Output details

Folly

‘Folly’ is the most recent in a conceptually-linked series of works which investigate the physical principles behind the sound production in a particular class of musical instrument, and the extension of these principles into the virtual domain. In this case the recorder is used to probe the contiguity between music (sound/air movements) and tactility identified in Waters (2012) [submission 1] and by extension of the proxemic zones proposed by Hall (1963) - the bounded intimate, personal, local and public space. Its originality arises from its contribution (as an instance in practice) to the author’s theoretical exploration of the musical implications of current research on embodied mind (Clark, Lakoff, Johnson) and situated cognition (Gallagher). The work was commissioned for, programmed, and premiered in a 25 year retrospective concert of the author’s work in the Sonic Arts series (University of East Anglia) in April 2012, and repeated in the concert series at the Sonic Lab of the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast) in May 2013. The submitted (live, but studio quality) recording is of this second public performance. In addition to the (broadly philosophical and cognitive) issues which inform the work it also grows out of a period of intensive collaboration with the performer at the University of Göttingen, therefore continuing another research theme evident in recent works which are designed to be specific to individual performers - investigating various levels of compositional fixity in which the performer has considerable (and varying) responsibility - in an attempt to make work which counters the possibility of ‘generic’ performance.