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Swell is a 5.1 installation which draws on my physical form, and the extreme transformations my abdomen undergoes following an allergic reaction.
Curious to hear how the changes in form would sound, I traced 5 curves ranging from normal, to the first signs of swelling, to my largest point. These form the score.
As my metamorphose takes place rapidly, all curves were taken the same day with flexible timing.
Listen HERE
Engineer on project: Andrew Larrabee
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Earlier this year I was commissioned by Debora Tutta, a fashion-marketing student from Central Saint Martins, to make a 4 minute composition for her project FINE.
Listen here
You can view the video here
To view the video as intended, you must switch the quality to 4K. The instructions of how to watch the film are in the description box on youtube.
*Please note, all text written below is by Debora Tutta.
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F I N E.
In the United Kingdom, one in four people experiences a
mental health problem each year. Yet, mental health issues
are heavily stigmatised, particularly within the fashion
industry.
The aim of F I N E . is to raise awareness about Anxiety and
Depression by exploring the difficulties of understanding
these illnesses and how the possibility of physically
visualising them, through immersive 360 degrees
technology, could have a positive impact on people's
perceptions.
A Sonic Meditation: Verznights #001 curated by Phil Maguire, Hundred Years Gallery April 2017
We focus much of our listening on the outer space, as an activity that enters us and ends just below the surface of our skulls. Asking that we listen with another ear, my score/text/meditation offers an imaginative and introverted journey, one that follows the breath down into the deeper points of our bodies, and brings about an imaginative hearing of the unique acoustics residing within our inner architectures.
Score - 60 pages. For purchase, please email me.
(Screen grabs from film shot by Phil Maguire)
Performed by Ensemble Entropy at IKLECTIK March 2017
Georgia Cooke - Alto Flute
Matt London - Baritone Saxophone
Rebecca Raimondi - Violin
Seth Bennett - Double Bass
Listen here
MUTED is concerned with the three dimensionality of the 'closed space', where a concept originates from my body, to reside within the minds and bodies of the performers where it is transposed into sound, to be in turn received through the bodies of the listeners.
Recently, I found myself aware of my female body as something more than just my own vessel. It is an architecture which can grow another, and this function takes place outside of my control.
When Ensemble Entropy approached me, I immediately thought about the parallel of the unheard voice of the unborn, and the 'unheard' voices - dormant, in so many instruments.
This open score addresses those sounds in spaces hidden and out of sight, by asking the performers to inhabit such spaces with their minds, and cry out (through their instrument) from isolation.
If you would like to purchase a copy of the score, 3 sheets and envelope, please email me.
(photograph of Ensemble by Megan Steinberg)
Published in Synzine #4
"5 new musical games by Ma'ayan Tsadka, Lola de la Mata, Teodora Stepancic, Richard Stenton and Maya Felixbrodt.
The games are meant to be played at home and outdoors with your friends, family and by yourself. We intentionally don't use traditional music notation so the games can be played by anyone. Hope you enjoy playing!" (Maya Felixbrodt)
Available free online https://issuu.com/synzine/docs/sinezine_final_april or printed in Birmingham, UK by stenton.press.
Site Specific - semi improvised collaboration with dance artist and poet Anna Gaïotti at PAF, August 2016.
The performance ended with participants from a screaming workshop run by Anna the previous day appearing into the surrounding bushes and holding long passionate screams directed into the ground, leaves, trees and each other's body parts. Anna and I still in the central aisle, rotated slowly back to back with her screaming into a drum and me playing her home made noisebox.
Composer in collaboration with Bufo Makmal, Premiere 31st May 2017 at Theatre Roxy, Birsfelden, Basel.
(music coming out soon, teaser available here)
"VIEL.ES (Much) is the answer to ALL.ES (Everything), hence an emphasis on the individual, following a collective transformation of the same. The dancer's collective, Bufo Makmal, creates an innovative setting that grapples with context in playful ways; the production principle stemming from an individual interpretation of the same tasks, as does the composition derived from this process. Through the use of signals, a web is created that leads to unpredictable encounters and separations that are facilitated by an incohesive, non-psychological approach. It's celebrating movement and searches for the joy of most possible freedom off own expression in simultaneous concordance."
Choreography Margarita Kennedy, Clea Onori, Rosie Terry
Concept Clea Onori in Collaboration with Bufo Makmal, Stage and Costume Michela Flück
Light Yoshi Goettgens
Music Strotter Inst., Lola de la Mata, Nives Onori
Outside-Eye Edan Gorlicki
Dramaturgy Yves Regenass, Organisational Assistance Saskia Läubli
Production Pascal Moor
Sponsoring Fachausschuss Theater und Tanz BS/BL, Wilhelm und Ida Hertner-Strasser Stiftung, Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art, Jubiläumsstiftung der Basellandschaftlichen Kantonalbank, GGG, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Cirqu`enflex
Workshop with Distractfold Ensemble, May 2016.
Awarded honorary mention F I Williams Prize for Composition, April 2016.
Katinka is sonic exploration of a young girl’s Nightmare. Her name, Katinka, inspired the piece’s title, with it’s meaning pure as a subtitle. Full of dramatic contrasts her nightmare was a rich vision of darkness, concrete and iron. Muted screams of a baby on a wax bed, walls opening onto more enclosures, and geysers of steam puncturing through the heavy dark underground space. I chose the violin as the main tool to discover the sound world contained inside this vision and borrowed Rudolf Laban’s movement analysis, effort drives to structure the piece. This led to a variety of extended techniques with an emphasis on noise, organised into modules exploring flow, weight, time and space.
Monotypes and Paintings from 2017
Monotypes:
'Fuselage' 47.5 x 35.6cm
'Chaperone' 33.5 x 50.2cm
'Clutches' 32.7 x 42.5cm
'Katinka's Nightmare' 48 x 36cm
'Sanctuaries' 50 x 33cm
Paintings:
Titles and sizing coming soon
"THE ENGINE ROOM presents: Sound Artists from Morley" 4-18 February 2016.
I showcased two pieces:
Insufflate - Suffolcate - sonic composition/graphic score
play...silence...action - installation
Insufflate - Suffolcate
(graphic score/sonic composition here)
Observing bodies as they walked up and down corridors, I began to notice how people would hold their breath when passing by one another. The whole of the body would tense up and take a little while to release, and a while longer to recover the lost breath.
Wanting to capture the experience of moving through such shared spaces, the anxious struggle became the focus of the work, expressed as an abstract score and animated through a sonic composition.
play a silent action
action a played silence
silence a playing action
(installation)
This self replenishing thread of text- described by a friend as “rather oblique”, offers us the freedom of abstaining from performing it.
Present in mind, absent in body- the physical body is caught in stillness while silently gazing into the reflective surface as the text becomes a mental game. One where the senses are activated through an internal visualisation of the animated body, straining to achieve the commands outlined by the text score.
Written for and Performed by Tre Vocci Ensemble November 2015
at Brunel University.
(Sway was performed under the working title For Three Performer’s Preparing to Stand)
Sway explores the proximity between two bodies, that of the performer and the cello. As one activates the other, they fall into a dance.
A play on domination- the two bodies shift with ease between the acting driving force and relinquishing control. Acting as choreographic indications for the performer’s body, the movement score takes chladni patterns from the cello range and repurposes them to open, lift and compress the torso. These lead to the activation of new vibrations propagating throughout the body of the cello, pushing through the F hole to merge with the already sounding waves released by the other activated wooden bodies.
The piece ends with the cello being released from the clutches of the dance and returned to its primary state. The performer changes plane, drawing away from the previously occupied space whipping the air, splicing through the weighted dense texture of sound.
June 2015
Experimental Theatre by Royal Opera House Actor Barry Callan.
My roles were as joint choreographer and mise en scene, and I produced the sound score.
Listen here.
Photography by Phil Maguire
Spring 2013
Experiment combining Labanotation - Textiles - Installation - Dance.
In collaboration with:
Dancer - Rosie Terry
Composer - Luke Deane
Make Up Artist - Tabitha Ellis
view video here
Photographic series November 2013
2014
