Conference Papers

(2024, June). Intimate Listening: Nature, Place, and Music in A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time. Music and/as Process RMA Study Group conference, Glasgow, UK.

ABSTRACT: How do the processes of music and listening help us better relate to both place and nature? This was the question posed by A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time – a multimedia research practice project in which composer Benjamin Tassie worked with instrument-maker Sam Underwood to build new water-powered musical instruments: a harpsichord, hurdy gurdy, and water-organ. Installed, filmed, and recorded in Sheffield’s historic Rivelin Valley, the work drew on the methodologies of historically-informed performance (HIP), field recording, and ecological sound-art to explore the Rivelin Valley’s rich industrial heritage (in the specific) and our relationship to nature (more broadly). In particular, it sought to foster a connection with the river through sound. As Annea Lockwood notes, “Listening to [a] river and re-experiencing the river’s flow can bring it into your being and remind you of its nature and its being. So next time you hear about a river in trouble you might want to help out”.[1] This paper will share research practice undertaken towards A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time insofar as it engaged with these ideas of place, nature, and listening. Sharing excerpts of the film that was one of the project’s outcomes, the paper will draw on ideas from philosophers of art and sound (Timothy Morton and Salomé Voegelin) to argue for the particular power of music in reconfiguring our relationship with the nonhuman in the Anthropocene. After all, as Heather Swanson et al. wrote, “Perhaps counterintuitively, slowing down to listen to the world – empirically and imaginatively at the same time – seems our only hope in a moment of crisis and urgency”.[2]

[1] Lane, C. and Lockwood, A. (2013) ‘Annea Lockwood’ in Lane, C. and Carlyle, A. (eds) In the Field: The Art of Field Recording Axminster: Uniform Books. pp.32-36

[2] Swanson, H. et al. (2017) ‘Introduction: Bodies Tumbled Into Bodies’ in Tsing, A. et al. (eds) Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p.M8

(2024, March). Approaching an Understanding of ‘Historically-Informed Ecological Sound-Art’: A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time as Case Study for a Nonmodern Ecological Art. AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) 2024, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

ABSTRACT: Anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers have increasingly come to reject modern ideas of progress insofar as they can be understood as having contributed to climate breakdown. What is needed, argued Bruno Latour, is a ‘nonmodern’ worldview; one that rejects the modern temporality and that foregrounds our entanglements with the nonhuman.[1] Existing ecological sound-art practice rarely, however, engages overtly with issues of time and history. This paper therefore presents a recent practice research project, A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time, that combined aspects of the post-HIP[2] and ecological sound-art traditions to approach such ideas. In doing so, it hopes to engage with the research question: what can post-HIP practice research contribute to ecological sound-art, and how can it help us better relate to the nonhuman in the Anthropocene? A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time featured new water-powered historical instruments designed and built by Benjamin Tassie and Sam Underwood: a harpsichord, hurdy gurdy, and hydraulus (or water organ). ‘Played’ by the river, these instruments were installed, recorded, and filmed in the historic Rivelin Valley in Sheffield, UK. For centuries a thriving hub of water-powered industry, the project engaged with the valley’s rich industrial heritage. It utilised what Latour calls a ‘polytemporal’ approach; combining performance on historical instruments (bass viol, Medieval rebec, and nyckelharpa) with digital recording and dissemination technologies. Arguing for the particular significance of historically-informed ecological sound-art, this paper will share excerpts of the film that was the project’s outcome, as well as drawing on existing practice and theory to outline the project’s original contribution to the field.

[1] Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern Translated by C. Porter. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press

[2] Post- Historically Informed Performance. See: Tassie, B. (2021) ‘‘Post-HIP’: New Music for Old Instruments in the Twenty-first Century’ TEMPO 75(297) pp.61-70

(2023, June 16). Augmenting Historical Organs: The Use of Creative Technologies in Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees. Music Ex Machina: Methods & Methodologies for Technology-Centred Practice-Based Research in Contemporary Music symposium, London, UK.

ABSTRACT: Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is a large-scale concert work commissioned by the pianist Dr Zubin Kanga as part of Royal Holloway’s UKRI-funded research project, Cyborg Soloists. Research and practice toward the creation of the work has used the latest studio and performance technologies to augment the musical and performance possibilities of notable historical organs. Technologies used include the new microtonal functionality in Ableton Live 11, the innovative ROLI Seaboard Rise 2 MPE keyboard, and a 360-degree, multi-speaker surround-sound array. Historical organs sampled for the work include the 1479 Van Straten Organ at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam and the cabinet organ in the private chapel at Knole House in Kent (thought to be the oldest playable organ in England). This paper will share insights into the role creative technologies have played in affording and affecting new musical vocabularies, in extending the performative and expressive possibilities of electronic and historically-informed performance, and in mediating social, cultural, and political meanings through the musical work. In particular, the quasi-religious component of the piece will be explored, with Max Weber’s concept of ‘brotherliness’ deployed to suggest the way in which the technologically-implemented historically-informed artwork might help ‘re-enchant’ postmodernity toward the reconstitution of communality.

(2022, June 18). ‘A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time’: Water-powered Historical Instruments as Ecological Intervention. Twelfth International Conference on Music Since 1900, Birmingham, UK.

ABSTRACT: In their introduction to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, Anna Tsing et al write that “Living in a time of planetary catastrophe… begins with a practice at once humble and difficult: noticing the world around us”. This noticing, they argue, attunes us to “landscapes of entanglement, bodies with other bodies, time with other times.”[1] These related ideas – noticing, entanglement, and anti-teleological time – are the starting point for our collaborative project, A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time, in which we are designing and building three water-powered instruments to be installed and filmed/recorded in the rivers Rivelin and Loxely in Western Sheffield. Loosely based on historical antecedents – a spinet, hurdy-gurdy, and hydraulis – the instruments will make connections not only to our cultural past but also the industrial history of the Rivelin and Loxely which are strewn with the ruins of mills and water wheels. The resulting recordings, blending field recording and mechanically produced music, will therefore attempt to collapse something of teleological (cultural/industrial) time, attuning the listener to the richness of the landscape’s history, our entanglement with it both historically and today, and music’s power to make connections across time and space. For the Twelfth Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900, we will present our instruments (as works in progress), demonstrating them and outlining their relation to the above-described research interests. In particular, we will situate this practice in the context of a broader shift in art-music since 1900, namely the blurring of the categories of ‘art’ and ‘music’ (as well as the roles of ‘composer’, ‘performer’, and ‘instrument builder’) in the work of Max Eastley, Yoshi Wada, Sarah Angliss and others. Finally, we will explore the urgency of engagement with the historical, the ecological, and conservationism in our current moment; as John Butt notes in Playing With History, “As we begin to perceive the limits of the earth’s resources a culture of recycling becomes vital for our future survival… the notion of linear progress becomes less obviously advantageous”.[2]

[1] Anna Tsing et al (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), p M7.

[2] John Butt, Playing With History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p 170.

(2022, April 8). Noticing a Landscape: Historical Instruments, Ecology, and Digital Media. AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music Conference, London, UK.

ABSTRACT: John Butt concludes his survey of the historically informed performance movement (HIP), Playing With History, by relating HIP to broader heritage movements, in particular architectural conservationism. He observes a quickening of the rate of preservationist tendencies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concluding “the faster the rate of obsolescence, the quicker things qualify for preservation”.[1] This, Butt notes, reflects a broadening (cultural) realisation in the Anthropocene: “As we begin to perceive the limits of the earth’s resources a culture of recycling becomes vital for our future survival… the notion of linear progress becomes less obviously advantageous”.[2] For the twenty-first century artist (working ‘post-HIP’), questions remain: how can new music made with historical instruments meaningfully intervene in ecology and conservation? How might our increasingly digitised cultural landscape aid or impede exploration of these ideas? And what futures might these creative interventions imagine? Written for the Icelandic Baroque quartet Nordic Affect, my recent composition Quartet for a Landscape approaches these questions. Consisting of sparse music for Baroque strings and harpsichord, recorded live at a concert in Reykjavik, the work was installed as a single-speaker installation in the Peak District. The film of this installation combines recorded music with field recording to occupy a liminal space at the intersection of the natural/cultural, contemporary/historical, and digital/material. In making the work, I drew on an ethos espoused by Anna Tsing et al, that “Living in a time of planetary catastrophe… begins with a practice at once humble and difficult: noticing the world around us. [Only then] can we repurpose the tools of modernity against the terrors of Progress to make visible the other worlds it has ignored and damaged”.[3] This paper will outline my methodological approach in making Quartet for a Landscape (supported with audio-visual examples), drawing on the above-quoted literature and autoethnography to explore what insights have flowed from practice, and how these insights might contribute to broader debates in HIP, ecological (sound) art, and new music.

[1] John Butt, Playing With History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p 169.

[2] Ibid., p 170.

[3] Anna Tsing et al (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), p M7