Practice Diary for The Land Singing

In The Land Singing I wanted to make a piece of music that would interrupt the day to day tactile habits of the audience. From the start our plan was to work with plants, and during the performance we had plants for adoption to any willing audience member. In the planning we decided that a yurt would be good to house the work since it would isolate us from the rest of the festival but also give us more possibilities to install works in the space to create an immersive and separate world into which the audience would enter. Thinking about the parameters of music and how plants could use them, I thought to pitch level and tone, since they are related to tension and thus weight, thus, the growing of plants and the contact between the plants body and the string would control the tone. Thus, the instrument turned vertical so that the strings which would be played would also support the body of the instrument where the plants would stand, as can be seen in figure 5.4.2. This way the plants’ leaves could also interact with the strings.

As mentioned, the hanging instrument was initially designed in two pieces which would be parallel to each other so that the human musician could be between them. Due to limitations of space only one surface was used. The second instrument, seen in figure 5.4.2. was a sewing machine table that was converted into a flower pot from which strings were extended over the sides where the tuning machines were and which were used by the human participants. Here the audience could play with their fingers or with the plectrum that were also provided in various wooden shapes, while the plant responded to the vibrations directly in front of their faces. The third type of instrument was in fact two separate organ pipes (40 cm and 80 cm) that one simply blew into and they would make a tone designed to be used by anyone from adults to children, as can be seen in figure 5.4.3.

Figure 5.4.3 Audience performing The Land Singing.

In figure 5.4.4 two audience members are shown who played the instrument with one hand and balanced the board with the other. This was unexpected because as the physical score of the music I never did this, but instead controlled the movements by the pressure I was putting on the string with the bow. As can be seen in figure 5.4.5, audience members would often take the bow in one hand while holding familiar objects in the other hand. The touch both who touched the sound board made, having the same function and aesthetic, revealed to me that affordance and design combined with visual haptics can overcome the representation of the score, and turn the touch of the musician towards interpreting the music rather than strictly following the score as it is presented. In this sense the touch the two players made interrupted my scheme and helped me better understand how the audience can be brought to touch the composed musical instrument without my physical presence.

5.4.2 Conclusion

The Land Singing interrogates how touch, vibration, and smell can mediate musical decisions which are perceived as not being merely pathological. In the context of plants, participating in making the music the notion of a pathological reaction is relevant because Eduard Hanslick has argued that the judgement of what is beautiful in music cannot arise from the

‘overpowering effect’ of sound and its ‘action on our nervous system’. He argues that this has nothing to do with musical beauty because what is heard this way does not arise from ‘free will’ but is only a pathological or

behavioural reaction to sound.51 _{What makes up music are the ‘intrinsically} pleasing sounds, their consonances and contrasts, their flight and re-

approach, their increasing and diminishing strength – that it is, which in free and unimpeded forms, presents itself to our mental vision.’52

These elements interconnect in the score which consists of the body of the composer, constantly playing and showing how the instrument needs to be touched, and the plants that participate in their own way in the

mingling of bodies and act on their own on the strings which are the sound source. This enables an instrumental interconnection that I argue mediates a communicative and aesthetic relationship between people and plants

because the function of playing and touching of the instrument results in different vibrations that mean different things for humans and plants, mixing the symbolic on the practical and performative level. The chemicals emitted by the plants in their actions also have a relation to the feeling and emotions

51 Eduard Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, trans. by Gustav Cohen (London: Novello and Company, 1891), p.122.

of the player and thus feed back into the how the instruments are touched and what the skin feels when playing. That the single musical instrument that is touched by many beings at once brings them together in a common activity where each musician acts out the score with their bodies while embodying it in their actions that can be copied by others either by watching or by touching the score and following through touch what the body does.