I’ve always been interested in life circumstances, I give a lot of thought and time to it. There is so much within the practice of improvising that involve choice and reaction/interaction, it’s impossible for me not to think about how it parallels with everyday life. And while many of the entries within this collection deal explicitly with their accompanying piece of music, I thought it might be nice to have one that speaks on being, to try and briefly outline what the realities of my existence are like, to be considered in tandem with the music I create. Ultimately so many of these thoughts and experiences make me the artist and improviser I am today. I know there are many who feel and struggle with similar things, especially in these times where nothing in our current world seems to make any sense.

It is an absolute joy and pleasure to have this life of mine, to travel and connect, to make music with so many individuals and communities that make up the world of original, unconventional, experimental, whatever you wanna call it, music. To lay these things out isn't to solve anything, I just think it’s important to articulate some of the complexities I feel we all go through as artists - and since it’s hard to express, I find it often goes unsaid. I see this as an opportunity, to say out loud and describe somewhat incoherently and incompletely, what it's like for someone like me (and maybe you) to move through this world.

Privilege

I'm the youngest child of immigrant parents, English is my first language and they were able to afford to put me through university. We were by no means rich nor even middle class at points, and there were times where we truly did not have enough to make ends meet, but we got by. Moving home if things got hard has never been an option for me or my brother, and we still decided to pursue artistic careers. Having a roof over my head and food on the table has been burned into my being as the ultimate priority. Things like going to the dentist have and will always be a financial burden for me. I've had a job for as long as I can remember, working under the table before I was of legal working age. I'm now noticing later in life that those of us who have worked those random Joe jobs have been given a sense of perspective and certain skill sets that sets us apart from those who have not. I really value the time I spent in the service industry, in retail, even at a call centre. Nowadays, the concept of stability seems more elusive than ever.

I also moved a lot when I was a kid, from Scarborough to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Mississauga, Malton to Richmond Hill. This made me very adaptable, too much of a people pleaser, and conveniently built for touring, I later realized. I was very much a tomboy, raised mostly by my Dad, brother and my many male cousins and friends in my formative years, raised to be independent with the absence of parents most of my teenage years.

I recognize how all these aspects, coupled with a lifetime of choices, failures and circumstances out of my control, have made this life of mine possible. It’s a reminder that a disadvantage to one is still a privilege to another, it’s relative and in constant flux, and (like most things) no rigid definition of it exists for any one of us.

Musician

Being in an environment where you’re outnumbered by males 9 to 1 or being the only person of colour is still a common occurrence to me even in these times, though definitely less so than say, when I was in music school. I’m aware that my tomboy-ness or longstanding struggle with whitewashing to fit in during those formative years made me less susceptible to the worst parts of those kinds of environments. Even still, being ignored or having loads of unwanted attention became a norm and I’m still trying my best not to default to old habits of how to ‘survive’. The age-old stereotypical assumptions attached to being an Asian woman are still very prevalent in today’s world and I unfortunately still find myself needing to protect or fight against them, particularly since inappropriate behaviours and comments are made unconciously. I feel lucky to say at this moment in time, I’ve found space where I can be, to have truly found my people, within the mess of it all. Even still, situations inevitably come up where I am hyper aware of the disadvantages and injustice so many of us experience.

Even while in music school, it was impressed upon us that only about 2% of us will actually have a career in music. Why does it work out for one artist over another? As I get older, I'm watching so many friends who are middle aged/mid level realizing that this isn't working out the way they thought, with some giving up on their practice. Some are not getting the recognition they thought they ought to have, most are not finding a career with music sustainable. Is the failure what we were set up to expect right from the start? Does being ‘good’ guarantee being successful? What’s ‘good’ anyway? If you work hard shouldn’t that mean you will succeed? But don’t we all work hard?

The hype and identity politics that now accompany which artists get chosen is really hard to understand… Am I being chosen because I'm a woman of colour? Yes but not in the way you think. But also, yes. And so I’m left with feelings of confusion - of feeling like I should be grateful (I am) to be chosen once in a while, but for reasons that feel misguided, while I/we continue to be subjected to mistreatment within a long broken system. I think most of us are exhausted and disappointed with the industry, we've been made to believe this is a community when it’s not. Not that community doesn’t exist, it most definitely does, and I count myself very lucky to be a part of a real one, one that stretches beyond countries and physical boundaries. I mean more that community sometimes gets conflated with industry and as a result, interpersonal dynamics often get used and abused when it gets tied up in business. For identity to be mixed up in how we are treated, how we are perceived. My life in music has given me so much, but taking part in the successes I’ve found often feels like perpetuating the shitty parts, and it’s exhausting trying to grapple with it.

Touring

These are friends, lovers, creative collaborators, employers, colleagues, roommates all bundled up in one splendid mess.

I realize that I’ve been hired often because I can ‘hang’. Which means I don’t ask for a lot, I’m often fine with whatever and easily adaptable. This ‘reputation’ often makes it difficult to outline needs, or know how to approach communication when something’s wrong. Not wanting to be seen as needy or demanding, and afraid that this would break the illusion that I'm a good ‘hang’ I would often stay silent. I'm trying not to do that as much now.

The truth is that I AM a good hang, I love people, I love hanging out and connecting. This has inevitably led to a few romantic relationships within bands which in turn has led to the few times I've lost my place in a band. Am I being fired because I'm a woman of colour? Yes but not in the way you think. But also, yes.

Still with all of our language and emotional awareness we have not found a way to talk to each other about the more complex feelings that arise from band dynamics. Maybe it really was because a trumpet was needed instead of sax. In which case just say so, as a hired worker I'll understand. Or maybe because there were ‘feelings’ that once were and aren’t anymore, so space or separation is needed. In which case, as a friend or lover, I would understand. The most hurtful thing one can do is not say anything at all. This includes bandmates who have become something like family to you, who seemingly don't stand up for you in these moments. Probably because they too, feel they need to stay silent and stay out of it, for fear of losing their job.

It does seem all too common for the emotional work and burden to fall on the femmes/ women who are trying to communicate and understand, as to not invent or have to guess what's happening in the face of silence. Or to be the ones to have to hold the aftermath of how actions, reactions or inactions are affecting those around them. To have to inevitably be the one that leaves or is left out, to be treated poorly by those who will never take accountability. There is indeed an emotional maturity to address these openly with each other, that is seldom seen, that I wish for, that I strive for. Whether it's a romance, friendship or work, these are all still relationships that deserve care and attention.

Organizer

Never have I encountered the unpleasant dynamic of women as assumed caretakers, and unchecked entitlement from men, more than in my role as an organizer. At this point in my life I have lost patience with the ‘top-down’, hierarchical, control driven power dynamics that are found in so many instances related to institutions and organizations. I pride myself in doing good work, being efficient and I absolutely believe it’s possible to do that and still be a sensitive human with emotions and care. It’s hard not to feel as if having the latter qualities still results in being taken advantage of.

The amount of people who would message through email, text, and all social media platforms because they were looking for a gig because they thought they had an ‘in’ with me because I’ve shown kindness in the past. The pressure or desire to help friends but not wanting to act based on favouritism. Who am I to decide? Everyone deserves their moment, deserves the space to present their art. In the end there are only so many hours in the day, and it was overwhelming to try and tend to everyone. Because I thought that’s what was expected of me, that’s what the job was.

People would sometimes speak to me like I was the ‘help’. The amount of times where I wouldn’t even be acknowledged in the conversation as people would direct their attention to the men present. My active efforts in trying to make space for all would then be taken up by those who aren’t considering others. Or the meanness and ugly behaviour I would receive, because the fact that someone like me might be a working artist who understands (let alone in charge of the whole thing) didn't even occur to them. That attitude would instantly change (most of the time in the form of surprise) when they realized what my role was. But what's worse, when they do find out - are they just speaking to me because they want a gig? Because they think they can get something from me? How much of what’s said and done are because of what I am, without consideration of who I am?

And in the years of doing this work, balancing programming with logistical sense and consideration for all involved, I’ve become more and more aware of the emotional tax that comes with it. It isn't the emails or spreadsheets or grant writing that made me quit. It was the pressure of feeling like everyone needed something from me. The assumption that once you’re in a position of power that you can fix the problems of a community, or make an organization relevant again. I was happy to give, to help, if I could, wanting nothing in return but for everyone to try thinking along the same lines, to help, support, give back to each other. I wish there was a better awareness of how actions affect others, to consider where others are coming from as circumstances might be very different from person to person and to never assume. To look beyond ourselves and our immediate needs, to centre those less fortunate, less resourced. In the end it was about support, and when you’re doing all the supporting and not receiving it back, it most definitely results in burnout.

Perhaps it would be easier if I didn’t care, and wasn't so kind to people, but I decided long ago that I’m not willing nor able to do that, for better or worse. The hard lesson of realizing that helping at all costs ultimately results in not being very helpful at all, and the eventual need of upholding boundaries. It's taken awhile but I (now) know my worth, I know what respect looks like, and when I’m not being valued, to know how to stand up for myself - and sometimes that looks like stepping away. To remove myself from situations, and instead put my energy in places where it is reciprocated, opposed to consumed without notice. Readers with whom this resonates with, I hope for this willingness to fight for your worth. You're worth it.

Human

The subject of de-humanization has come up a lot these days, for obvious reasons. I realize that many face this every day, different versions of varying scopes - to be seen for what we are, opposed to who we are. Ultimately I am and we all are humans with thoughts and feelings and deserve to be treated as such. I truly believe with all my heart that no one deserves to exist more than another.

And so, it’s heartbreaking to have to fight just to be human. I speak for myself to a much lesser extent here, but more for so many others I see out on the streets, out in the world. To accept that in this late capitalist world, the ability to exist, to be stable, as someone less privileged is not in the interest of those who are.

Maybe it's because the world feels like it’s about to end, as the fires and heat press down upon the earth, as genocides rage, as cruelty wins over and over again. It feels hard to do anything. But I still feel an inexplicable urge to be kind. To care and be compassionate. In this time it feels like just by being, in this way, and continuing to gather, to make space for art and creative endeavours, that is an act of protest in itself. Because in the face of aggression, of oppression, or patronization, I choose to counter with kindness. How might we all be kinder to each other? Can we shift our goals and wants so it doesn’t come at the cost of others? Can we have desires without feeling entitled to it? Can we accept that we don’t always get what we want? That in the clumsy journey towards the ideal, not every endeavour will encapsulate all that is ideal? That we need to share sometimes, that we should consider how others might be affected? Especially those less fortunate?

So while I'm not one to ever tell anyone what to do (who am I to say?), I do wish we would do better in taking care of each other. Sometimes we’re not able, and I find for myself that it often calls for a time to take better care of and be kinder to myself. Instead of shaming or blaming, strive and hope for us all to do better.

These words are just how I observe and experience things, how the world is for me. And as I continue to fumble forward in this life, I'm committed to leading by example to treat everyone with humanity because that is how I also wish to be treated. To surround myself with caring people. Because in the end I am still so grateful to have this life of mine, grateful that it’s even possible to have a life like this, despite everything I've said. Possible for the moment at least.

I leave you now then, with a solo saxophone improvisation. Despite my eternal exploration of music and sound, this continues to be me at my most honest and vulnerable.

- KN

July 5th, 2025 - 6:05 am:

my leg wraps, my boots.

my blanket and my saddle pad.

my saddle placed over my blanket.

my breast collar, my girth.

my bit.

my bridle.

my badge. my badge. my badge. my badge.

1.

My family’s first apartment was across the street from an NYPD precinct. My parents love to tell the story of when they found me, a newborn, awake in my crib performing a distinctly high, warbling sound. Retroactively, they say that I was imitating the sirens: “See! It’s like your music!”

2.

Horsepower is a unit of measurement developed by the engineer, James Watt. It measures the rate at which work is done, specifically the amount of power needed to move 550 pounds the distance of one foot in one second. Watt developed horsepower as a marketing tool to aid sales of his new and improved steam engines. The efficiency of earlier designs had been increased by adding a separate condenser which eliminated the cycles of cooling and heating previously required. Despite this newfound efficiency, the mine and farm owners - Watt’s prospective customers - didn’t immediately take to his new design; a development which came as a shock. Watt thought that the language around his design - one of thermal efficiency and energy units - may have been confusing them, and so he set out to develop a unit of measurement to which they could better relate.

Watt’s steam engine transformed manufacturing, transportation, mining, and agriculture and vastly accelerated the development of industrial capitalism by increasing productivity and restructuring economies around fossil-fueled machinery. Powering this industrial transformation required not just machines but a new labor regime. In Britain and the U.S., carceral and slave labor were used to feed production needs and to build and maintain infrastructure required by the industrializing state (think: railways, factories, and mines). Following the Civil War, new laws criminalized idleness, vagrancy, and unemployment — targeting freed slaves and displaced workers affected by enclosure and urbanization.

3.

I first encountered the adverse effects of noise on horses at an outdoor show in Cologne the summer of 2023. My band was playing in a public garden that neighbored a stable. Soon after our performance began, the manager of the stable appeared - apparently the horses were unsettled by the music. We weren’t aware of the extremity of their distress until the manager called the cops, ending the show abruptly. The horses had been attempting to escape their stables and were so anxious that they needed to be sedated for the night. We felt horrible.

Horse hearing is particularly acute. They have a hearing range between 55Hz and 33,500Hz with their best sensitivity in the range of 1000Hz to 16,000Hz. While horses are particularly adept at registering high frequency sound, they have a slightly worse frequency response in the lower register as compared to human hearing. Horses are able to sense low frequency sound in other ways that bypass the ear however: vibrations from the ground can be registered in their hooves as well as in their teeth and diffused through their jawbones. Horses have ten different muscles in their ears which allow for 180 degrees of independent rotation: this means that with both ears the horse can localize, funnel, and amplify specific sounds within a 360 degree radius without moving its head. While a horse’s hearing is particularly sensitive, its vision is even more robust: despite this the horse has two blindspots in its vision - one directly in front of its forehead and another directly at its rear. Its ability to locate the source of a sound with such precision functions to fill in these blindspots (which the horse also achieves by regularly moving its head from side to side). When a potential threat is detected sonically, a horse will confirm it visually before reacting.

As a prey species, horses are particularly sensitive to sudden, unexpected noises which may be interpreted as a potential danger or threat. A brief, unanticipated, or unfamiliar noise can scare a horse, resulting in a range of anxiety behaviors including an escape attempt which can cause severe accidents for the rider-handler. 83% of horse riding injuries are caused by the rider falling off the horse, with the number one cause of falling being a frightened horse. Noise anxiety can have a significant impact on a working horse’s general welfare, with some handlers reporting that a horse may never be able to work effectively again following an escape attempt.

Horses have also shown a particularly strong aversion to the odor of pigs.

4.

In early 2025 I was having lunch at my friend S’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. We heard the sound of horse hooves coming from the street below. S explained that he lived next to the NYPD Mounted Unit’s stables. The Mounted Unit is part of the Special Operations Bureau of the NYPD and is primarily used for crowd control at demonstrations and protests in each borough excluding Staten Island. Their stables are located on the ground floor of the Mercedes House, a luxury apartment complex that shares the real estate with the Mercedes Benz Manhattan Dealership. Their motto: “Luxury has a new address.” At approximately 7am the Mounted Unit - known colloquially as “10 Foot Cops” - will leave for the day before returning between 5 - 6pm. When they return, S’s neighbor puts a bubble machine to his window and releases a deluge of bubbles into the street.

5.

In January I encountered a number of gruesome videos coming from the Southern US border where U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents were deploying their mounted units to violently repel and track crossings deemed illegal. The Border Patrol Mounted Unit - part of the Texas Department of Public Safety - were also deployed on April 25th, 2024 to break up Pro-Palestine protests at the University of Texas campus in Austin. This wasn’t the first time we’d seen the violent deployment of a Mounted Unit: consider June 9th, 2025 at anti-ICE protests in LA, 2016 at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, or October 2011 during Occupy Wall Street, and many times since, between, and before.

6.

Now in Texas, prisoners in Coffield Unit (Tennessee Colony TX), Hilltop Unit (Gatesville TX), Robertson Unit (Abilene, TX), and Luther Unit (Navasota, TX) are engaged in the breeding, training, and care of horses used for law enforcement and border patrol units.

7.

The NYPD - and the various police departments across the country - try to account for a horse’s particular sensitivity to sound through a training program of desensitization. In their training facilities in Pelham Bay Park, a multichannel loud speaker system is setup along the perimeter of the space: as horses move through it they are exposed to a series of loud noises so as to remove the possibility of an anxiety response. The NYPD uses audio recordings ranging from the sound of bagpipes, helicopters, car noises, and gunfire to accustom the horses to the soundscape of an urban context. Several horse trainers I spoke with indicated that the desensitization training for a working horse in a city like New York would likely also consist of recordings of noise associated with people (spontaneous yelling, laughter, apparently even crying), as well as dogs barking. The generic content of experimental music - think: the extremes of volume, frequency content, rhythmic irregularity, density, etc. - is completely distinct from the audio used in the police department’s desensitization training. In this way, it could likely still be effective in frightening the Mounted Unit horses and catalyzing an escape attempt.

Horses are also frightened by certain objects. Anything that appears suddenly and moves quickly tends to startle them. Several of the trainers mentioned that horses are particularly afraid of plastic bags blowing past them as well as balloons.

8.

July 5th, 2025 - 5:43pm:

A performance took place on 53rd street between 10th and 11th avenue in Manhattan — just outside of the NYPD Mounted Unit’s stables. On cue, as the Mounted Unit returned to headquarters for the evening, the 38 cars parked on 53rd street blared exceedingly loud music from their stereo systems. As the music screamed, the drivers of the cars revved their engines and honked their horns in rhythm with it. The cacophony of high frequency sound, roaring engines, and shrieking horns terrified the 18 horses and their riders. The horses threw the 18 police officers to the ground as they tried to escape the sound. The officers were severely injured in the process, receiving several blows from the horses during the escape attempt. A single car peeled out of its parked position, blocking the horses from escaping towards 10th avenue and corralling them towards 11th. Waiting on 11th avenue were five trailers which could fit four horses each. The horses were guided into the five trailers and taken to an undisclosed location in upstate New York. The recordings accessible at the following link document this performance:

Performance Documentation - July 5th, 2025

9.

My parents would ask Lucy to babysit me when they were busy. She lived in our building and must’ve been 16 at the time. I think I was 6. It was early evening in July and Lucy decided we should go for a walk to escape the apartment’s heat. We found ourselves on 7th Ave. and came across a small street fair with floats and vendors. On the corner were a few police officers milling and one member of the Mounted Unit.

“Look at the horsey!” said Lucy, picking me up.

We approached the officers and Lucy asked if she could introduce me to the horse, who was named Great Jones. She hoisted me up and put us face to face. Great Jones looked me directly in the eyes. I started sobbing, pleading to get away from it. Lucy laughed. The cops laughed too. Great Jones remained unaffected.

10.

Approximately 15 - 20 cars are able to park on a single side of the street on a residential block in NYC. This will mean there are 30 - 40 cars total that the horses will pass before returning to their stables. In my visits to the block I never encountered more than 38 cars total - 3 of which were NYPD vehicles with 2 trailers for the horses - as well as one motorcycle. Each car door facing into the street will be outfitted with a Soundboks4 Speaker, currently graded as the highest powered battery operated, wireless speaker - capable of reaching upwards of 126db with transparent monitoring and a frequency response of 40Hz - 20KHz. One speaker would be inserted into each street-facing door and covered with a fine mesh screen so as not to disrupt or dampen the diffusion of sound. The screen would be dyed or painted to match the color of the car and conceal the speaker. In total, 60 - 80 speakers would be installed. The speaker cones would rest at a height of 35 - 45 inches within the frame of the door, depending on the car model. As such, each speaker would need to be tilted at an angle of 22.6 degrees so as to be directed at the horses’ ears assuming a height of approximately 60 - 72 inches.

Given the horse’s sensitivity to low frequency vibrational transmission, overnight a false street would be installed above the concrete ground that would exactly resemble the concrete below. The top layer of the false street would be constructed out of a high quality plywood such as Baltic Birch or Marine grade at a thickness of 1.25 - 1.5 inches with 60 - 80 Dayton Audio Bass Shakers affixed to the underside of the false street. Bass shakers diffuse sound through a physical medium as opposed to other speakers which cause vibrations in air: when a low frequency sound is transmitted through the shaker it will cause a vibration in the false street that will mimic the sensation of the ground shaking. The top layer of plywood would be reinforced by an aluminum framing using a grid of square tubing spaced 12 - 16 inches apart. The Bass Shakers would be affixed directly to the plywood and centered between the support joints to allow for maximum vibration transmission. For best transmission, a solid mount with epoxy or metal brackets would be used. A horse’s hoof pressure can exceed 2,000 psi: as such, this structure would be designed to support at least 2,500 lbs distributed and tolerate high point loads, while ensuring no significant flexing.

PHFFFFFRRRRRR

PHFFFFFFFFRRRRRRRRR

phfffffrrrrrr

phfffffffffrrrrrrr

PHFFfffRRrrRrRrrrRRr

One bass shaker will be placed on the underside of the false street adjacent to each car door. With each sound played through the Soundboks4 array a bass frequency will occur in a different location making it increasingly difficult for the horse to locate the source of the sound. The diffusion of sounds will be designed in such a way as to take advantage of the horse’s blindspots, moving the sounds rapidly through the speaker array so that the location source is constantly shifting from one blindspot to another in the hopes of causing sudden movements in the horses as they attempt to visually locate the source of the sound.

Horses are known to exhibit increased “flightiness” on windy days given the frequent movement of objects in their field of vision: as such, the piece will be installed on a day forecasted to have increased wind and weather warnings. Several bubble machines will also be setup along the route and balloons will be tied to the sideview mirrors of all the parked cars.

Given a horse’s known anxiety response to the strong odor of pigs, timed canisters will be placed underneath each car emitting a burst of strongly scented pig odor into the street every 30 seconds.

11.

I have left you this score to be performed alongside the recordings accessible at the below link. These recordings of various loops are to be listened to in your car with the windows down, the sunroof open (if applicable), the hood of the car open, and the doors open. The loops can be accessed here:

Performance Loops

…where you will be prompted to select the number of loops to be performed. This score investigates various forms of horsepower and understands horsepower as a measurement of sound. A direct link between sound and horsepower can be made by translating horsepower into acoustic power, which is the amount of sound energy a source produces per second, or: the rate at which sound is transmitted and received. Acoustic power is measured in Watts (W) and is named after the inventor James Watt.

For the purposes of your performance, I’d like to suggest a different mapping. When a car increases its engine speed (RPM) it also increases its horsepower. To our ears this will sound like a change in frequency: when horsepower is increased the car’s engine generates a higher frequency sound and when it is decreased the engine produces a lower frequency sound. In this way the acceleration pedal is like a pitch controller! The loops you will perform alongside come from several “classic” pieces of experimental music by the composers Maryanne Amacher, Luigi Nono, Pauline Oliveros, Karlheinz Stockhausen, James Tenney, David Tudor, and Iannis Xenakis with more recent contributions from Florian Hecker and Marcus Schmickler.

To be performed by as many parked cars as possible (though ideally 38):

July 5th, 2025 - 11:37 pm:

The 18 horses arrived at an undisclosed location in upstate New York. Each horse underwent a “noise-to-tail” check where they were examined for cuts — especially around the legs, face, and chest — swelling and heat in their joints, and for signs of overexertion including rapid breathing, trembling, sweaty coats, and high heart rates. Some of the horses had suffered small scrapes and cuts which we cleaned with antiseptic and finished with a soothing Manuka honey ointment. Another horse had suffered a minor chip in its hoof. After we cleaned it with water and antiseptic our farrier filed and rebalanced the hoof. The horses were offered clean, cool water and were sponged and hosed with cold water to calm them. We walked them gently on flat ground for 15 minutes to lower their respiration before individually placing them in a small paddock with plenty of hay. Over the next 48 hours, we monitored them for signs of anxiety or distress. During this time, we repeatedly checked the horses for any indication of swelling, limping, changes in eating and drinking, and other signs of stress or pain.

To Begin

0. Three different possibilities for synchronizing:

A. One car honks its horn 4 times in a steady and slow rhythm — on its fifth honk the driver starts their recorded loops and begins their performance. On this same 5th honk the next driver will start their 4 honks in the same repeating rhythm. On their fifth honk the driver should start their recorded loops with the next driver taking up the same rhythm. Continue this process until all cars have started their loops. Determine an ordering in advance of the performance.

B. Start together with a cue.

C. Start whenever in any ordering or in any other way of your choosing.

01. Start the loops: select the number of loops you wish to perform via the above link.

02. Each track presents loops of various pitch bends — glissandi — and other incremental fluctuations in pitch. Its repetition will create a rhythm — use the rhythm of these pitched fluctuations to generate a rhythm using the car’s acceleration pedal. The rhythm of acceleration — the revving of the motor — can exactly match, subdivide, or be in counterpoint with the rhythm of the loop.

Matching

Try to exactly replicate the glissandi with the car’s acceleration.

Subdivide

Divide the rhythm of the glissandi into smaller units realized using the car’s acceleration.

Counterpoint

Generate any complimentary rhythm to the glissandi. For each loop you should set a range to explore within the acceleration pedal, either:

A. Full range of pedal.

B. 3/4 range of pedal.

C. 1/2 range of pedal.

D. 1/4 range of pedal.

03. At any point you can honk your horn in rhythm with the loop and your revving. This honking rhythm can again match, subdivide, or be in counterpoint. For each loop determine the density for honks using the below options which will also activate a different mechanism within the car.

Honking Densities:

A. Sustaining / continuous honks [Windshield Wipers ON]

B. High Density [Headlights - alternating at will between low & high beam]

C. Mid Range Density [Alarm ON / Flashing Lights]

D. Sparse / Pointillistic [Indicator Signals - alternating at will between right & left]

E. Chaos Rhythm (no discernible rhythmic logic) [Hazard Lights ON]

You can use any criteria to choose the pedal range and honking density.

04. Your honking should produce a regular and consistent rhythm. This need not be consciously in relation to or coordinated with the honking of another performer, but complex rhythms between the various cars’ honking will emerge and should be encouraged and explored.

05. For each loop you should only explore one honking density and one pedal range option. With the start of each new loop you should change to a new pedal range and new rhythmic density. Your rhythm should be as consistent as possible within each loop.

How do you feel honking?

Revving?

As you perform: what are you most concerned about?

To End

Performers should choose an arbitrary number of loops to perform — within a given range — which can be coordinated in advance of the performance. For example: performers can agree that they will perform a total of 8 - 12 loops. Each performer can then choose the number of loops they wish to perform within that range.

When Your Loop Ends

Turn off your car and slowly honk the number of total loops you performed in a steady rhythm before exiting your car. For example: if you performed 16 loops, honk your horn 16 times in a regular rhythm.

If you hear / see someone complete their performance

Quickly and steadily honk double the number of loops you selected and perform a repeating, rapid acceleration of the pedal in its full range until you’ve completed honking. For example: if you have chosen to perform 16 loops, honk your horn 32 times and accelerate / decelerate rapidly.

Where are you?

Outside the Mounted Unit’s stables as they prepare to leave for work?

Creating a perimeter around a protest through which the Mounted Unit cannot pass?

During a military parade?

Outside a baseball game?

New Year’s Eve in Times Square?

In the parking lot before a massive pop concert?

Really any stadium event could work?

At the border to protect crossings?

A car convention?

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade?

During a visit by a politician to your neighborhood?

Where else?

How did you feel when I started talking about horses?

Why horses?

Do you think I’m violent?

Did you have a horse growing up?

Who taught you to drive?

When was the last time you hurt something?

How did you make yourself feel better?

How do you feel now?

Whose badge should we wear today?

12.

The 18 horses are now undergoing a process of resensitization intended to bring their attention back to the sensitivities numbed by police work. The first step in this process involves touch. These horses currently show no reaction to contact and do not respond to poking or prodding even in typically sensitive areas (think: the girth, the ears, and the muzzle). We start by touching specific areas of the horse’s body with a soft brush and then move to our hands — varying the type and duration of contact — all the while watching for small responses from the horse indicative of alertness. These include flinching or ear flicking which are rewarded with an apple slice. This process reminds the horse that it is okay to respond to contact.

These 18 horses are entirely desensitized to their surroundings, so much so that they no longer pay attention to the environment they’re in at all. We are slowly introducing new objects and scenarios into the horses’ daily walks in the hopes that they begin to notice and process their surrounding environment again. When out walking, we will stop the horse at a specific location, asking it to quietly observe the surroundings. When we encounter a response indicating awareness — again: an ear flick or a head turn — we reward the reaction with an apple slice. I try to notice what it is the horse may have responded to. I wonder what they are hearing. Each time we stop and reward a response, I hope that something has changed in my ears. Am I hearing differently now too?

In these same walks we try to promote the horse’s mental awareness by inserting obstacles on a familiar path as well as suddenly changing direction and pace. This process has been a slow and difficult one for the horses; they have been through so much. But they are gradually regaining their capacities. We performers hope that with continued exercise some amount of their previous alertness, engagement, and responsiveness can be restored. And also: that new sensitivities will be uncovered.

- DC

I don’t like music, I only like songs.

There should be a song that kills you if you sing it.

There should be a song that sings you back.

Last Christmas, Payton took me to see Kiki and Herb and something Kiki said has stuck with me continually. She said that she loves when people scream out on the dance floor that they love this song, or when they scream it out in a car or what have you, because when you say you love a song, you’re really saying you love yourself. It was about how we love songs when the songs connect with something in us. And to love a song is a very easy and automatic expression of loving yourself.

The story from the Rod Stewart song Maggie has always haunted me.

The lyrics to It’s Not Unusual by Tom Jones are some extremely crazy shit and also the song itself is like 25 seconds long.

A random guy in Central Park started singing Hotel California and my mom stopped in her tracks and said, Wow, best song in history.

Something beautiful I witnessed recently was my dad and his wife discussing the possibility of their mothers dying while we rode down the highway with Red, Red Wine absolutely blasting out of the speakers on Christmas Day. They were yelling over the song saying, like I can imagine it up to a point, but then my brain stops, it won’t go on. It’s just -- nothing.

Another time I thought my friend John had written the song Illegal Smile, which is a John Prine song. I was like jaw to the floor and crying as he was playing and singing it, because I thought my friend had achieved something truly amazing, thinking he made it up, and he was like, oh my god, no, it’s John Prine.

Isla, who is 6 years old, told me her crush is a pop crush. What is a pop crush? I asked. She said it’s a crush where you write pop songs about it.

A Wing Stop commercial just reminded me how good the song No Flex Zone is.

I love when Lana Del Rey sings, They sang folk songs from the 40s / even the fourteen-year-old knew Froggy Came a’ Courting / how do my blood relatives know all of these songs / I don’t know anyone else who knows songs that I sing.

Kyle used to sing Froggy Came a’ Courting to the preschoolers. Being in a relationship with someone who knows folk songs from the 40s actually was really special and I’m grateful for that.

Green Day made a song about us, or they retrofitted their song Wake Me Up When September Ends to be about us, after Hurricane Katrina, because it happened on August 29, and that song played constantly on the radio in Mississippi and made you pull over the car to cry because it was retraumatizing because they mixed it with horribly sad clips from the news after the storm. The most painful of these clips was a man saying, I’m looking for my wife, I just have to find my wife.

I walked into Party City with Jordy who was four years old and the first notes of the Taylor Swift song Getaway Car came on the speakers. I didn’t know they were playing the best song ever, he said.

I first heard the song I Started A Joke by the Bee Gees in the movie Zoolander about a male model whose star has risen but is now on the decline.

Derek Zoolander walks around in an empty Times Square, or the Times Square equivalent, in his somewhat fictional world, and the mysterious song begins to play.

I was enthralled by the mystery of the song, and further awestruck by the fact that this song was made by the same people who’d made Stayin’ Alive, a song so overdetermined by its context in Saturday Night Fever, I could hardly imagine the same people creating the mystery built of simple language in I Started A Joke. I started a joke that started the whole world crying. I started to cry which started the whole world laughing. Though it made no sense, and even though I was a child, I felt on some level I understood.

On the internet I discovered I was not the only one who felt they might understand:

It's a song about a guy who never said a charitable thing about anyone his whole life. He used sarcasm and poked fun at others' mistakes.

This song is about feeling alienated and feeling you're on a different schedule or world than the other or 'real' world. It's simple and repetitive.

It's a love song!??? The whole world is the loved one. Little things make the loved one cry and laugh. He thought he made a joke. It's the other way around.

Robin is the least attractive of the brothers. He has a great since of humor but thinks he is the joke of the family and all would go on laughing still without him. He lived his life very dangerously. He meant that song about himself but doesn't want others to feel bad about their looks or think of suicide.

I think it is about losing his first wife in divorce and being separated from two of his children, Spencer and Melissa for so long. He did things that he regretted and it affected his life and two eldest kids. He felt guilty about it.

My version would be in the garden of Eden, when Satan started a joke, mocking God, and had the whole world mocking God, but Satan didn’t know the joke was on him when Jesus Christ died at the cross, and he’s alive in heaven, and that he defeated death. And that those who believe in Jesus Christ will have eternal life. Now that’s a joke on Satan.

That song reflects exactly how I feel in social situations. I can't let go of the feeling that I'm the one dragging the rest of the group down and that everyone is judging everything I do or say. If someone laughs, it must be at my expense."

Same here. I heard somebody once say that Barry’s falsetto made hearts flutter but Robin’s vibrato made the earth tremble.

I, for one, couldn’t agree more.

I personally believe the Bee Gees song how deep is your love was written and produced by God.

If I could figure out any human gesture completely, I’d choose crying or singing.

I recently saw Ingrid Michaelson sing her one famous song from many years ago, this year, on Shark Tank.

When I was a child, I was sent to a day camp on a cruise ship for one day but I cried the whole time so my parents never sent me back. While I was there, something odd happened. The strange adults circled everyone up in order to play Name That Tune, the idea being that they’d play a little part of a song and then we had to say what the song was. They were playing mostly Disney songs. They played a lot of the song, almost all the way to the chorus. Everyone was horrible at the game and I knew the answers before anyone else did and I kept answering, almost begrudgingly, so that we could get this game over with.

Then they played a song I had never heard before that went, I’m a gummy bear/ a gummy gummy bear/ I’m a gummy bear. Then they turned off the music. Everyone was completely stumped and I was like, um, the Gummy Bear Song?

And they were like, Yes! You’re so good at this game! How did you know that!?

And I was just like absolutely mystified by how stupid everyone was and that’s when I started to get scared and confused. Like, why didn’t any of the kids know the songs?

In the Jamie Foxx song about songs Slow Jamz, he says, imitating the voice of a woman at the club, I already danced to ninety-two hundred songs.

There is something like a drug for me in all the scenes in John Cassavetes movies where one drunk character forces another character to sing. It reminds me singing is about participation. And participation is required but does not always feel good.

When I was a child, I made burned CDs of TV theme songs from Kazaa. Because they were so short, you could put about 40 TV theme songs on a burned CD.

This is a pickup line I invented: Are you Conor Oberst? Because you’re crying in the middle of every song.

When a male songwriter reaches a certain age, he is compelled to write a minor song about Frank Lloyd Wright that ends up being kind of a throwaway because it sounds too much like a research project because he can’t make the theme (Frank Lloyd Wright) and his central meaning meet somewhere lyrically that doesn’t feel forced.

The other night at bed time, when it was time for Milo to choose what song I would sing to him, he chose Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, unbelievably.

I’ve got that song ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP stuck in my head.

William Blake died singing.

My boyfriend wrote a song when he was 19 while he was working at the Olive Garden. He introduced it at a show the other night by saying that he was inspired to write the next song while doing his opening shift at the Olive Garden, sweeping the huge parking lot with a broom. The song is called Will I Ever Know Joy In This World Again?

There should be a song that kills you if you sing it.

There should be a song that sings you back, getting revenge.

- CB

I don’t believe in structured improvisation. Improvisation is unplanned and unstructured. “Improvisation is a predicament.” [1] Once a predicament is structured it could be resolved easily. That is perhaps why Cage was trying to “make improvisation a discipline.” [2]

Improvisation, however, could be part of a greater structure. Improvisation is all about undercurrents, the things that are never mentioned but exist. It’s about being obligated to bring forth something, to silence nothing.

As long as there is a task, there is a score. As long as there is a score, often, choices are a priori to decisions. In improvisation, however, even if there is a score, it does not emerge from choices; it begins with decisions. (E.g.Cardew’s Schooltime Special) Improvisation is sometimes thought to be about sudden and fast processes of making choices, but to me it’s all about the slow periods of decision making. The present actions emerge in the background of constantly deciding, the incessant beginnings.

When I improvise, the question is not where and how to end, but where and how to begin. Even the ending happens in response to a question about how to begin again.

Every decision I make in my improvisations is very similar to the moment of pushing a button to capture a picture with a camera (“I have seen this.”) I have not reached the point to be able to forget all my habits, so they are there. The material, the tasks, the actions, the gestures, the sounds, the local something, they are all there, floating in the opaque river of my habits, the undercurrent, the background, the context, the global nothing.

You see something and you put a frame around it (the local) that means you try to unsee what’s outside the frame (the global) and then you decide on the moment when to capture it. For me that right moment does not come wholly from outside (the right composition, light, etc), a change either from outside or inside usually initiates the passage from deciding to acting, from seeing to capturing.

Consider street photography. Imagine a figure with a camera walking around, looking. What am I looking at? What am I looking for? A decision is made…bang…the picture is taken. What did I do? I just looked. Everything in the picture was there. I just framed it. That is how I think of improvisation. I just frame the things that are there in the space of improvisation. I look around, listen around. There are things around, lots of things. I would rather reuse things that add something new to the pile of things that we already have. Improvisation in this regard is very close to collage…juxtaposition. It is real-time enactment of memory-juxtaposition. That is why I see my improvised actions in relation to the whole and at the same time completely isolated. That’s how framing works.

One could also see that this approach is coming from having nothing to say. To do from out of nothing…the obligation.

In general, and in retrospect, as I am improvising in a free improvisation context, I am walking on eggshells and every once in a while, after gathering in my body enough tension resulting from the suppression and the censor, I break from it. These subdued moments of careful consideration of sound-making/acting are often preceded and interrupted by moments of decision making. I often have moments of silence (I don’t intentionally make any sounds…to back off…to wait, and to begin again. [3] I have been influenced by the kind of works that create certain improvisatory inquiry into the nature of sound, its materiality and how it acts (e.g. Alvin Lucier’s Vespers, Opera with Objects, Tapper, and even Music for Solo Performer.)

The absurd details stem from the anxiety of presenting “my music” on stage. The anxiety around the inability to have total control, and leaning into that inability, reproducing the anxiety once again on stage. To try to express, through often limited, repetitive and singular actions, could be a source of anxiety due to its tightness. It is like asking a person to walk in a tight gown that has no sleeves and limits leg movements. (Watch Beckett’s Quad.)

One who could hear cannot stop hearing, and that is the nothingness of sound appearing through only hearing and nothing more. Sounds might be filtered out or ignored by the brain but one cannot stop receiving them or avoid the vibration they cause in one’s body. As long as I am alive, I can hear myself breathing and my heart beating. This is ideally where I want to begin each act from, out of nothing, from out of breath. Nothing, here, is somehow everything that is the whole. In other words, the space [4] that I am in is acting as a score for me, the one that is taking shape with me and by me. So, as I act, I change the whole and that’s why I must take a step back, look at the canvas—one that is in constant flux—from a distance and begin again. I also realize even dropping out changes the whole, so there is not much difference between me doing something or not doing something in that matter. (As I am trying to write about improvisation, all I am trying to say seems not so true.)

It takes a certain mixture of confidence and anxiety to stand in front of the row of eyes and ears without any preparation, or better to say any specific preparation.

There is a connection between intentionally and attentively looking/listening, and the phenomena of recording.

I used to repeat this answer to the question about my work: I don’t know what I am doing. And that’s improvisation. It is like Deleuze’s idea that philosophers should think on the edge of thought and write about that which they don’t know.

Other than my search for finding the right moment to begin again—offering something that was already there but still unique because it is a new moment, I often break from the pattern—or for that sake any pattern—that I establish, or I think it’s established by others. These breaks take place usually in group improvisations because there are moments I feel the need to say “I am still here” to stop myself from melting into a group…after trying so hard to be part of it. To reveal my solitude in that setting, and to some extent maybe poke others (performers and audience) to do so as well. These breaks might take different shapes: being tacit and listening/looking, acts of surprise, disappearance, breaking the fourth wall (momentarily), bringing up cliches, quotations, or something totally out of context, etc. This all happens with the idea of juxtaposition and collaging in mind.

But I could use these kinds of ‘breaks’ only when I feel comfortable enough with the people I am working with. It takes a certain level of trust in others to let yourself trust yourself.

Group Improvisation is like watching a movie in a dark movie theatre, you are with others, but you are encouraged (by the darkness and the direction of the seats) to feel your solitude.

- PF

[2] Stanley Kauffmann, moderator, "The Changing Audience for the Changing Arts/Panel," in The Arts: Planning for Change (New York: Associated Councils of the Arts, 1966).

[3] Recently, I have been using contact mics more in my improvisations. A sensitive contact mic with a high gain forces you to be very careful and slow with your movements.

[4] By space I mean anything that is around me in time.

Soundtrack.

A few years ago in early 2020 I visited Senegal as part of my research on the trans Atlantic slave trade.

My guides took me to N’der, a village close to St. Louis.

I was told a story about a group of women who had immolated themselves- refusing to be captured/kidnapped into slavery by marauding Moor slave traders who had come from the north. I was told that the men of the village had been in St. Louis fighting against the French.

That was the year 1819 or 1820.

This was years… ~3 centuries… ~300 years since the commencement of the transatlantic slave trade… but it’s not clear how many years it had been since the start of the trans-saharan slave trade. It was for me a mind freezing encountering, a junction where the two slave trades met… and met also with the colonial capture of the region… the terror… and considering the various types of resistances enacted by people… for over 300 years… resistances on land, in water, over water, internal implosions and external detonations… and self immolations…

I was in N’der village with 2 guides, a historian, Aicha and a facilitator/program producer Marie Cisse from RAW materials co.

We were hosted by a family of one of the descendants of the women…

They took us to the site of the tree where the women had burnt themselves. I spent time with the tree and the soil of the place. We walked around the village. Afterwards, we were invited for a home cooked lunch in one of the homes of the descendants… we were treated with such kindness and honour. We ate collectively - the best, tastiest thieboudienne ever, and It was very heartwarming… a day I will never forget… a generosity of spirit I will always remember.

I spent some more time visiting other parts of Senegal with Marie Helene Perreira, who was at the time the director of RAW.

After Senegal, I had visited various parts of Ghana, guided by Mantse Aryeequaye, where I was also shown and taken to sites related to the transatlantic slave trade including forrests, forts, castles, villages as well as the state archives.

When I returned to South Africa, I visited Tlokwe Sehume, a great musician who lives in the outskirts of Tshwane. I told him about my research and where it had taken me… what I had seen, what I had felt… what I was told… how the descendants of the Nder women had been so generous in their hospitality. I asked that he help me compose something- that would add to the soundtrack of the animation film I was working on- which was shown at the ICA at VCU in Richmond, Virginia in 2021 and at Prospect New Orleans.

The sounds herein include sounds recorded in the various places I visited… several sites in Senegal… in Ghana… CapeTown, South Africa (also known for its slavery history via the Dutch Indian Ocean pillages- later I found out about the Paul Kruger story- but that’s a story for another day) and also a few of the many key sites in the USA- waterways and forests traversed by the enslaved people in Richmond and Nola.

Tlokwe and I made sounds together, he coached me on how to practice an ancient throat singing technique which you might hear when listening to the audio. I spent the day at his musical instrument filled studio at his farm… if one has a really good ear, once in a while one might hear the distant bleed of a goat or 2.

This sound is the soundtrack separated from the animation film, “Master Harmoniser” 2021. The animation film is made up of around 1000 drawings of water using clay from the places I travelled to. I have shown it thus far in Richmond, in New Orleans at the African American Museum and also in Seattle at the Henry Gallery. Some songs I recorded with Tlokwe were also ‘exhibited’ as part of the work I presented at Artes Mundi.

The name of the work “Master Harmoniser” was inspired by the writings of Nnedi Okarofor, she so beautifully wrote about that idea in the Binti trilogy- the idea of a “master harmoniser”…

When I began the work, it was about 400 years since the commencement of the transatlantic slave trade. Around the time when the idea of making a work about this history had come to me, I had found myself weeping about what had happened to the millions of people- abused… and the tentacles: the aftereffects on the descendants of the enslavers, on African descendants of enslaved people living in the diaspora, on Africans living on the continent in post colonial states, the effect of these traumas on the rest of the world’s people… and I found myself curious about what the earth remembers- the various lands on which the tears, blood and sweat fell, landed, evaporated… what the waters remember… and the wind…

- DSB

The work was generously supported by luminous strong beautiful ancestors; Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Virginia; Raw Material Company, Dakar; Prospect. 5, New Orleans; Menokin Foundation, Virginia; Artes Mundi 9; Special thanks to Matty Monethi; Lily Cox-Richard; Nontsikelelo Mutiti; Joy McMillian; Mantse Aryeequaye; Marie Helene Pereira; Amber Esseiva; Tlokwe Sehume; Mongane Serote; TBAcademy; The waters of Solomon Islands, and the spirit of Lucky Dube’s music(everywhere I went) and my earth vehicle: my dear body.

Fragmentation as the process or state of breaking or being broken into fragments [1]

as the disintegration or breaking apart of a cohesive narrative, structure, or form, often conveying a sense of dislocation, chaos and discontinuity [2]

a socially anchored process of deliberate breakage and reuse [3]

as feeling

I moved to New York City in August 2024 for a year-long research fellowship. The last few months have been intense, characterised by numerous personal changes and emotional ups and downs. Time has felt incredibly slow and expansive one moment, rapid and overwhelming the next. Both over-excited and overwhelmed, I found myself needing to find a way musically to explore these intensities of feeling, and to understand how my internal experiences connect to broader ideas about change.

Fragments 1 is part of a larger project of four (work in progress) pieces exploring different states of change: stasis, fragmentation, emergence, and equilibrium. These concepts appealed to me because of their relevance in both musical and non-musical contexts—ranging from the psychoanalytic and literary to the technical, scientific, and metaphorical—as a framework for understanding the relationships between time, change and feeling.

The concept of fragmentation informed my musical decisions on multiple levels. The sound sources include three different iPhone recordings of improvisations using playing metallic materials (such as a metal filing cabinet, radiator and the metal rim of my snare drum). I approached each improvisation as constellations of fragmented gestures and irregular phrases (inspired in part by the generative and fluid, yet fragmented rhythmic structures of computer music). In Ableton, I chopped each recording into fragments – some extremely short, others longer. I then played around with simple EQ and tempo manipulation to enhance micro-rhythmic and sonic details. Together, these recordings and processes create satisfying ambiguities between acoustic and digitally enhanced and rhythms, between rhythm and texture, material and immaterial.

Versions

It hadn’t been my plan, but I sent three different versions of Fragments 1 to Eric over the course of a few weeks. The first was intense, chaotic, somewhat disorientating. The last (this version) is much more subdued. Version one explored the idea of fragmentation as a sort of brokenness where I layered the original recordings of my improvisations and let them play simultaneously, without any structural intervention. For version two, I added one new recording of my radiator and cut small sections from the previous version. I mined these fragments for interesting details, textures, rhythmic patterns or timbral qualities and arranged them in new configurations. This version meandered for long stretches, followed by sudden changes between dislocated fragments.

The final version built on this disjointedness by focussing on sections where interesting relationships had occurred between sounds contained in the fragments from the previous two of versions. The chaotic, high frequency sounds from the first version (and therefore the intensity of my initial reactions to lived change) are still there, but their prominence in the mix has drastically shifted. The rhythmic disjoint and feeling of dislocation articulated in version two shaped the pace and mood of the final version. Rhythmic snapshots from all versions became the repetitious structure which abruptly ends the piece (but could easily continue indefinitely).

Fragments 1 reflects the final stage in the evolution of my understanding of fragmentation and its limitations or potential as an aesthetic device. The process of making it became a way to articulate my sometimes-contradictory emotional states over the past few months without forcing an unrealistic coherence between them.

- RB

[1] Generic dictionary definition

[2] Generic literary perspective

[3] Katherine T. von Stackelberg, Review of The Fragment: An Incomplete History by William Tronzo, Canadian Art Review 35, no. 1 (2010): 98–101: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42630827?seq=3

Campo Bishop Split Attention

What is attention ? What is attentive listening ? And conversely, what is unfocused listening ? Fuzzy, lateral, peripheral ?

What do psychoanalysts, sitting in their comfortable, disheveled chairs, surrounded by books and fetish objects, do when they lower their gaze and appear to sleep in front of the patient ? When they let their listening become unfocused, and sink into a wide backstage from which the opinions and projections that swirl on the surface seem only distant reflections and where an unexpected analogy, a coincidence or a spark of beauty allows itself to be caught on this side of reasoning ?

What form of attention inhabits a compassionate listening and let us remember, it turned toward caring for the fate of the other, the patient who is now speaking ?

( A kind of lucid fog from which figures emerge ).

( A movement reminiscent of the spontaneous gesture of someone walking in the countryside, picking a flower on the side of the road, snatching it in fact, without even slowing their pace and apparently without criteria - it is a lateral, peripheral gaze, to have seen it - instantly making it a symbol, a figure, a memory. )

Unfocused listening is what leads to cledonomancy, a divinatory practice that finds answers and omens in words caught fortuitously on the street, spoken by strangers who pass us by. At a traffic light in Piazzale Loreto two girls pass by me and to my ear comes only “my father does not like seafood risotto.” Why do I remember only that very phrase ? Why in the midst of my distraction something — someone — paid attention? What about seafood just now ? From whom does that message come to me ? From where does the attention flow ? Why did I catch that very sentence ? Maybe the figure of the father who rejects something. The dish that brings together the sea and the misty plains ( an unsolvable contradiction of my life ). Possible interpretations are already sprouting and I am the one making them sprout. What did those girls know about me ? That sentence was not meant for me and yet my attention picked it up.

For Johnatan Crary western modernity has demanded that individuals be defined and trained by their ability to ‘pay attention,’ that is, to disengage from a broader field of attraction, visual or auditory, in order to isolate or focus on a reduced number of stimuli” [1], exactly the opposite of what I thought I was doing as I — unfocused and inattentive, relaxed and content with my flanerie in a familiar landscape — navigated the wide, teeming field of Piazzale Loreto. Unexpectedly, however, something in me “paid attention” and the sense of the world contracted into a mysterious seafood risotto.

I live at the turn of two centuries and am undecided about which form of attention to adopt. Deep attention in black boxes ( theaters ), white cubes ( galleries and museums ) careful readings and deep - and engaged listening ( often with headphones ) have shaped my individuality. However the parceling of attention that began with the early television zapping and advertising non sequiturs of the 1980s and continued with the atomization of attention enforced by social media have in turn had an effect of which I do not know whether to resist or adapt to.

I now try, as a pure exercise and with this bifurcation between two time periods and two modes of attention in mind, to bring into dialogue with each other two figures who succeeded each other, and whose dates of death and birth slightly overlapped in the 1970s — Claire Bishop and Cristina Campo — and I’ll do so focusing on two texts : “ Disordered attention ‘ by the former, from 2024 and ’ Attention and Poetry ” by the latter from 1961.

In the transition era between the respective twenties of the 20th and 21st centuries revolving around the 1970s, the concept of attention seems to go through multiple semantic twists by contracting and expanding, like someone's consciousness going through states of sleep and wakefulness.

Moving within the framework of performance studies, Bishop argues that modern spectatorship, premised on fully focused presence and deep attention, no longer seems appropriate or necessary [2] arguing further that attention and distraction are a false binary [3].

For Campo, on the other hand — a fervent proponent of what had yet to be named deep attention, and whose writing is interwoven with spiritual concerns — to ask somebody never to be distracted, to withdraw tirelessly his faculty of attention from the equivocation of imagination, from the laziness of habit, from the hypnosis of customs, is to ask them to embody their highest form. It is to ask of them something very close to sanctity in a time that — with blind fury and chilling success — seems to solely pursue the total divorce of the human mind from its own faculty of attention [4].

For Campo, attention and distraction are opposing and irreducible polarities while Claire Bishop — who instead moves more cautiously into the minefield of a complex contemporaneity — takes her cue from Crary's position that attention and (...) distraction cannot be thought of outside a continuum, within which the two states are constantly intermingled, in a social field in which the same imperatives and forces demand both attention and distraction [5].

From an ethical standpoint, for Bishop to allow oneself to escape the grip of attention imposed and put to profit by capitalism is synonymous with freedom and inclusion ( not everyone necessarily wants to pay attention to the same things) .

Shifting our gaze, shifting our attention to a collective, shared plane can be an antidote to the post-Fordist pressure that compels us to exploit every bit of our attention and the desire that animates it.

For Campo, however, it is still deep attention that acquires ethical value and leads those who practice it on an ascetic path of intensity and even pain.

To have accorded something extreme attention is to have agreed to suffer it to the end, and not only to suffer it but to suffer for it, to place oneself as a screen between it and all that may threaten it (...) Here attention reaches perhaps its purest form, its most exact name: it is responsibility [6].

Campo writes from a posture of isolation, an almost hermit-like position ( forced by her illness into a suffered solitude ) while Bishop — for whom attention is always collectively constructed as a field of dynamic relationships [7] — embraces the social and collective aspect of the alternating pulsations between attention and distraction and if she recognizes the creative intensity of the one she also highlights the antagonistic and resistant potential of the other.

But what did Campo presage of the fate of attention in what for her was a distant future and for us is our contemporaneity ?

If we really pay attention to her discourse we find in it a singular semantic shift : what she was most concerned with was not so much the opposition between attention and distraction, but rather that between attention and imagination.

And the imagination she speaks of is a stroboscopic imagination that vaguely prefigures the flow of images that frame our present.

Today's art ( and let's remember, Cristina Campo's text is from 1961) is overwhelmingly imagination, that is, chaotic contamination of elements and planes. All this, of course is opposed to justice ( which in fact is of no interest to today's art ) [8].

What does Campo mean by this statement ? At the beginning of her text Cristina Campo counters attention understood as readiness for revelation and thus mediation between all that “silently cries out to be read differently [9]” to imagination that is “arbitrariness (...) and violence to the reality of things.[10]”

Justice ( and responsibility) are for her attention, readiness to grasp, rather than imagination i.e. a violent, potentially devastating fabulation.

So if attention is expectation, fervent, fearless acceptance of the real, imagination is impatience, flight into the arbitrary: eternal labyrinth without an Ariadne's thread. This is why ancient art is synthetic, modern art analytic; an art largely of pure decomposition, as god befits a time nourished by terror. For true attention does not, as it might seem, lead to analysis, but to the synthesis that resolves it, to symbol and figure — in a word, to destiny [11].

How can we not think of the scrolling, the deluge of images, the endless, depthless collage, on whose smooth surface it has become impossible to carve a fissure, a wound or a gateway leading to transcendence.

I imagine Campo alone facing a destiny to come and surrounded by her vast library as opposed to Bishop for whom destiny is now, and whose attention is porous to a whole range of other stimuli and connections :

Today I quickly switch from one mode of attention to another. In a typical visit to an exhibition, I get lost in long periods of attention and presence. But I also scan the QR code to read the exhibition booklet later. I wonder if I can ask the curator for a link to stream the video at home. I take pictures of the installation and a few close-ups. I respond to messages from my partner or companion about childcare. I take pictures of the labels. I send an image to a friend and tell them they were right, this is (or is not) a good exhibit [12].

If Bishop encourages us to give free rein to distraction since in it it is possible to build a habitat for survival, Campo invites us instead to pick up on signs, symbolic gleams, unforeseen analogies or synchronicities since it is only by allusions concealed in the real that mystery manifests itself [13].

Attention must be paid to the trivial clue, to the magic of the simple form, the barely hinted at allusion.

The symbols (...) that for millennia have nourished and consecrated life, are clothed in the most concrete forms of the earth: from the Burning Bush to the Talking Cricket, from the Pommel of Knowledge to Cinderella's Pumpkins. ( and, said en passant, to a strange seafood risotto ). In the face of reality, the imagination recoils [14].

For this to happen, however, reality must come ablaze, enter into resonance, vibrating together with fervent expectation, and activate a feedback.

Where does attention flow from ? Bishop tells us that Attention is so valued because it is rare and unstable, continually unravelling from within [15].

While Campo points out that : It matters little whether this creative moment, in which the alchemy of perfect attention is accomplished, leads to long and painful pilgrimages, or whether it springs from enlightenment [16].

I often feel envy for those chosen spirits — I think I know a few — who create on the spot, free of reference and research, in complete freedom. They open their mouths, they pick up their pencil, they come up with something when in contrast I spend longer and longer periods of time reading quibbling, copying — and this text is yet another example of that — in search of an hypothetical ecstasy, in the hope that by holding it all together until the end the explosion will happen, the unity of the figure will emerge.

And as if this were not enough there are the journeys, long, tortuous, exhausting even in exhilaration, intoxicated by the dizzying accumulation of listening, visions, readings, encounters and experiences.

Such quests, such journeys become more and more imposing, branching out, sometimes the moment of fulfillment, of synthesis, seems to recede into the fog despite never failing the faith and fever that spur one to pursue them.

Instead, I envy those who are naturally attentive to an as yet unknown object, free we might say, always clear-headed and ready to catch a sign or, to use Paul Valery's expression, to fecundate boredom [17].

To conclude this diachronic pas de deux between Campo and Bishop I try to include them in the impossible image of them embodying the two characters of a 1972 performance by Dan Graham : Past Future Split Attention in which Two people who know each other are in the same space. While one continually predicts the other's behavior, the other recounts (from memory) the former's past behavior [18].

The exercise is exhilarating, the two people are talking almost at the same time, they don't really have time to focus — to pay attention — to what the other person is saying but are nevertheless affected by it : why did he say I will do this ? How does he describe what I just did ? Both people continually escape the other's prediction or description of them but are nevertheless conditioned by it.

It is the warmest, most precious form of attention : attention to the other.

The image is impossible because Campo and Bishop inhabit different eras but it is thought-provoking, Campo telling us about attention from the past, Bishop telling us about it from the future, and Dan Graham, in the short ( and curiously convoluted ) text/ score describing the performance associates attention with present time. Graham makes the existence of a present dependent on the double figure-eight feedback — which you can imagine similar to an infinity symbol — between past and future, and thus for one to see the other in terms of the present (attention), there is a mirror reflection or closed loop of figure-eight feedback/feed ahead of past/future [19].

In the text the notion of attention appears furtively in parentheses but is central, and in fact we also find it in the title : Past Future Split Attention.

We would be inclined to say that this is a performance about the tension between past and future but in fact the present, the elusive focus of the action, is made to coincide with attention, and it is attention that is the central and most enigmatic object. Both performers, despite being hopelessly “distracted” because they are overwhelmed by the task of describing in real time the other's past or future are completely enveloped in attention to the other and from the other. And what is particularly touching and in tune with Crary and Bishop's thinking is that this is a perfectly shared, collectively constructed [20] form of attention.

It is precisely attention, flowing simultaneously from the past and the future, that gives rise to the present and creates a double loop ( what Dan Graham calls “figure-eight” and which he has enacted several times with recursive circuits between mirrors, microphones, speakers, cameras and monitors ). A double loop that once entered into resonance or feedback, sets attention aflame.

The two characters in Past Future Split Attention collectively construct attention in a mix of the focused and unfocused. Those who have tried to interpret this performance know that while striving to maintain full concentration, one cannot help but be affected by what the other says in a continuous evolution of causal reactions.

One person's behavior reciprocally reflects/depends upon the other's, so that each one's information is seen as a reflection of the effect that their own just-past behavior has had in reversed tense, as perceived from the other's view of himself [21].

The ear that on the one hand chooses, or chooses to exclude, on the other hand registers everything, brushed by everything else, and is nevertheless affected.

The gravitational loop between the two poles of the performance oscillates between distraction and attention, between conscious and unconscious listening, between past and future. The tension between before and after is what produces an ardor.

It activates a complex game that includes the ellipse ( the unspoken and the form-eight ), the void ( absence to oneself ), indeterminacy ( what comes to mind, or what rains down in high fantasy), and, ( most interestingly), the suspicion ( or comfort) of a secret.

“If you were really paying attention you would notice that — ” says a professor of Italian literature who seems to give more importance, while reading a text, to hidden messages — irony, coded messages, meaning-laden pauses — seen as possible tools of resistance, of protection from abuse, of those who know how to choose their battles by reserving to strike later, limiting themselves for the moment to sharpen their weapons in silence. Caute.

Marseille, January 2025.

- AB

[1] Jonathan Crary, Attentional Capitalism, in Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 2016

[2] Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books, 2024, pg. 6

[3] Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books, 2024, pg. 18

[4] Cristina Campo, Attenzione e poesia, 1961 L'Approdo Letterario, VII,13, 58-62. Poi in Gli Imperdonabili, Adelphi Edizioni, Milano, 1987. Translation by the author.

[5] Jonathan Crary, Attentional Capitalism, in Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 2016

[6] Cristina Campo id.

[7] Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books, 2024, pg. 103

[8] Cristina Campo id.

[9] Cristina Campo id.

[10] Cristina Campo id.

[11] Cristina Campo id.

[12] Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books, 2024, pg.

[13] Cristina Campo id.

[14] Cristina Campo id.

[15] Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books, 2024, pg. 9

[16] Cristina Campo id.

[17] Paul Valéry, Le bilan de l’intelligence (1935), in Variété, Œuvres, t. 1, Gallimard, Pléiade, p. 1076.

“Nous ne supportons plus la durée. Nous ne savons plus féconder l'ennui. Notre nature a horreur du vide, — ce vide sur lequel les esprits de jadis savaient peindre les images de leurs idéaux, leurs Idées, au sens de Platon.”

[18] Dan Graham, Past Future Split Attention, performnace, 1972 "Two people who know each other are in the same space. While one predicts continuously the other person's behavior, the other person recounts (by memory) the other's past behavior. Both performers are in the present, so knowledge of the past is needed to continuously deduce future behavior (in terms of causal relation). For one to see the other in terms of the present (attention), there is a mirror reflection or closed figure-eight feedback/feedahead loop of past/future. One person's behavior reciprocally reflects/depends upon the other's, so that each one's information is seen as a reflection of the effect that their own just-past behavior has had in reversed tense, as perceived from the other's view of himself."

[19] Dan Graham id.

[20] Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Verso Books, 2024, pg. 103

[21] Dan Graham id.

*Plane Talea, an archive/instrument that Alessandro Bosetti has been building since 2016, made up of anonymous voices - to date more than 80 - sorted into thousands of utterances. Each Plane Talea performance is preceded by individual recording sessions/encounters in which volunteers donate their voice and accept that it can/could live autonomously, becoming a living, fictitious and real object. The collected utterances are ordered in an idiosyncratic taxonomy that arranges them in organum and constitute an instrument, then played to create a purely utopian vocal music, a polyphony that builds teeming textures starting from the multiplication of the details and imperfections of which the voices are carriers. In FasFari this device becomes a closed but vast universe. Vocal sounds are never electronically transformed but only recomposed, recombined, juxtaposed or superimposed (no sound processing, cloning or selection through AI). All sentences begin and end naturally.

The Nomadic Listener is an augmented publication project involving aural drifting and auto-ethnography, exploring migration, urban experience, and sonic alienation. The work stems from psychogeographic explorations of a number of contemporary cities through embodied listening, situated writing and field recording traces made between 2012 - 2020. Each text is an act of contemplative listening on-site, where the author records their surrounding environment and attempts to attune to the sonic fluctuations of movement and the passing of events. What surfaces is a collection of meditations on the minutiae of life movingly interwoven with the author’s own memories, associations, desires and reflections. The project draws up a tender map of contemporary urban experience, and the often lonely, surprising, and random interactions found in the quotidian.

- BC

The audio recording is an improvisation with the Syntrx II synthesizer and processed voice.

- EL

The lockdown in New York began the day after Gryphon Rue and I held what would be our last concert for over a year, though neither of us knew it at the time. We'd been on the verge of canceling the event, as events throughout the city were getting postponed amid concerns over the rapidly spreading new virus, but we ended up performing for an audience of four. Afterward, on our way home through the eerily empty streets of Manhattan, we glimpsed the first signs of the ghost city New York would soon become. The city that never sleeps was finally taking a break.

Over the next two months, I experienced a strange dissonance: everything I was hearing and reading described the world outside my apartment as a breathable death threat, but the view from my window was of life in full bloom. Spring had arrived, the trees on our block were bursting with blossoms, and – unless an ambulance's siren was cutting through the silence, which was often – the uncharacteristically hushed soundscape of Brooklyn had filled with a greater diversity of bird calls than I'd heard in all my previous 13 years as a borough resident.

In my local community of musicians, the onset of Spring was especially dissonant with the fact that we couldn't do one of the things we loved most: sounding together. Online jam sessions felt unsatisfying, so Gryphon and I started scheming ways we could meet in person for socially-distanced musicking. We masked up and brought our musical saws to various Brooklyn parks, brandishing our blades at each other from opposite sides of a bench. During our initial sessions, it was often challenging to hear each other over the wind and other ambient noise, so we began scouting for outdoor areas with good acoustics. Prospect Park, with its network of hilly paths, supplied a series of tunnels which turned out to be perfect rehearsal rooms. Our favorite, Cleft Ridge archway, soon became a popular spot for local musicians who were also looking for ways to sound together.

This audio clip contains fragments of recordings I made in that tunnel, with sounds of my voice and my partner Michael playing tenor saxophone. I had decided to compose a piece that would be staged across a series of locations in Prospect Park, to celebrate the haven the park had become for musicians during those times of sonic isolation. These sounds were my initial sketches. I based the piece on field recordings of local bird calls, as an homage to the birds whose voices comforted me during lockdown by connecting me to the living world outside. After selecting my favorite birdcalls from the recordings, I transposed them to be performed on two euphoniums by Christopher McIntyre and Weston Olencki. Christopher and Weston would follow two predetermined paths through Prospect Park, crossing at different junctures before ultimately converging at Cleft Ridge archway for the final act. The audio here, recorded in the archway, includes some first attempts at imitating the recorded birdcalls, as well as other exercises I asked Michael to perform on saxophone to test the tunnel's resonant frequency. The piece, “Mo(u)rning”, was performed in Prospect Park on the second Saturday in May, 2020, World Migratory Bird Day.

*I recommend listening to this piece with headphones, as I recorded it with binaural microphones.

- MB

- “The Cybernetic Hypothesis” Tiqqun

Torvald clutched the jagged edge. With one final desperate attempt he pulled himself up onto the rim of the escarpment. His head spun. His vision faded in and out with the labor of his breathing. He lay on his back and groaned, finally breathing deeply, heart rate slowing.

His monitor implant let out a shrill beep. Hastened by the missive he struggled again to stand. His legs trembled. His iter-suit hung in tatters, patches of his exposed skin seared by the var-beams of the algo-blats.

The blats! He spun around peering over the edge, his gaze sweeping frantically across the twisted labyrinth that lay below him. Here and there swarms of the hideous media-blats swooped in and out of the mangled and mind-bending patterns of corridors, arches, stairs, and chamber-ways. He trembled again, remembering what other horrors waited, concealed there in the maze.

His cranial implant buzzed lightly. A trace of his stack-path blinked into overlay on his view; a thin, glowing line marking his crooked trail through the circuit-skein.

His monitor toned it’s shrill signal again. His muscles tensed. He felt a synth-gland release a flood of chemicals into his system. Coursing through his blood, the stimulants washed the pain away. His vision cleared and tightened. A cold gust blew in from behind him. He looked up and around, aware now of the arch above his head. The metal gleamed dully, no seams visible in its unforgiving surface.

Facing away now from the valley behind him he glanced down. His mind reeled, his jaw clenched. The same perplexing plane of skein-circuit stretched out before him. Another buzz in his head, the same trace, rotated now 360 degrees blinked onto his view. He gave a sharp inhale and squinted into the distance and there, at the limit of his sight a ledge rose up above the plain. And likewise an archway peeped through the wall. Was it possible? Was there a figure poised there in the center? A ragged, tense shadow; an echo of himself, gazing out through it’s own arch onto another identical skein-circuit.

The monitor skreeched again in rapid succession. “Initiate skein-circuit cycle engagement.”

Stairs leapt up ahead of him, spiraling down into the valley.

“Stack-trace compulsory completion timing 3.3973 parcels.”

A full parcel faster than the last cycle! In a surge of recognition it dawned on him then. He would complete the feedback loop, faster and faster again; compelled by the algo-blats and node-beasts, fueled and guided by his implants.

A thick mist emitted from the arch, swirling around him. A fresh iter-suit congealed on his form. He lept off down the stairs into the labyrinth, his mind a fleshless envelope.

- LS

Overactive sound

Events weave and unravel

Frayed pulsar threads snap

Pulsar Threads is the latest of a series of works that aim to inject the sound and morphology of pulsar synthesis into my practice while maintaining active continuity with prior work. This music is about 17 minutes long. This music is also about 17 years long, the length of my practice so far of working with different kinds and orders of improvising with an established but still evolving performance ecosystem (1) in ways that are influenced by both early tape works and modern turntablism.

Specifically, Pulsar Threads explores, often simultaneously, buffer scratching, corpus scrubbing, waveform scuffing, live sampling and a range of time-based, spectral and neural transformations of material sourced from the New Pulsar Generator (nuPg) (2). To borrow a phrase from Bolt's work on practice-led research, if there is any magic to be found here, "the magic is in the handling" (3) and concerned with material thinking. This music is characterised by fast moving detail, development and interactions between sound objects and embodied technique to make connections in material through superimposition, stratification, juxtaposition and interpolation.

I love the sound of pulsar synthesis, it can be pushed to so many different kinds of sonic places, but I just can't play nuPg fast enough, or really, I can't play it fast enough with the required precision and agility for creating responsive real-time onset, continuation and closure of sound events at multiple time-scales that cluster and collide then fragment and dissipate, with varied and morphing envelopes, arcs and sharp changes in direction. Maybe I just need to practice more!

Keep's concept of "instrumentalising" is the discovery of the inherent character and opportunities for manipulation of sound in sounding objects (4), and since 2007 I've been working towards instrumentalising high resolution multidimensional surfaces in combination with MaxMSP software and digital sound files in order to achieve rapid gestural and textural transformations of pre-recorded sound files of varied character and differing durations, from milliseconds to minutes. Beginning with a graphics tablet and what has been described as 'mixed sensing' I've explored a range of typical tablet gestures (5) which, together with scrubbing and scratching, include dipping and bowing across different kinds of sampling and synthesis methods and material. Additional interfaces augmenting the system include a USB turntable, pressure and location sensitive pads, and a compact midi controller.

With time the graphics tablet has given way to a multitouch device offering greater opportunity to explore simultaneous contrasts and traversal of timbre and temporalities in material. Different approaches to creating and manipulating sound include sample segment triggering and microlooping, spectral resynthesis, granulation and more. The system uses a range of mapping strategies and design in the interaction of the different DSP layers such as non-linear controller values, and (un)control and unpredictability in the live sampling processes as my attention and intention shifts between simultaneously sounding layers of points, lines and planes in motion. A point might be a moment of pause or a moment of action. A sequence of points forms a line. Massed points create textures of varying density. Lines have a descriptive function as the material trace path of a moving point. Massed lines create shifting planes and curving arcs of lines under tension.

As the system has developed for different use cases or works, it's generally followed Cook's principle of "Instant music, subtlety later" (6). There's an immediacy to triggering sounds, but also a complexity to shaping them, even before we begin to process them. The more I practice the more my 'bandwidth' increases, both cognitively and physically. The performance system here meets a number of Croft's conditions for instrumentality (7). The scale of physical gestures on the multitouch surface affects the scale of audio output in a fine-grained way, the responses of the software outputs are tightly synchronous with my gestures and generally my dsp processes follow or match the energy motion trajectories of the input audio. The relationship between my actions and the computer is (mostly) stable, and for people watching a performance, there's a visible relationship between action, effort and sound.

I've designed in "explorability and learnability" (8), and occasionally 'bug' becomes 'feature'. One example of this is polyphonic voice stealing. Reflecting on some glitching that was the result of too many simultaneous multitouch points and too few available voices I thought, "Oh, OK, increase the voice count", then, after a reflective pause, "Oh, no, leave it, because it gives me another place (distortion, saturation, and stuttering overload) to go". This is playful, what my Raw Green Rust bandmate Owen Green might describe as a decision to not use tools 'properly' (9), but also results in opportunities to create emotionally and expressively charged "highly aestheticised digital bits" (10).

This work also explores processing of sound in ways that my previous work with nuPg material has not. In part, this is a result of working more deeply and regularly with nuPg itself, spending more and better time with it. Having moved from initial exploratory sessions to arrive at informed improvisations with shaped sound output, there's more causal understanding and detailed control of nuPg, leading to a more varied palette of pre-recorded material for further typological and transformational discourse and development of sonic morphology (11).

There's also more extensive experience of improvising with the already improvised outputs from nuPg, in mapping them to surfaces and software processes, in understanding the possibilities for threads of connection and combination in and of material. These performed sounds are then sent to multiple auxiliary destinations for further temporal and spectral processes of stuttering, scanning, freezing and looping, of which, these processes can also send to each other in an extended feedback network. These are all things I've been doing for a long time, just not with this material, and it's that material thinking that is at the centre of this, the tacit 'knowing' that comes through handling materials (and tools) in extended and sustained practice.

Beyond the auxiliary processing, there's a final couple of developments explored here that aren't present in my earlier solo work in any form. The first is the use of the Fluid Corpus Manipulation (FluCoMa) toolkit (12) for corpus based similarity analysis, dimension reduction and clustering of fragments of sound across a series of newly developed multitouch controlled software instruments, creating an interpolation space for highly expressive sounding action.

The same kinds of corpus analysis can be used for live input audio matching, where sound input triggers further sound output that is related to the original material across different descriptors. In addition, this work employs neural style transfer, where sound is resynthesised using the timbral characteristics of a trained model. In this case the model has been trained on an improvisation by saxophonist Franziska Schroeder (13), and I've given myself control of four out of sixteen latent vectors so that I can direct the output character in real-time while keeping sound output roughly proportionate to the energetic characteristics of the input audio

Overall, there's a rich set of possibilities for monophony and polyphony, precision and instability, simplicity and complexity, but all these often conspire to create what Waters would call a "rate of information" (14) problem in my work. I've tried hard here to address this and relax a bit, but one element in particular was gifted to me. Owen has previously suggested that agility might be found in performing with or through uncooperative and failing tools and processes, and in this case nuPg was more or less frozen. All I could do was make a spectral intervention by changing the harmonic structure of a high register metallic drone accompanying regular rhythmic pulses, so I did that, for a long time, and for this release, improvised with and around that recorded improvisation for a long time too.

- JR

(1) Waters, S. (2007) Performance Ecosystems: Ecological approaches to musical interaction. EMS : Electroacoustic Music Studies Network – De Montfort/Leicester 2007 (available online at http://www.ems-network.org/IMG/pdf_WatersEMS07.pdf)

(2) https://www.marcinpietruszewski.com/the-new-pulsar-generator

(3) Bolt, B. (2007). The Magic is in Handling. in Barrett, E (Ed.). Bolt, B (Ed.). Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, (1), pp.27-34

(4) Keep, A. (2008) Responsive performance strategies with electronic feedback: Shaping intrinsic behaviours. PhD Thesis, p.29 (available online at https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/1470/)

(5) Zbyszynski, M. et al (2007) Ten Years of Tablet Musical Interfaces at CNMAT. Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME07). (available online at https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2007/nime2007_100.pdf)

(6) Cook, P. (2001) Principles for Designing Computer Music Controllers. Proceedings of the CHI'01 Workshop on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME01). (available online at https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2001/nime2001_003.pdf)

(7) Croft, J. (2007) Theses on liveness. Organised Sound 12(1): 59–66 2007 (available online at http://john-croft.uk/Theses_on_liveness.pdf)

(8) Orio, N., Schnell, N. and Wanderley, M. (2001) Proceedings of the CHI'01 Workshop on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-01) (available online at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.01571)

(9) Green, O (2011) Agility and Playfulness: Technology and skill in the performance ecosystem. Organised Sound 16(2): 134–144 (available online at https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1017/S1355771811000082)

(10) Rodgers, T. (2003) On the process and aesthetics of sampling in electronic music production. Organised Sound 8(3): 313–320 (available online at https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1017/S1355771803000293)

(11) Smalley, S. (1994) Defining timbre — Refining timbre. Contemporary Music Review, 10:2, 35-48. (available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07494469400640281)

(12) https://www.flucoma.org/

(13) https://huggingface.co/Intelligent-Instruments-Lab...

(14) Waters, S. (2000). The musical process in the age of digital intervention. ARiADA Texts, 1(1). (available online at https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/17255926/2000musical_process_libre.pdf)

I’m drawn to the intimate and erotic relationship between the human body and technology in live performances. Starting in 2022, I began exploring the possibility of playing with microphone-speaker feedback and placing contact microphones within bodily orifices to amplify the sound of muscle movement, footsteps, and bone-conducted sounds. After a series of experiments, I started to sonically augment the body - by placing a customized speaker in my mouth to create feedback with a headset microphone and place a geophone sensor within my anus to amplify my body movements, and using a pair of Chinese bass drum sticks to play my body as a drum.

The in-mouth speaker plays back audio samples of gun sounds and is automated to create feedback at specific points in the performance. My mouth filters and mutes the playback samples and creates multiphonics and beatings when singing with the speaker's feedback tone.

The geophone sensor transforms my body into an instrument, incorporating the room into my acoustic body. My position in the performance space, the speaker’s volume, the muscle movements, and the room's layout all contribute to the sound-producing process and change the tone of the physical feedback system, which happens occasionally. The sound is conducted from the subwoofer on the ground through my body to the microphone. Because of these variables, the resulting sounds become intertwined with my relationship to the room through my choreography, which is improvised live. Thus, the audience in the room becomes physically connected with me through the haptic low frequencies.

The resulting solo performance consists of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations that build on ancient Chinese drumming traditions and explore body dysmorphia, self-harm, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality, linking sound, movement, and violence in divine ceremony.

The audio is an excerpt from my solo performance at E-Flux Bar Laika in NYC on January 31, 2024.

- QLL

[ the music of history ]

Tonkin was one of the 5 protectorates of the 'Union Indochinoise', to the northeast and with Hà Nội as its capital. On January 1st of 1882 the colonial governor opened the 'Manufacture d’Opium de Saigon' in order to control the entire opium production in the 'Union Indochinoise' and its sales, financing the colonial regime to a considerable extent. The french exploitation of coal in Tonkin began in 1884. Soon after, 1894 onwards, the private 'Société française des charbonnages du Tonkin' intensified the exploitation in the extended open-pit deposits of Hongay. On June 27th of 1908 Vietnamese nationalists attempt to assassinate French military of the Hà Nội garrison by poisoning their meals, the start of a general uprising in Tonkin to drive out the colonial regime. The strata of image and text in the postcards follow in their economy the economy of power, their 'truth' is a commodity. The postcard with the beheading scene seems to have as its source photographs signed with "Exécution capitale à Quan Yen Tonkin le 7 Mars 1905. (Coll. J. Chinh)" from which the postcard publisher produced postcards with a variety of legends, testing the sales market.

Postcard 1

Postcard 2

Postcard 3

"For the historical index of the images not only says that they belong to a particular time; it says, above all, that they attain legibility only at a particular time. And, indeed, this acceding „to legibility“ constitutes a specific critical point in the movement at their interior. Every present day is determined by the images that are synchronic with it: each „now“ is the now of a particular recognizability. In it, truth is charged to the bursting point with time. (This point of explosion, and nothing else, is the death of the intentio, which thus coincides with the birth of authentic historical time, the time of truth.) It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation."

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project [N3,1]

- MW ( 2019 - )

These 12 minutes of sound are a combination of a recording of waves and wind at the rocky breakwater beach at Belle Côte in Cape Breton, Canada and a recording of me piling up wood on the porch on the following day in December 2023.

Sometimes we think that to live in the present with no memory is an escape, has a freeing quality.

To be so caught up in the sensuous now that we live completely, completely live.

Sound as sense beyond sense that keeps reminding us of its ongoingness. In and out as quickly as we hear it.

But what’s the way that sounds also maintain or hold us, suddenly point to themselves and to other things?

Everything is piling up.

Memory sifts time’s accumulations.

Sound piles are what must be left out so that we can make sense.

But our little bodies and lives are also records of these forgotten (and never even known) heaps.

Sounds accumulate around us, through us, in us. Neither pure narrative nor pure sensuousness.

There are the sounds we don’t and can’t parse but that still exist in us: a mass, a weight, an unwritable history. The frequency splatter of everydayness.

All around us, there’s this music of amassing, different densities of sound piling up, a relentless sound that is always there, will be there, has been there.

In Derrida, Egyptian Peter Sloterdyk suggests the pyramid is a monument always already built to be a ruin.

"It stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because its form is nothing other than the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that, following the plan of its architect, is built to look as it would after its own collapse."

A pile of monumental ruins built to be “as it would after its own collapse.” It’s the made unmade just at the edge of composition, improvisation, constructing a life, dying, forgetting.

To record piles of sound is to record nothing much and not do much but hear the sound of the falling monument, simultaneously forgotten and forever.

As I record the sound of moving wood from one pile to another pile, I want to listen to stored energy relayed from one place to another. Armload from the yard pile to the porch pile, from the porch pile to the fireside pile, to the fire, to the atmosphere…

As I listen to wind and breaking waves I want to listen to the meeting-point between air, water, and land, to where solidity falls apart in foam and scribble. Water, rock, sand gets moved. Waves like pyramids. Falling in the very act of their emergence.

I tried to escape composition with these piles—but can’t. I can only begin, and then begin again. No gesture but the poverty of means, of attention, of capability, of memory as a starting ground. Aimless gathering.

And in that?

- JM

As animals with smell, so are humans with voices1

– Anne Karpf

In the summer of 2012 I conducted an exercise called OWN VOICE, consisting of interviews on the perception of one's own voice. After gathering basic information, participants were asked three key questions:

1. Do you like your voice?

2. What do you like (or dislike) about it?

3. Can you describe your voice?

Most interviewees found it challenging to articulate why they liked or disliked their voice. The phrase "I don't know" was a common response. The following are excerpts from six interviews:

- Nataly (19, Spanish): "Yes. I don't know what to say about my voice. I think it's more high-pitched than low, I don't know what to say."

- Jean Carlos (17, Dominican Republic): "Yes, I like it. I don't know, I see it as normal. It's sensual... beautiful."

- Rejep (20, Turkey): "I like my voice. Because I like to sing... and... I don't know what else to say. Not so strong, normal, baritone, male voice... I don't know what to say."

- Paolo (54, Brazil): "Honestly, no. It seems a bit metallic. I don't know, it seems not very modulated, sometimes a bit monotonous."

- Gabriela (17, Spanish): "No (laughs). I don't know! I hear it is very weird. It's very serious (laughs). I don't know! It's very strong (laughs)."

- Alameda (16, Spanish): "Yes. I don't know how it sounds and all. I don't know, sometimes it sounds high-pitched."

After this exercise, questions arise: Why is it so complicated to talk about one's voice? What happens when we speak about our own voice? Why do we lack linguistic resources to describe the voice?

Thomas Trummer's2 statement provides a clue: "Our own voice is our own most trusted familiar, more trusted than our own appearance, for which we at least need a mirror. Although it appears to be so close to us, the voice is in a strange place surrounded by many other voices, and sometimes it gets lost there." And Haytam El-Wardany3 wrote in How to disappear (2013) "Your inner voice is the sound of the external world resonating within you."

The last of the interviews conducted for OWN VOICE was with Valentina, a woman who studied journalism, worked in Chilean radio, is an academic, and an artist. Even she had a bewildered reaction when suggested to describe her voice, and later reflected on it:

Valentina (38 years old, Chile)

1. Yes.

2. I don't dislike it. But the truth is, I've never really thought about what I like about my voice.

3. It's a soft voice, I would say. Mhmmm, yes, I can't think of more adjectives. It's difficult because one doesn't generally hear oneself speaking. I could describe other people's voices, but my own voice is different. The thing is, one doesn't really hear oneself when speaking, I believe.

Talking about one's own voice is a rhetorical peculiarity: it is both the medium and the material of analysis. Qualifying one's own voice is also listening to it cautiously, and in this process, there is something similar to what a signal delay in a phone produces, where the delay increases, and we hear ourselves a little after saying a phrase. Trummer introduces the Voice&Void exhibition catalog with the reflection: “The human voice can say something about itself, and therefore it is a vehicle for speech and, at the same time, its own-reflective commentary, because talking about the voice always takes place in and with the voice."

In Western culture, the process of socialization is mainly carried out verbally. We use the voice as a means of exchange; it is the instrument with which we shape our identity in relation to others, expressing our feelings through it. Guy Cornut4 explains that there are two links that connect the voice with someone's personality: 'the voice as an instrument of self-expression' and 'the voice as an instrument of self-assertion.' The first responds to the need to manifest emotions through crying, shouting, laughing, while the second is explained as follows: 'Every person who speaks tries, to a greater or lesser extent, to have an effect on their interlocutor. The more one seeks to obtain the listener's agreement, for example, to make them obey, convince them, or seduce them, the more a high level of energy is needed, which will translate into a modification of the various characteristics of vocal emission: intensity, tone, timbre, articulation, speed or slowness, associated gestures, etc.'

For Cornut, voice intonations are acts of self-affirmation. The act of 'having an effect on one's interlocutor' is a way of confirming one's presence in a specific place and with a specific person. By expressing through the voice, we reaffirm ourselves in the present, leaving evidence of our connections with others and the environment. This opens the door to considering that the occurrence of human communication (through the voice) circulates in deeply intimate implications, activities that go far beyond the transmission of concepts. Anne Karf writes about the human voice:

'The voice isn’t just a conduit for language, information, and mood: it’s our personal and social glue, helping to create bonds between individuals and groups.'5

That the voice has the power to create bonds between the individual and their community has been exploited in various political and mass communication applications.

However, we also utilize it in personal and ordinary use: every small detail of the voice functions as a link in the everyday seduction between two people.

In 2006 I did an experiment which essentially involved staying silent. I set this goal on a Monday, wanting to see how many days I could go without uttering a single word. At that time, I was studying at the University of Buenos Aires, and this location facilitated the experiment: a foreign city where nobody knew me. The plan was as follows: always carry the exact change to board the bus, arrive a bit late to class, leave as soon as it ended to avoid exchanging words with classmates or the teacher. Bring a snack and eat in the park. Coffee: from a machine, as ordering it would require speaking at the cafeteria. Return home with exact change. Don't answer the phone, only respond to text messages. If I had to leave the house for another reason, do so with headphones on. On the first day, I felt relieved, immersed in an egocentric sensation, yet still content and satisfied. The second day brought difficulties: I began to experience the desire to communicate, to say at least a "good morning," so I started writing: everything I wanted to say went into a notebook. I realized that, although I was not contradicting my initial plan, I was engaging in a dialogue. While writing, I heard my own voice dictating what remained on paper. I also started singing internally and formulating speeches in the way I speak... I mean that, while thinking, I was listening to myself speak, as I usually don't compose my ideas the same way I construct speech; instead, I do it through images, isolated words, some phrases, abstract elements, clusters of sensations. The third day was truly challenging; I started to lose the enjoyment, feeling like an excluded woman. I continued writing in the notebook, and the writing style became more introspective and boring. On the fourth day, Thursday, I broke the rule. I remember how it happened: I was on the bus back home, and a lady sat next to me; winter was just giving way, and that day the sun was setting on Rivadavia Avenue. She said, "Look, what a beautiful day!" Although that statement wasn't a question, and there wasn't much to respond to, I couldn't stay silent. I remember feeling great relief when I heard that lady's voice because, even though her words weren't directly addressed to me, she assumed that I was her listener, her interlocutor; it was a way of including me in her world, in a snippet of her life. That final realization was the most valuable takeaway from the experiment, contrary to what I initially thought I would achieve: a Vipassana meditation-style introspection, where I could enhance inner tranquility. Instead, the result I ended up with was truly different; those three days of remaining silent made me think that speech is an almost necessary human action for perceiving oneself in the social world, evidence of synchrony and nowness.

- APS

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OWN VOICE was carried out in the summer of 2012 in Barcelona at the Center for Studies and Documentation MACBA. And re-edited in January 2024 for Lateral Addition.