The Deformation of Figures (for Tim Feeney)
Seth CluettA 55-minute work for solo percussion, The Deformation of Figures employs a single, large, horizontally-mounted bass drum fitted with a small speaker cone with a rubberised surround (marked circle-T in the score). Performance actions are divided between the right and left hand where the direction and shape of motion is notated by arrows and the duration of action (or rest) is marked next to each notated gesture by numbers (in seconds) within parentheses. The score consists of ten unevenly divided arrival points or movement-shapes, each bearing a time indication in minutes and seconds between which the performer creates a slowly changing action-path. The tones played from the transducer actuate the drumhead in a frequency range inducing nodal resonances that are then bridged or stopped by the performance gestures. The tones morph (gliss) slowly between frequencies whose arrival points are asynchronous to the timing of the movement-shapes; the morphing tones create a shifting node structure on the drum head that oscillates in and out of phase with the performance gestures. The resultant system is one in which my composer-provided instructions, the physically exacting performer actions, and the structural properties of the drum itself create nested interrelationships denying causal prediction.
The Deformation of Figures explores the tension between embodied cognition through performative action and the formation of a non-linear environment (and by extension the deformation of subjecthood) amplified by the actuated membrane of the bass drum head. In this piece, I am actively attempting to decentralize the performer and composer as primary agents in the generation of the work, encouraging what the philosopher Levi Bryant advocates as a flat ontology where all entities are on equal ontological footing. Considering the bass drum as a non-human actor in a networked system of objects, an ecology is created between my own scored intention to direct the actions, the performer’s self-determined path from one movement-shape to the next, and the fixed acoustic response of the bass drum to the transduced sine waves. The repetitive action, stasis, and long duration creates an environment in which the listener freely oscillates between attention and inattention, at once immersing directly in the production of the experience but also hearing themselves directly opposed to it. Rather than a fixed construction, I try to create an unstable dialogue at the intersection of flesh, drum, action, hearing, and thought that eschews the purely sonic in favor of highlighting the shared failure to perfectly realise expected roles within the dynamism of common experience.
In 2015, Wolf Notes invited composers and musicians to write a short text about one of their own pieces. A word count of no more than 500-words was the only guidance given.
Seth Cluett is an artist and composer whose work ranges from photography and drawing to video, sound installation, concert music, and critical writing.