Cindy Cox, The Shape of the Shell (2010) for audio tape
text by John Campion
bass clarinet/voice by Laura Carmichael
My daughter brought a shell and bade me put my ear to it:
—That’s the sound of the ocean, I said.
—Is the ocean inside of it, she asked?
—The shape of the shell causes the sound, I said.
Move, tongue is an attempt to create a non-linear space in sound, where the order of events is not important but rather the experience and perception of their coexistence. In my mind this is analogous to the act of being in a physical space (say a room or a park) and after perceiving it with whatever degree of detail, one arrives at an internal conception — a modeling — of the space.
Performed by Matt Ingalls; December 12, 2011, Hertz Hall (UC Berkeley)
As the title suggests, (control) deals with differing degrees of control – exertion of control and release of control – “applied” to both performer and listener. The performers are asked to read a very specific score and simultaneously improvise with varying degrees of liberty.
Performed by the Eco Ensemble; April 11, 2012, Hertz Hall (UC Berkeley)
My daughter brought a shell and bade me put my ear to it:
—That’s the sound of the ocean, I said.
—Is the ocean inside of it, she asked?
—The shape of the shell causes the sound, I said.
—Then the ocean is the shaper of things, said Sophia. You throw a stick out into the water and it comes back looking like a fish.
text by John Campion
Tentations—its title derived from the mechanical engineering term meaning “a method of making mechanical adjustment by a succession of trials”—came to fruition through exactly such experimental means. The composition, indeed is a posteriori, a musical hindsight born from intense collaboration between cellist and composer.
Images from rehearsal + performance of "Base.Mat.1 - Coitus_More_Ferarum" at the CIM Art Residency, Morelia, Mexico, July 2010
