Doran Edwards Major Project Research Diary

The work is about the relationality of all people as exemplified in the connection through voice, awareness and listening with one’s own body and others in group toning and chanting. Removing the subject --toning-- I want to present its energetic essence. I want to give the installation as a metaphor, like a poem without words, but I want to not write in this diary in such an academic way. I think describing this, over and over with short poems will help;

A stream of breath

blows wordless voices

on warm clouds of wax

A line appears

Something is lost

I’m aware of the Haiku-esq style of this, and in time will learn and develop a different way. But, it is fair to say that I am moved by poems such as the Zen Buddhist monk Enku’s;

This morning’s dew

Draws my mind

To the flower of my heart -

How fragile

Continuing my own theme of traces, Stephen Connor offers a theory of voice as a strain;

‘What is a voice? It is a straining of the air [...]

The breath is drawn as a bow is drawn, by applying a force against the resistance of the diaphragm and intercostal muscles. The power of the voice is the release of the kinetic energy stored in these muscles as they return to their resting positions. But the voice’s energy is not simply given out. For there to be voice, there must be a secondary resistance, the impedance or thwarting of this outflow. Where the breath simply escapes, there can be no voice.’

(Stephen Connor, Strains of Voice. Phonorama: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Stimme als Medium, ed. Brigitte Felderer (Berlin: Matthes and Seitz, 2004), pp. 158-72)

To develop the voice as a trace of breath, first I want to make a comparison to the drawn line. For Time Ingold it is not, like  drawn line is not gestural strain in a kind of arm wrestle with its own interior and exterior material reality, but instead a path that is traced ‘not from an image in the mind of a maker to its expression in the material world but orthogonally, looping in and out between mind and paper, rather as a swimmer dives into the water and comes back up for air (Berger, 2005 p.125, in Ingold, 2011 p. 217-8).

‘[H]earing the sound of others, chant in such a way that you feel as if their voices enter your ears and pass out through your own mouth. This means that we should chant in oneness with others rather than as an expression of ourselves.One of my students compares this to being like a reed instrument that sings as air blows through it.’

Adapting Moore’s description of listening and chanting allows me both a method and analogy of the cross-sensuous depiction of the voice with ink and paper for the installation. Rather than synesthesia, it is my present moment awareness that allows me to experience the voices of the toning workshop recordings directly and flow through my body, I become one with the voices. 

[Our] primordial, preconceptual experience, as Merleau-Ponty makes evident, is inherently synaesthetic [...];

'[...] The intertwining of sensory modalities seems unusual to us only to the extent that we have become estranged from our direct experience.’

Attending Zen Brushwork classes has allowed me to re-engage with my past drawing practice and open the potential for cross sense interpretation, as Abrham’s says;

'Although contemporary neuroscientists study "synaesthesia"--the overlapping and blending of the senses--as though it were a rare pathological experience to which only certain persons are prone (those who reported "seeing sounds", "hearing colours," and the like), our primordial, preconceptual experience, as Merleau-Ponty makes evident, is inherently synaesthetic [...]

'[...] The intertwining of sensory modalities seems unusual to us only to the extent that we have become estranged from our direct experience (and hence from our primordial contact with the entities and elements that surround us):

... Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the centre of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel in order to deduce, from our bodily organization and the world as the physicist conceieves it, what we are to see, hear, and feel

(Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 229) (p. 60)

It is not, for me, a case of internally seeing images when hearing sounds, but allowing the sounds to flow through to my hands, moving with them as we gesticulate with our own language. Being fully present, as Abram states, cannot prioritize the one sense over another.

Examples of the potential for this crossing-over are the relationships I see in the voice and drawing;

Mira Schendel - Monotypes: ‘the trace of the line would materialize from the slightest friction between the body, the paper, and the ink, in contrast to the direct intentionality of drawing with graphite with paper.’

Keiko Uenishi, Traces (2012)

In this work Uenishi traces the ‘aural space’ using audio feedback. As the pencil traces the lines of what is already there under the surface of the tracing paper, Uenishi uses this term effectively to communicate that she is revealing the relationship of space, materials, architectural form and people with feedback as the substance, not a musician controlling feedback in a room that becomes the instrument of their own artistic expression; ‘The audio feedback is simply the response from the physical space. As a tracer, I tried to walk the paths as simple as possible with options of speed (of walking) and the positions of arm/hand.’

This piece was an importan influence for my year two compositional strategies el2, What is Here? I employed the same technique of using audio feedback to explore the connection between the changes in feedback pitches and quality in relation to the feedback system (speakers, microphone, proximity, architectural space and materials, movement), and the present moment awareness of the performer. This present moment awareness itself and the impermanence of the feedback tones are described by the sound in each moment as it traces and renders the in-between of the conditions of its occurrence. 

‘Car Décalé (Légèrement) / Because Shifted (Slightly) (CDL) is a long-term research through series of sound-performances/installations method to redefine space utilizing audio-feedback. CDL was purposely constructed in the simplest format without specifics. Aesthetic aspects such as the material used for walls, ceiling, floors, columns, furniture, people, etc. serve as influential components.

At Eyebeam on August 15, 2012, utilizing Eyebeam's vast concrete floor, Uenishi materialized her long-time wish to create a room-sized graphic score for CDL (abbreviation for "Car Décalé (Légèrement)/Because Shifted (Slightly)".)

With the score, she traced the "aural space" of Eyebeam that physically measured as 96.9 x 52 x 16 ft (80620.8 cu.ft = 12943.16 gal.)

The performance of "CDL traces Eyebeam" was a part of CT-SWaM (Contemporary Temporary Sound Works And Music) series curated by Daniel Neumann.

This video contains approx. 10 minutes of excerpts from the 30 minutes performance of "CDL traces Eyebeam". Video documentation by Melissa Lockwood Timelapse photos by Lukasz Antkiewicz Video edited by Uenishi’

Drawn line is a trace of existence

Voice is a trace of breath

Breath is a wave with no beginning or end

Memory is a finger drawn across a frosted pane of glass

Language is a ghost of the first impression

‘Levy-Bruhl […] describes how the Tasmanians “had no words to represent abstract ideas . . . could not express qualities such as hard, soft, round, tall, short, etc. To signify hard they would say: like a stone; for tall, big legs; round, like a ball; like the moon; and so on, always combining their words with gestures, designed to bring what they are describing before the eyes of the person addressed” (Levy-Bruhl, 1966).’

(Levy Bruhl in O. Sacks, Seeing Voices. P. 50-1)

i want more ‘men’

with flowers falling from their skin.

more water in their eyes.

more tremble in their bodies.

more women in their hearts

than

on their hands.

more softness in their height.

more softness in their voice.

more wonder.

I have never seen a shadow

filled with flashing red light;

The cyclist unaware of his impossible silhouette 

Through the clouds

beneath the moon,

a finger is drawn across a frosted pane of glass

as if to underline

Condensation 

traces a memory

of bodies no longer 

there

Qiu Zhijie, Writing the “Orchid Pavillion Preface” One Thousand Times (1990-5)

“[...] Clay kneaded

Forms a pot.

The emptiness within, 

The Non-Being, 

Makes the pot useful. 

Windows and doors chiseled 

Create a house;

The Emptiness within, 

The Non-Being, 

Makes the house Useful.

Being and substance

Bring benefit.

Non-Being and Emptiness

Make things Useful.”

(Lao-Tzu, Non-Being. Tao te Ching)

‘What “is not” therefore is more important in these cases than “what is.”’

(Duyvandek)