mutable bodies #1: soft-speaking

mixed media installation, 2020

amplified flute, sine tones, noises
wood, plexiglass, surface transducer, hot plate, gelatin

In many forms of institutionalized contemporary music, the loudspeaker is understood as ‘invisible’—a transparent source of non-information, both in how sounds pass through and out of it and in its presence on the concert stage.

Meanwhile, though they are created to taste and look as invisible as possible, gelatin, agar-agar and other wiggly bioplastics are often seen as unavoidably physical. The cheap byproducts of our industry-driven present (and stand-ins for the household feminine), they exhibit a kind of soft plasticity: a modernized, flattened, domesticized flesh.

In this installation, a 15-minute audio loop of sine tones, noises, amplified flute and flute-generated feedback from solo improvisations during spring and summer 2020 is played through a soft bioplastic loudspeaker.

The loudspeaker replaces the performer as the embodiment of musical gesture and as the object of the gaze. At the same time, its physical body acts in ways that, through an institutionalized electroacoustic lens, might be seen as ‘ruining’ the music it produces: contributing physical malfunctions that distort the audio, and messily dissolving itself over time.

Is there a possibility for a soft aesthetic for this music—one that allows humans and objects to intrude with, or disappear into, their bodies? That allows room for variance, for physicality, for cheapness, and for failure?

(view a full-length video of this installation here.)

mutable bodies is part of an ongoing series combining failure-focused audio design with crafts, household labours, and other gendered practices.

This project was realized as part of the artistic research component of the 2018-2020 Contemporary Performance and Composition programme (CoPeCo), co-hosted by the Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia (Estonia), Kungl. Musikhögskolan i Stockholm (Sweden), Conservatoire National Superieur Musique et Danse de Lyon (France) and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (Germany). Thank you to the CoPeCo team and to Rama Gottfried for their assistance.