Category Archives: music

[[[From Soundworld Disposition Settings (2022)

Each Disposition Setting can be played with any sounding equipment/material, necessitating only that electronic (including electroacoustic) sound sources are always utilized during performance of the material. Each Disposition Setting is otherwise an open invitation for a set of players (at least 2, excluding Derive Interity which should be done alone ) to explore a text’s tonal inclination as filtered through their own apparatus for noisemaking. Each composition acts as a sonopoetic nudging towards that should be followed from top to bottom in its performance.]]]




Derive Interity (Dipolar Acquisition of Extended Bodily Consciousness Through Ambient Biological Monitoring)

Set-up:

This score is for a single player only. In many places of varying terrains (at least 10), over an extended time (at least 3 months), follow these instructions:

“Go for a walk,
and breathe musically.”

Pay special attention to the differing percentages of your ability to focus on the sound taken up by your breath as you move through these different spaces, and make a list ordered by the varying levels. Once you have done as instructed in all chosen locations and your psychogeographical research is compiled, pick out the two places (which we will now refer to as Space 1 and Space 2) where your perception/consciousness of your breathing was the most and least prominent. 

Re-visit the general areas of Space 1 and 2 (do not have to follow the exact same route as during your first visit) with a recording device and record 10-40 minutes of yourself following instruction #1, and 10-40 minutes of sitting neutrally not performing any action somewhere along your route. Once again keep track of the percentage of total aural perception your breath takes up in Space 1 and 2 while following instruction #1.

Sounding:

The performance of this score will be broken into two separate pieces, divided into information from Space 1 and Space 2. During the performance of each piece, do the following:

  1. Layer and play the set of two field recordings taken first at Space 1 (and later at Space 2) and allow them to take up a percentage of the total loudness of the soundfield equal to the halfway point between the percentages of aural perception of the breath during the first and the second visits to the space. 
  2. The other part of the soundfield will be created via a ratio (expressed via percentage of time performing the two actions) of unsounded physical gestures (what gestures left at discretion of performer) in relation to the the performer sounding electronic sonic material (can be anything as long as it is not generated with an acoustic sound source) equal to the percentage of total aural perception taken up by the breath to one minus the percentage of total aural perception.
    • So say that at Space 1, Visit 1, your total aural perception of your breath took up 30% of your aural soundfield. In this case, you would perform unsounded physical gestures for 30% of the performance time, and perform a sounding of electronic sonic material for 70% of the performance time. Performance time should be broken into minutes when accounting for this ratio to allow for 3b) to be followed correctly. The unsounded physical gestures and electronic sonic material can be interspersed as long as they do not overlap.
  3. Over the course of the length of the field recordings, transition this percentage of total aural perception (from which you are performing according to) from the one observed during visit one to that observed during visit two.
  4. When you arrive at about the halfway point between ratios of total aural perception during visit one and visit two (in above case, 50%), one should change style of both gestures and sounding.
  5. Piece should always end on at least 15 seconds of unsounded physical gesture (along with field recordings which have been playing the whole performance and whose end determines the end of the performance), no matter the performance ratio being used during the last minute of the performance.
    • Allow a period of rest of at least thirty seconds before following the above Sounding instructions for Space 2.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: Sometimes I think of the world as this network of relationships between humans and plants and animals and the natural world, spanning across time and space, and I think of my body as a hub in that algorithm, and that I’m made up of relationships, and I’m made up of communication and sometimes that’s physical and sometimes that’s spiritual, and sound is part of that.

And so sometimes I think songs are stories, sometimes they’re prayers, sometimes they’re ethics, sometimes they’re connectors, sometimes they’re healers, they have a power and it comes from a place that I don’t think that I can fully understand or articulate.

https://earwaveevent.org/article/discussion-with-leanne-simpson/
https://earwaveevent.org/article/discussion-with-raven-chacon/
whole magazine is really nice !!