Swan Song – Follow up on Tutorial

After the residency I had a tutorial with my supervisor to catch up on things and do a tiny review of the unit so far. This is some of the notes and thinking during that session.

First of all I need to remember how much I have achieve so far and give myself a pat on the shoulder for the work I have been creating, like I have said in the last blogpost, They are very interesting and provided me avenues to go down further. It was a good start.

We spent most time talking about story-telling and specifically through time. How do you suggest future in the context of the past? How to tell a story differently? How do we edit sound as a reflexive process, to present the relationship between the happenings in the piece? What is the relationship between editing and time, and between time and sound? What’s the truth behind a disturbed timeline?

We also talked about script as an aesthetic object within the work. The script I have produced, how can I see it more than what it is, to reflect on it and develop with it.

The discussion within these questions goes beyond the notes, to me as a follow up here are some thoughts:

I think it takes time for me to step out of the work in order to gain perspective, and it is important that I slow down for a moment here and reflect on the work on how well I have achieve with my research and what I wanted to explore in the first place. I think to me the process has been expectedly unexpected, and good things did came out of it as I explained in my last post. It is important to not go into the blackhole of overthinking everything, but I think it is more of a case in tidying up and leaving only the important bits in the work and organise it in a way that is more understandable sonically to the audience. There is also an interesting thing I said in the tutorial, that in order for the sound piece to be understood, with the piece being so abstract in mind, it could be beneficial to take a non-linear timeline in telling the story, to not be stuck with a story that only I understand the linearity and logic to it; but to communicate sonically with the audience, to create a timeline through sound composition, and for the listener to understand the high and low of the story by a sequence of sound compositional tools and not a theatrical dramaturg sets of tools so to speak.

I think I have been constructing the piece as a theatre piece while I could go down the path of restructuring it as a sound piece more this time, to reflect the nature of sound, and time being a method within the piece.

Here are some more thoughts after the session, hopefully more refined and open from the last section.

How do you tell a story with sound? (How is it different from i.e. theatre or literature or film [visual medias]?) The ‘part 2’ of the project as I call it, will be aiming at using time the forth dimension as a medium for artistic expression (but not an integral plot device) and aim at telling a story from the perspective of me, a person who was born after the handover of Hong Kong towards the audience of British people, more specifically the community of people I found myself in here in London.

To break down this long sentence, it means that I am now more aware of the world and my position in it as an artist, not just me recording what I felt like in the studio at the time. And to do that, I will have to reimagine a new way to present the materials I have recorded, which in this case through editing. To tell within and through he audible, some sort of reverse Acoustemology. Ha! That’s how my dissertation is related to this creative practice.

From reading and writing about the practical usage of Acoustemology rather than just a pretty theory, I have realised how important to define the relationships between all the elements within the construct of a work. The artist, the work, the audience; The expresser, the expression, the experience and the experiencer, it is not only what they ‘are’ that matters, but the relations of them, the coordination of them on a map. Especially in sonic arts, this physical effect of listening, the bodily sentiments that hits everyone when the sound hits our ears. That means, if I could analyse a piece so deeply, I need to considering as deeply as the artist when I am working. This opens up new perspective in working and makes me very excited.

And to reach this level of clarity in one’s work, one has to be clear about all the essential elements: What am I producing? What context does it sit within? Where do the artist stand? What about the audience, who are they and where are they? How close between are the work and the audience? How do I want the work to be seen? How do I light the work? Do I show myself within the work? So many questions to answer if the relations are included in the equation, and so dynamic and full of possibilities.

Reflection on the first part of Swan Song

In the first part of the work, I settled the story as a theatre piece. I wrote the structure that way with a script, I rehearsed it and recorded as a play, considering everything theatrical. Yet the outcome has always been meant to be a radio broadcast. That juxtaposition itself is an experiment, what would be the benefits of doing that? What would be lost in translation?

The answer is now that I have done it, has its merits but not what exactly what I wanted. The forms of the piece is constrained by the resources I get, and it is okay because it allows me to be creative and problem solving is where I feel most creative. The good thing is surprising things came my way, textures and details on the woven sonic fabric are so precious and a welcomed surprise. The bad thing is, or rather the things I want to work on more is, the story is completely lost, while a certain maturity of the narrative could be heard, the big vision is lost. I have realised how much I am relying on language to help move the story along, and how it reduces the whole piece. This results in the hour long piece having some texts in the middle to drive things yet they break the sonic palette that’s so beautiful, the piano and the strings and the room tones. So now the choices are, I embrace it going forward or I abandon texts as a tool to tell a story. And of course I choose the latter. Now does it matter? I could pretend that it doesn’t and say that this is the result of my experimentation within my limitations and live with it, but I wanted more from this project, I don’t feel I am done here.

So that’s why a second part is important. The first has made me realise the form of a play is interesting to do, but ultimately for this one I want it to be about Hong Kong, about imagining the future of Hong Kong contemporary music. At least that’s what I what my work to be about in a bigger sense. So to re-contextualise the materials I have now and to make an album out of it, is a nature progression, and a beneficial one for me personally to take. To build new structure, to consider sound more carefully as the sole tool to tell a story, my story.

So what is the piece, again? And how is it different? From who? I hope to revisit these questions later when I have thought about it properly.