Background

My Sound Theatre compositions (Antarctica (2004), Play: Antarctica (2006),
Superfield [Mumbai] (2009), White Noise (2009), and corresponding cyber-widgets)
are experimental interdisciplinary performances combining field recordings, live
computer music, the mental ‘seeing’ evoked from sound and a theatre performance
environment. They are a creative open space in-between disciplines and function
using the phenomenological qualities of sound, music and theatre.

Their main concern is the see-hearing imaginary landscape. Within the
presentation of these interdisciplinary compositions the ultimate aim is to ‘infect’ the
audience, take their mind to other places, create a ‘dimension’ for their minds ear to
wander. As such they create a living dream of hallucinogenic clarity, where the
internal dialogue between listening, memory and imagination evokes a cinema
without a screen; a play without a set or actors.

The “polyphony of sense” present in Sound Theatre is one of its most
interesting concepts, and one that I think makes it literally interdisciplinary. By that I
mean that which is in-between disciplines; an area of creative, open space
suspended between the disciplines it sits amongst. Sound Theatre, is in-between
listening and seeing, as such, it embeds one discipline within the other so as they co-
exist and become fused and inseparable.

The use of randomness during performance is of paramount importance as
each library of field recordings is the composition: a multidimensional sonic ‘DNA’ of
a place and its people at a particular moment in time. They are ‘a thing and a
reflection of a thing’ and should remain open and free from any hierarchical
structuring.

The Cape Jeremy Affair is the most recent stage of this investigation, and one that
marks a change. Here, the library is a multidimensional sonic ‘DNA’ of a written
sledge report from 1968. The concept of the library now includes elements other than
field recordings and can be said to be more forensic ontology. Extra elements
include:
⋅ the text of the report
⋅ sounds mentioned in the report
⋅ musical responses to the text
⋅ manipulated and processed field recordings
⋅ music recordings surrounding the report (suppositions)
⋅ audio readings of the report

This library also contains visual elements:
⋅ scans of the report
⋅ photographic evidence surrounding the report (suppositions)
⋅ scans of manuscript pages from music surrounding the report

This piece is scored for two performers (ev2) and two laptops. During the 20 minute
performance the laptops act as score and performer (currently being developed).
Each laptop will contain a software application hosting this forensic library. Each will
randomly choose a sound and/ or a picture and/ or silence or black. Each performer
can ‘PLAY’ and respond to the acoustic-visual stimulus with varying degrees of
collaboration or abstraction: using spoken voice, sung speech, song with a
microphone, or their instrument - percussion and soprano saxophone. The overall
result will be a constantly shifting image of this library: it will start and then stop, and
the stuff that happens inbetween will be both the report and the music. And
completely unique at every performance – as will each audience members’
perception of the chain of events ... making sense of it, somehow, as people do.