Swan Song R&D 8 – further reading and research
I think in the last blogpost on reflection has gotten very sinister and I think it is because I am quite tired in my own head. This calls for expanding the research and look for new perspectives and different horizons. Here I will talk about a radio/installation work by Samson Young, an exhibition by Yuk Mui Law, several opera works and readings from Chion and Bergson.
The first section is on sound installations by two artists from Hong Kong. They are more visual and fine art-oriented. The first being Samson Young and his work called ONE OF TWO STORIES, OR BOTH in 2017
This piece of work is originally a radio project, turned into a colourful exhibition. I haven’t seen this before today and I hope I had before I did my residency. It is inspiring to see how Young came at radio without much knowledge described by himself and how he created concepts and compositions with the medium. It is certainly an amazing excerpt from the first video, seeing how mainly three sections of sound combined together to form the piece. Voice(text), ensemble of various classical music instruments and sound effects (found objects, train whistles, contact mic on drum, etc). While the piece is very voice dominated, the text is quite abstract which made it less apparent of its narrative use, which suggest it’s more of a channel for inducing emotions or creating a sense of imagery. This way of working with voice and text worked very well in his favour as a tool of composition, and it is so clearly his style of composing as well. As the tiny pieces of texts combines with the sound and music, it collages a bigger picture which is non-linear but fluent in flow. I particularly enjoyed the contact mic on the drum and the voices closing in and getting back to create a physical fade being so performative but radio, live but studio-like.
Another thing to mention is the exhibition in Manchester of the project. Having the piece shown on a tv with speakers and objects that created a visual space. This is what enhanced the piece in my opinion as it understands so clearly who is it for and how is it imagined to be perceived. Through the visuals and the space Young created a place for his work to live in outside the studio.
The second piece is by multi-media artist Yuk Mui Law (also from Hong Kong), it is an exhibition with a few pieces of work that combined into one durational experience. I also very recently found her out which is a very surprising thing. I feel like I might have even seen her face around quite a bit in Hong Kong but I didn’t know she was an artist back then. There are so little sound art in Hong Kong which made me so surprised.
She is solely interested in the distance between the sky and the river bed, the length between seasons, the shapes of memories and prayers. (text from her work description https://www.lawyukmui.com/portfolio/there-is-no-one-singing-on-the-river/)
This piece is important in the sense it told a story through the artist’s perception, her soundwalk and field-studies. It shows a flow of time with the river being the centre of the lineage. One thing that really caught me was her describing the work as difficult for the audience to understand, as the work’s flow being so slow but ever-changing, where you have to be so sensitive and focused in that experience to perceive change. That is also a very good design with the theme rivers in mind.
The two pieces of work here shows similarities in their form, both having multi-media and live performance elements. Yet (of course) they both told their story so differently, the first being so collage-like and the second being an absolute linear experience. They are both extremely fluent and coherent in their themes and story-telling and at the same time so open for their perception of the work re-experienced and re-imagined which is a thing I have to learn. I also think the fact that the construct of a sense of place is more important than most people think. I feel in the time I studied here it was more or less ignored of the effects of visuals and objects and lightings on a sound piece, which is a shame but it truly is something I wanted to explore especially towards my graduation.
If I were to imagine Swan Song as a multi-channel sound installation, it would have to be in a rather large space, with the room being set as almost a lighted theatre stage, or at least a dim room with various objects, paintings and drawings.
Now we go into operas, which is the least relevant subject to my work now it seems. Maybe I have used the word wrong thinking back, but here we go anyway. I am only going to pick out one thing in them and ignoring the work itself here.
The first being Einstein on the Beach. I have actually referenced this work so many times through out my study here, for it has influenced me for so many years. I think maybe those days for me are over almost. There is a smell of theatre to the piece, and it is theatre, so what I am describing is the style that comes through in most theatre pieces, the theatrical elements, the style that comes from a theatre performer. The projection of energy within the eyes of a performer whom understand they are performing on stage and that they are projecting their energy to the furthest audience. This “smell” is present in all these works I am mentioning in this section of the blogpost and I think I really am trying to move on from it. I will talk about this in the last section, but now let’s identify understand the smell first.
The ways a performer acts in a theatre and in front of a camera is inherently different and has a clear distinction between the two. Made extremely clear is the performers in Einstein on the Beach, where you can see each action are performed with such intensity and clarity. This is because you have to believe in the actions and project that believe into the space so clearly for the audience to catch it from 30 metres away. with this opera in particular, with the choreography and music being so minimal, that focus-ness of a performer is so needed or they will simply became invisible to the audience, lost in the ensemble.
Jennifer Walshe & Timothy Morton – TIME TIME TIME https://vimeo.com/343456633
This is another opera piece I was given to look at. This is also super super performative in a sense that the sense of a performance space is so present, and the performers are inherently projecting their sound-making into the whole space, whether big or small. And this projection and awareness of space also affects the way performers use their voice, not just projection but also the way they articulate the words, making it so much larger than it is to project further.
The third is Meredith Monk: https://vimeo.com/user7600479
This is a trailer for her opera Quarry, in which you can see how she wrote the composition and structured it to be a performance. The range in pitch in her part is clearly comfortable for her to project, which won’t be possible if she was singing an octave lower for example. In her studio recordings, you can see how a close microphone changes her way of singing and how she has more freedom in creating textures and nuance. She has been so good at improvising with her voice in the context of folk traditions, and this became the basis of her composition, knowing that these songs are meant to sing out loud, to share with one another, mostly without much amplifying from using technology. This kind of singing can be found everywhere really, but also back in Jennifer Walshe too!
This is also another example of singing without embodying the technology (not not using, but not embodying) in this case the microphone. This is now a bit off tangent of the theatre “smell” in performers but as a vocalist it is still important to differentiate the two style.
The very sound studies comparison would be between Joan La Barbara and Diamanda Galas.
The first using her body as the instrument, and experiments with extended techniques and the latter more so incorporating the microphone as an extension of her lungs and vocal cords. This is a very surface level comparison and evidence in proofing a point, yet it feels very important for me to point this style of performing out, as it was what I used in the first part of Swan Song. And this is exactly what I want to avoid all together. This comes so nature to me, to just use my voice and thinking of the mic as a separate matter. And this is my training as well, musical theatre, belting my voice to the last row on the 2nd balcony. I will again like the first section come back to it in this last section.
The last part talks about Chion and Bergson. These two readings are also sent to me, which is great because it’s not something I would immediately think important but it somehow fuels my thinking. This is definitely so helpful in making my research broader and clear my head a little bit, to see things in a different angle and different vocabularies.
The first is Bergson on Time as a philosophical concept.
Bergson – Don’t get too lost: https://theconversation.com/a-philosophical-idea-that-can-help-us-understand-why-time-is-moving-slowly-during-the-pandemic-151250#:~:text=Bergson%20argued%20that%20time%20has,felt%2C%20lived%2C%20and%20acted
I haven’t really read his writing except for when he is in relation to Roland Barthe.
- Distorted idea of past and future - Signposts in objective time - Stuck in the present
I am aware of his concept on objective time, but I never thought it would be helpful in constructing a form for my work. This is clearly helpful in the way that I have to consider (in very simple words) how long does certain things feels, in relations to all the other events in the piece. As the piece is narrative driven, it is separated as sections and scenes like a play. So how long is the play? How long should each scene be? And more importantly how long they feel in relation to one another. Ignoring the timeline for a while, this is a detail that I can now think about in my editing process, to expand the depth of my structure. This also go back to the first section of this longgggg blogpost, how do I use time to create a sense of duration, and what would that flow be? If it was to be an exhibition, how long do I want people to stay in the space, how much change is happening within a minute? How long is the piece? Do I need a bigger space for a longer duration? Or does it not matter if the room is small and the piece is three hours long? of course the last question is silly and straight forwardly you want the space to feel like you can stay longer if you want the experience to be longer right?
Or in the context of a play, I have once seen a show where they had a walking scene. The actors would spend half an hour to travel from one side stage to another, that’s it. Or the set is slowing rotating, with text projected in the back, that would be another half an hour. It’s that sense of change, almost like Philip Glass’ music, almost mundane but ever so slightly changing. There are so many applications and extremes I could go to, so where does my work stands in this spectrum.
This also brings to the second reading Audio-vision by Chion. With music you kind of have to keep everything very smooth so your listener doesn’t clip out of the world you are creating. Not like in films you can edit completely independent shots together to create a montage. Explained so well by Chion in his book, it makes me think about the relations between sound and visual, and the nature of these two and how they sit with and compliment each other.
I am just going to throw my notes in because I can’t seem to write it down in words and in lines. I also then quoted this in my notes:
“above all, you cannot create an abstract and structural relationship between two successive sound segments (e.g., a fragment of bird calls or of music) the way you can between shots. If you try something like this with the soundtrack, the abstract relation you wish to establish gets drowned in the temporal flow. ”
As a performer and director (whether theatre or film) at the same time, how do I edit sound? I have certainly seen it as a theatre piece when I was editing and recording in the residency. But what about I now edit it like a film. Having hard cuts, as two shots would be put together. Or sequencing “sound shots” to form a scene more than a sequence of movements on stage?
This is what I meant the smell of a theatre performer. What if I perform as I would with a camera? What happens if I am clerical in recording like filming on set? With that in mind, having camera (microphone) really close to me, where everything would be captured, needless of me projecting my energy? What if the second part is a film adaptation on the original opera/play? This opens up so much in what I can explore in my editing and gives me new directions to go into, much more clearly than just “reworking” and editing.
There is so much being said here, with so little explanations yet in my head so clearly linked. I truly am not good with putting words into sentences which forms a paragraph in a linear floating sense. But this is all my thoughts for now, and how all these researches sits with each other. I am more interested in the relations between these works (so into relation suddenly), than how individually they contextualise my work. back to the web analogy, these researches are like threads, and ultimately they weave into a web of knowledge where they becomes a bigger fabric. Continuing to work on the project, I am trying to expand my thinking by seeing art-making through other people’s thoughts and perspectives. I hope this would become anchors to guide my working, to make it solid of the reasons I make creative choices.