17/4/14
LOCKED OUT: CAC
Thursday: Organic Kinetic Object Activation

– Set up: guitar on the table with an array of objects laid out like a surgeons table.
– Most of what’s getting produced sound-wise won’t be heard or heard well because it’s not amplified but the recorder will pick it up because its placed on the guitar- its presence is recording or picking up something that wasn’t actually real to me as the witness at the time, it captures more than what is real/knowable to me. It stores the sound of what we can barely hear and then has the potential to play it back to us but this will always be secondary. The presence of the recorder in/on the piece is problematic in this way.
– Are the objects really specifically chosen?
Yes, the metronome for its weight and dimension
– As the performance piece starts its use and placement are a lot more prevalent than this.
The prongs act as a resonator- Mbira on the guitar strings over the sound hole- it’s like a ghostly voice, an incantation over the guitar which is the subject of this seemingly surgical procedure, it feels very primitive and tribal in this way. The Mbira sings out of the vibrations
– What is the relationship between the Mbira and the metronome?
They each have an interruptive vibrating rhythm that inform each other constantly
– The metronome is broken and is used because it activates the piece and then is activated by what it activated- it starts the chain of activation and the chain of momentum events keep it going.
– The piece is strongly related to time becuase the metronome is supposed to fix a time context but is broken which is significant here.
– Mbira and metronome will never be at the same speed- 2 symbiotic worlds of time because one activates and perpetuates the other.
Not amplified.
– The emulation of this situation is usually achieved with electronic music- it’s a primal version of it.
– The hands- it’s to do with a learned movement that can then be applied but things are hanging in the balance
– Tiny, minute movements, you have to strain to perceive them, very little movement of the artist- very dead pan but with concentration and accuracy- the Mbira sings and vibrates but everything is so tiny and balancing
– The performance comes in two pieces but they are both versions of the same, why?
The two performances are the future and the past, the future can be serialised as long as the same method is applied but the past is the same. The past comes second because it explains the future performance, the second one doesn’t use the metronome, it uses beaters to activate the Mbira
– It’s like conjuring up a spell, the beaters take it back again to being more basic, why do you strip it back in this way?
Taking out electronic reliance and technology (which is supposedly a by-product of progress) an advancement can still be made, advancement is still being achieved here and this has been achieved without the use of electronics.