Phatic Tactility
(Composition, 2023)


- Musical composition and production
- Part of interactive live performance/experience
- Concept developed together with 2 co-composers
Me and 2 co-composers, Alex Persson and Ossia Sokolova, developed this concept together, about contact. Physical contact, between microphones and speakers, and by extension between people. 6 separate compositions play from their own designated speaker (6 in total of various sizes). They play at a very low volume, but using 3 microphones, audience members are invited to interact with the speakers, and, through contact, amplify these tiny sounds to the surrounding loudspeakers. We hold some of the speakers, and the participants explore the sounds and music with their microphones, free to play around and experiment with distance, movement and mixing sound sources. In this way, even people with no prior knowledge of playing musical instruments can experience interactive sound generating, and collaborative music making, in a very hands-on sense (literally!).
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This piece was presented/performed at University of Skövde in 2023 (with some lovely audience participation!), a recording of which can be found below.
The two excerpts at the top of the page formed parts of two of the final 6 compositions used for the performance. Inspired by the concept of contact, I used contact microphones to record the manipulating of various materials. In First Contact I used physical contact of skin, rubbing hands, touching arm hair, running the mic on textiles etc. In Last Element it was all about the natural element of earth. Sand, rocks and gravel; stirring, rattling and grinding. All rhythms and harmonics are extracted from and composed using those organic recordings. In both of them I also experimented a lot with reverb to play around with distance and closeness.