential for that knowledge to activate and extend my sonic gesture into physical, acoustic, social and even metaphoric space, creating both sonic and visual traces of this intention and action.

In my research and reflection, I have aimed to consider my awareness of subjectivity as a body moving in or perhaps straying through these varying conceptions and manifestations of space -  moving past mastery -  to get to something else: the implication of presence – what is here or perhaps what is just over there; and absence: the ghost in the next room.

To that end,   I’ve maintained a daily studio practice, comprised of experiments in improvisation, composition, drawing, and recording: emphasizing process within a multivlaent practice, through which I’m looking at my embodied correpondence with my sonic materials and situation.

I’ve also explored interrelationships between gesture and sound, seeking to mine tensions between awkwardness and fluency. My research engages with Julia Kristeva’s writing on abjection and the sublime, noting her implication that these two aspects exist in a balance that is at once precarious yet generative, opening up sites of creative potential.

Of particular note in this context is my work with the custom software sound-processing instrument that I have been working with and adapting over many years. The instrument, named after inventor Rube Goldberg, is an improvisational partner that facilitates the slippage of my intended musical gesture into sonic realization that is not entirely controllable, by design.  All of the works that I’ve made during my fellowship have engaged with the instrument in some way.  

I have been making things during this time: sound and video recordings, drawings, and writings. . Much of this work has been documentation of research, though there have also been publically-presented works, including fixed media compositions and performances whose realization is contigent on their site and situation, a series of electroacoustic performances, and the completion of two CDs, including a stereo fold down recording of a spatial audio work. Additionally,  I have created a body of videos and drawings that I see both as research and completed art works in themselves.

As an asepct of my research I sought to closely re-examine the materials I’ve been working with for many years: my electronically processed accordion, a set of objects that I’ve collected, which I amplify and live process;  as well as my samples and field recordings from which I select fragments, and process in real time.   Additionally, I have moved more fully into an amplified drawing practice. This invests in the tension and the space between gesture and sound with the mark as a trace of that experience.  This has resulted in a drawing series and video documents of the practice.

Nonetheless, and as for many others, the coronavirus-related lockdown of 2020-2021 presented a challenge in my research: how could I create the projects I wanted to make, which hinge upon sonic reception and presence as embodied experence, not only for me,  but also listeners? AND FORCED A CHANGE IN MY PROJECT.. DISCUSS

With that in mind, I chose to use this time as an opportunity to dig into research on my experience of embodiment in relation to my materials, sound and space, and above all situation: working at home,  and documenting what I do. And the work did move forward, though in ways that I could not anticipate.

Even as I remained situated this very room with its bad acoustics, and devised forms of research that could inform the works I hoped to create “after the pandemic” I have come to recognize that these “forms of research” were and are in fact the works themselves.

Among them: a series of 15 short videos, in which I improvise with small objects, working with just a minimum of sound processing  They are rough in their presentation, fragmentary, improvisatory, soloistic. Some of them expose the fact that they were made on Zoom; yet imply that there was no one else on the other side of the computer screen. I think of them as a set of Etudes that address small gestures in correspondence with the small indexical objects I’ve been working with as instruments. 

I am interested in how these pieces exemplify one end of my exploration of  “scale". That is: my body’s performative interaction with objects and instruments, and my desire to extend/expand/explode the scale of my smaller, more intimate gestures as a performer  — in conjunction with my materials -  into larger scale spatial performances or fixed-media works.

During my fellowship, I began incorporating Authentic Movement as an element of my research. Authentic movement is a practice, which helps develop sensory awareness and proprioception -- important for me to address in my understanding of (my) body in space within performance, and in fixed media works in which my body isn’t present, but which might hold the implication that some other body is present as an instigator of sound. The structure fo the practice offers timed sessions in which  one moves with their eyes shut, while witnessed by another, who later reports back what they observe in the movement. Since 2019, I’ve worked in this context with Oslo-based movement artist Olive Bieringa, primarily via Zoom.

For some time, I moved only in an empty room.  Later, I began moving with the addition of big sheets of heavy paper and large swathes of fabric, adding sound processing from my software instrument. This was both intended to build in more physical challenge for myself – as I strive to do -  and also as a way to extend my body  -- with the paper and fabric --  in order to sense , to listen for - where the edges of the room might be.

In this instance, I developed a deeper understanding about my physical interaction with objects-as-instruments, how I work with physical and acoustic space, and the role that listening has in this practice. This is research that has been moving toward a form of performance that is situated in intimacy, perhaps as was suggested to me by my external supervisor Trond Lossius, just for an audience of one or two persons, whom I could invite to my home to witness what I’m doing. This points to possibilites for a new kind of dissimention of my work, which honors its process-oriented qualities, its relation to material, and the intimacy of a relationship between I and an other. 

This research was rough and noisy, and it was created in isolation. And yet for me, it resulted in works from which I learned that I was engaged in an embodied practice that was equally comprised of sounding and listening.  I wondered if and how I might share this work with other artistic researchers – in terms of process, materials, and also affective qualities and poetics : what I perceived as these works’ abject aspects, which attract me:  the fact that they are not about making beautiful music, but rather home in on interruptions of sonic flow, with awkward eruptions of feedback,  unintended sliences, or just plain ugly sound - -  the moments when I could locate resonance and reflections – not from an –other  -- but only and simply from the walls and surfaces of  the room in which I lived.

Lockdown did ease this past summer,  and I was able to invite an other as a collaborator: in this case, I asked pianist  Magda Mayas to engage in 3 days of artistic research with me in a large studio in Berlin.  Here’s the space we in which we work:  

PHOTO:

During those days, we shared and exchanged our sonic materials, and explored ways in which we could extend our musical and performative gesture across and with each other in acoustic and physical space,  documenting this research with sound and video recordings. As an outcome, we recorded a set of improvisations for two pianos, objects, electronics, my accordion, and Magda’s Clavinet.

We  also made a longer form piece, which was recorded on video.   In this collaboration, we really do share our materials and processes.  Magda is an improvisor who normally plays inside the grand piano, working with a set of preparations that she has developed over the years, which provide a huge range of timberal possibilities. In this instance, she worked for the first time with objects outside of the piano:  some  were objects that she brought with her to the session, and some objects belong to me and have been indexical to my sonic identity as a performer. I, on the other hand, eschewed working with the instruments which which I have the greatest fluency: accordion, interactive electronics, and acoustic and electronic keyboards, exposing my engagement with the more intractable materials that I had been exploring during the lockdown— large rolls of paper  and amplified drawing tools, along with my software instrument   -- moving close to the floor, though occasionally jumping up and grabbing other materials in another part of the room. Magda and I recorded a discussion of our process afterward, both admitting that we felt vulnerable as we explored this form of research,  but also intrigued by the way it asked us to work differently  with our respective materials, rethinking our sonic interaction, and notions of fluency or virtuousity.

 As I had instigated this research, Magda gave me permission to edit the video as I wished, and I see it as both a document of our research and also as a work in itself.  In this piece, she appears at times as a not-quite materialized “other.” This points to my own subjectivity  -- with the other as an implicit presence, who comes into focus and being through visceral engagement with (our shared) materials/materiality.  My materials, at last, in someone else’s hands.  Link to Project Page? (Or should I move this text to the project page) 

EXTRA:

I recognize that there is a sense of incompleteness or of the fragmentary about my works. Are they fragments? Artistic researcher Mareike Dobewall interviewed me as part of her project, The Body of Sound. She asked me.? (WHAT WAS HER QUESTION) , and in reponse I replied,  ““A totality is made with the gathering of fragments. So that a listener might understand that totality,  even with absence of the maker, or even a “completed” work.  There perhaps can be a reconstitution/reassembly of a practice through experiencing those vestiges - an archive - the stuff/practice of the work."

”

IN MY DISCUSSION OF INSTALLATION WITH MAREIKE DOBEWALL, I STATED:

In a room a space, I’ve disappeared from the work – the work itself becomes a presence in the room, but I am not there. Yet there is a vestige remaining: the performative gesture can still reside in the fixed media work when its maker is no longer present.

ARF3: THIS IS BETTER

The focus of my research during my fellowship has been on the body’s relation to materiality, sound, space, site and situation.  Through creation, documentation, and reflection I’ve been working toward a deeper understanding of my own sonic and embodied “tacit knowledge”, considering the potential for that knowledge to activate and extend my sonic gesture into physical, acoustic, social and even metaphoric space, creating both sonic and visual traces of this intention and action.

 In my research and reflection, I have aimed to consider my awareness of subjectivity as a body moving in or perhaps straying through these varying conceptions and manifestations of space -  moving past mastery -  to get to something else: the implication of presence – what is here or perhaps what is just over there; and absence: the ghost in the next room.

To that end,   I’ve maintained a daily studio practice, comprised of experiments in improvisation, composition, drawing, and recording: emphasizing process within a multivlaent practice, through which I’m looking at my embodied correpondence with my sonic materials and situation.

I’ve also explored interrelationships between gesture and sound, seeking to mine tensions between awkwardness and fluency. My research engages with Julia Kristeva’s writing on abjection and the sublime, noting her implication that these two aspects exist in a balance that is at once precarious yet generative, opening up sites of creative potential.

Of particular note in this context is my work with the custom software sound-processing instrument that I have been working with and adapting over many years. The instrument, named after inventor Rube Goldberg, is an improvisational partner that facilitates the slippage of my intended musical gesture into sonic realization that is not entirely controllable, by design.  All of the works that I’ve made during my fellowship have engaged with the instrument in some way.  

I have made things during this time: sound and video recordings, drawings, and writings. . Much of this work has been documentation of research, though there have also been publically-presented works, including fixed media compositions and performances whose realization is contigent on their site and situation, a series of electroacoustic performances, and the completion of two CDs, one of which is a stereo fold down recording of a spatial audio work. Additionally,  I have created a body of videos and drawings that I see both as research and completed art works in and of themselves.

As an aspect of my research I sought to closely re-examine the materials I’ve been working with for many years: my electronically processed accordion, a set of objects that I’ve collected, which I amplify and live process;  as well as my samples and field recordings from which I select fragments, and process in real time.   Additionally, I have moved more fully into an amplified drawing practice. This invests in the tension and the space between gesture and sound with the mark as a trace of that experience.  This has resulted in a drawing series and video documents of the practice.

Nonetheless, and as for many others, the coronavirus-related lockdown of 2020-2021 presented a challenge in my research: how could I create the projects I wanted to make, which hinge upon sonic reception and presence as embodied experence, not only for me,  but also listeners?

With that in mind, I chose to use this time as an opportunity to dig into research on my experience of embodiment in relation to my materials, sound and space, and above all situation: working at home,  and documenting what I do. And the work did move forward, though in ways that I could not anticipate.

Even as I remained situated this very room with its bad acoustics, and devised forms of research that could inform the works I hoped to create “after the pandemic” I have come to recognize that these “forms of research” were and are in fact the works themselves.

Among them: a series of 15 short videos, in which I improvise with small objects, working with just a minimum of sound processing  They are rough in their presentation, fragmentary, improvisatory, soloistic. Some of them expose the fact that they were made on Zoom; yet imply that there was no one else on the other side of the computer screen. I think of them as a set of Etudes that address small gestures in correspondence with the small indexical objects I’ve been working with as instruments. 

I am interested in how these pieces exemplify one end of my exploration of  “scale". That is: my body’s performative interaction with objects and instruments, and my desire to extend/expand/explode the scale of my smaller, more intimate gestures as a performer  — in conjunction with my materials -  into larger scale spatial performances or fixed-media works.

During my fellowship, I began incorporating Authentic Movement as an element of my research. Authentic movement is a practice, which helps develop sensory awareness and proprioception -- important for me to address in my understanding of (my) body in space within performance, and in fixed media works in which my body isn’t present, but which might hold the implication that some other body is present as an instigator of sound. The structure fo the practice offers timed sessions in which  one moves with their eyes shut, while witnessed by another, who later reports back what they observe in the movement. Since 2019, I’ve worked in this context with Oslo-based movement artist Olive Bieringa, primarily via Zoom.

For some time, I moved only in an empty room.  Later, I began moving with the addition of big sheets of heavy paper and large swathes of fabric, adding sound processing from my software instrument. This was both intended to build in more physical challenge for myself – as I strive to do -  and also as a way to extend my body  -- with the paper and fabric --  in order to sense , to listen for - where the edges of the room might be.

More recently, I  extended the practice to include everyday household objects which are – once more, intentionally difficult for me to interact with – again along with my sound processing. I used them as a means of mining the difficult acoustics in this room, and the potential for my software instrument to sonically explode at exactly the right moment — that is, when I don’t expect it. 

In this instance, I developed a deeper understanding about my physical interaction with objects-as-instruments, how I work with physical and acoustic space, and the role that listening has in this practice. This is research that has been moving toward a form of performance that is situated in intimacy, perhaps as was suggested to me by one of my supervisors, just for an audience of one or two persons, whom I could invite to my home to witness what I’m doing.

This research was rough and noisy, and it was created in isolation. And yet for me, it resulted in works from which I learned that I was engaged in an embodied practice that was equally comprised of sounding and listening.  I wondered if and how I might share this work with other artistic researchers – in terms of process, materials, and also affective qualities and poetics : what I perceived as these works’ abject aspects, which attract me:  the fact that they are not about making beautiful music, but rather home in on interruptions of sonic flow, with awkward eruptions of feedback,  unintended sliences, or just plain ugly sound - -  the moments when I could locate resonance and reflections – not from an –other  -- but only and simply from the walls and surfaces of  the room in which I lived.

Lockdown did ease this past summer,  and I was able to invite an other as a collaborator: in this case, I asked pianist  Magda Mayas to engage in 3 days of artistic research with me in a large studio in Berlin.  Here’s the space we worked in:

PHOTO:

During those days, we shared and exchanged our sonic materials, and explored ways in which we could extend our musical and performative gesture across and with each other in acoustic and physical space,  documenting this research with sound and video recordings. As an outcome, we recorded a set of improvisations for two pianos, objects, electronics, my accordion, and Magda’s Clavinet.

We  also made a longer form piece, which was recorded on video.   In this collaboration, we really do share our materials and processes.  Magda is an improvisor who normally plays inside the grand piano, working with a set of preparations that she has developed over the years, which provide a huge range of timberal possibilities. In this instance, she worked for the first time with objects outside of the piano, and some of which  were objects that she brought with her to the session, and some objects that belong to me and which have been indexical to my sonic identity as a performer. I, on the other hand, eschewed working with the instruments which which I have the greatest fluency: accordion, interactive electronics, and acoustic and electronic keyboards, exposing my engagement with the more intractable materials that I had been exploring during the lockdown— large rolls of paper  and amplified drawing tools, along with my software instrument   -- moving close to the floor, though occasionally jumping up and grabbing other materials in another part of the room. Magda and I recorded a discussion of our process afterward, both admitting that we felt vulnerable as we explored this form of research,  but also intrigued by the way it asked us to work differently  with our respective materials, rethinking our sonic interaction, and notions of fluency or virtuousity.

 As I had instigated this research, Magda gave me permission to edit the video as I wished, and I see it as both a document of our research and also as a work in itself.  In this piece, she appears at times as a not-quite materialized “other.” This points to my own subjectivity  -- with the other as an implicit presence, who comes into focus and being through visceral engagement with (our shared) materials/materiality.  My materials, at last, in someone else’s hands.

EXTRA:

There is an incompleteness or fragmentary sense about the works I have shared today. Are they fragments? In an interview I stated, ““A totality is made with the gathering of fragments (So that a listener might understand that totality,  even with absence of the maker, or even a “completed” work.  There perhaps can be a reconstitution/reassembly of a practice through experiencing those vestiges - an archive - the stuff/practice of the work.”

In installation:

In a room a space, I’ve disappeared from the work – the work itself becomes a presence in the room, but I am not there. Yet there is a vestige remaining: the performative gesture can still reside in the fixed media work when its maker is no longer present.