A one-minute film created in one day by Katie Hanning (concept, performance), Caitlin Rowley (performance, video editing, music) and Jon England (videography, performance) in Porthleven, Cornwall. Shroud began with the finding of the bathtub in the discarded rubble of a home renovation near the studio where we were working, and used this and other objects to explore ideas about Porthleven’s maritime history and meteorology.
The final edit of the film was projected back into the bathtub which appears in it while the soundtrack was improvised live as it was rerecorded.
A performance inside a notebook, fragments of score, the sounds of the rehearsal studio, coffee on loop. Welcome to HAYDN SPACE OPERA, a piece which uses composition and performance creation as its materials. Taking place in browser-based online virtual reality, your exploration of the spaces of the piece creates your own unique mix of sounds including scraps of conversation, experiments and performances by Bastard Assignments. What will you find inside the composer’s notebook?
HAYDN SPACE OPERA comprises six virtual reality rooms:
The Corridor
The Warm-Up Room
Phyllida Barlow Playground
The Blank Page
The Café
The Apocalypse
Everything in the piece has some connection to the work’s creation, whether documentation of its development in workshops, playtests and experimental versions, the graphic scores used, or metaphorical connections, representing the development phase of composition (‘The Corridor’) or echoing the way I work in my notebooks (‘The Blank Page’).
Updates
As Mozilla Hubs, the platform HAYDN SPACE OPERA is built on is perpetually changing and improving, every now and then things break or go awry in unexpected ways. I try to keep an eye on it, but if you’re in there and find something wrong, please do let me know so I can fix it up. You can compare with the walkthrough videos if you’re not sure something’s intentional.
For information about the development of the piece, visit my notebook – these updates here are just announcements of notable fixes and changes.
31 May 2024: As of today, HAYDN SPACE OPERA is no longer online due to Mozilla’s closure of the Mozilla Hubs platform. I am working on a way to bring it back in some form, but for now, you can view walkthrough videos of some of the rooms on YouTube.
7 August 2023: There’s an ongoing problem with objects that I’m aware of. I lodged a ticket with the Hubs developers back in May 2023, and they’ve verified it’s a problem but are still working on fixing it. For the moment, it would be best to visit The Blank Page last! If you visit it before then, you’re likely to have giant ducks and other objects follow you when you leave that room. If this happens, try Shift-Refreshing the page, which should prompt you to log in again and hopefully will clear out the objects. This seems to be a bug that’s been introduced with a change to the environment that only relates to spaces where you can add your own objects within Hubs. As such, it doesn’t happen with the other rooms because that ability has been switched off everywhere else.
22 May 2022: Reinstated background sound in the Warmup Room, which was lost due to an apparent change in availability of files hosted on Dropbox. I’ve moved this to the CDN so it shouldn’t vanish again. The audio object for this sound was visible in Hubs in spite of being set to “not visible”. Reported this bug and implemented a hack to obscure it in the meantime. Similar changes made to Phyllida Barlow Playground and The Apocalypse, along with some adjustments made to volume of background sounds which seem to have altered to be much, much quieter than when first set up. Similarly adjusted sound levels in The Café.
Performance history
Premiered 10-23 May 2021 for Bath Spa University’s SparkFest digital festival. Part of Electric Medway’s Showcase programme, 21-30 August 2021. Relaunched with a new room, ‘The Corridor’, 2 May 2024.
Acknowledgements
Concept, programming and artwork: Caitlin Rowley
Performances by Bastard Assignments – Caitlin Rowley, Timothy Cape, Edward Henderson and Josh Spear
Huge thanks to my colleagues in Bastard Assignments, whose performances and conversation make up the bulk of this work, and whose assistance as I reimagined this piece as a purely online experience has been invaluable. Thanks, too, to my supervisors, James Saunders and Robert Luzar, and the other members of Open Scores Lab at Bath Spa University, who provided very helpful testing feedback and suggestions. And giant ducks all over the Warm-Up Room.
Thanks, too, to the places represented here: Centre 151 in Haggerston, London where we recorded most of the audio material and The Premises Studios in Hackney, London where the rest of it was captured; Replay Espresso café in Turramurra, Sydney where several of the notebook pages used here were created and the coffee videos were filmed; the Illy Café near South Kensington tube station in London was the venue for the writing video; and of course the homes of Bastard Assignments members where additional material was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘mesmeric’, ‘eerie’ (audience responses to A Memory of Wind)
A Memory of Wind came out of the Porthleven Prize residency I attended in March 2020. Striations in the rocks seen at the Cornish beaches we visited matched up in my mind with the patterns formed by the lines on maritime charts, where numbers indicated the depth of each band on the chart. Combining the two created a collaged score where the approach to the sound is shaped by the idea of wind, water, depth and time.
Score of A Memory of Wind
Off the coast at Porthleven, under the sea, is an area of petrified forest and the combination of rocks and depth prompted thoughts about that forest, how if it could think it might remember what wind felt like, but that being at the bottom of the sea now, the wind’s often violent effect on the waves is diminished the further down you go.
The numbers in the score range from small at the top of the page to largest at the bottom of the page. They form a rough map of deepening pitch in the piece. The performer starts with the top segment (surface, performed on the A string), improvising their way through the numbers using a wind-like tonal palette created by the use of left-hand fingers only half-touching the string in combination with flautando bowing that may move around between the bridge and the fingerboard. Movement in this surface segment can vary in activity level and is the most active area of the score – as the piece progresses through ‘deeper’ segments the activity levels reduce. The ‘surface’ is returned to between each segment of the piece, and the piece ends on the C string in the deepest segment.
As this piece does not demand exact pitches or extreme control of the bow (random harmonics and unstable tonal effects are encouraged), it is suitable for performance by any violist who has mastered the bowing technique to produce of harmonics.
Tuning is left to the performer’s preference. The composer generally performs this piece with the viola strings tuned to F / E / A / G (this is the same tuning as for Quiet Songs).
A second movement of A Memory of Wind, for solo voice, is currently in development in collaboration with Misha Penton.
Quiet Songs was written for Bastard Assignments’ performance at Aldeburgh Festival in 2019. Written for the composer to perform, it sets live detuned viola against a constructed video part of silenced and manipulated vocal and viola performances by the composer. Starting with a simple mirrored relationship between the two (the viola provides the sound for the silent vocal performance onscreen), they quickly take different but related paths, coinciding here and there throughout the piece.
The viola uses very few traditional playing techniques. Using scordatura (the strings are retuned to F-E-A-G), a wide range of playing positions (near, on and behind the bridge all the way to the fine-tuners and over the fingerboard all the way to the scroll); creating white noise by bowing the body of the instrument in various places), and noise effects.
The audio in the video part uses recordings made in the composer’s studio – most notably via a contact microphone positioned on the window, simultaneously capturing the sound of the performance in the studio and the sounds of the street outside.
Bastard Assignments perform Aides Memoire at Asylum, Peckham. Photograph by Dimitri Djuric
A hybrid piece about the technological ways we capture memories and how captured memories relate to recollection. This piece uses field recordings collected by the composer across a 12-year period, narration and the sounds of live photography.
Aides memoire is the title of the performed piece, with POV being the title of a byproduct piece created from the photos taken in the performance. POV takes the form of a video comprising the still photographs from multiple cameras from a single performance, giving a different view of that performance from documentations captured of the performance itself:
Community of Objects boxes set up for performance at hcmf//, Nov 2017
Community of Objects explores the private act of performing and the private space of the score within the situation of a public performance. The piece’s score is also its principal instruments – a collection of handmade paper boxes that are handled with gloves and bare hands, and which are destroyed during the performance.
The sounds of the piece are chiefly the sounds of paper-handling, crumpling, tearing, etc. These very quiet paper sounds are interspersed with sounds and actions prompted by the contents of the boxes, discovered by the performers over the course of the piece. The box contents (which are likely to be different at each performance) relate to the uses of boxes in everyday life, and to the material from which these boxes are made – paper.
Opening the boxes before the performance is forbidden, and as they are destroyed after they have been opened, the sense of private experience when performing this piece should be heightened – as the performer, you are the only person (apart from the composer) who will ever experience this set of boxes, and, crucially, you are the only person who will ever get to experience discovering the contents for the first time. It is hoped that the experience of performing the piece will be one of curiosity and occasional delight.
Community of Objects was written for Plus-Minus Ensemble, who gave the first performance at Bath Spa University in May 2017 and will perform it again in March 2018:
It has since been performed three times by Bastard Assignments. The following video was taken in the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings:
Audio-only recording of Plus-Minus Ensemble’s performance at City, University of London, 27 March 2018:
Peruse the performance notes (use full screen option for easier reading) or download the PDF (119KB)
Text score for a performed piece of any duration for any number of performers.
This piece is currently in development. At present, the intention is:
The score for this piece contains a simple text which each performer should use to create an entire notebook of variants which will serve as a handbook of ideas from which to develop a live performance version of the initial score. The notebooks should be displayed (open at a single spread) where the audience can see them at the performance. The variants may be drawn (using wet and/or dry media), collaged, described, included as video or audio of a performance interpretation (performers may want to consider the use of QR codes to include these digitally recorded versions in their books), or any other form or media that comes to mind.
The final performance may take any form the performer chooses. Performances that are created as scores become separate but related works, which can be performed in future by performers who have not undertaken the notebook process.
Current scores developed from dot drip line line are:
trainlines is a piece for private performance on an intercity train. It is a text score for an improvised performance consisting of simple drawing and listening, suitable for performance by people who don’t usually perform or draw. As it is a private performance, there is no need to announce what you are doing – it is simply performing for your own pleasure. Each performance will result in a unique drawing, some examples of which are displayed below.
If you have performed trainlines and are open to sharing your experience, I would love to hear your thoughts on the piece and see a photograph or scan of the resulting drawing. To share these, please email me at trainlines [ at ] caitlinrowley [ dot ] com or tag me on social media.
trainlines 1: Chippenham to Swindon, graphite on black papertrainlines 2: Swindon to Reading, graphite on black papertrainlines 3: Swindon to Didcot Parkway, graphite on Post-It notetrainlines 5: Marne-la-Vallée Chessy to Paris Gare de Lyon, graphite in Leuchtturm A5 notebook
On an extended visit back to Australia after seven years away, I found myself homesick for England. The contrast between the soggy grey British early winter I’d left and the Australian summer I found myself in was extreme, and these pieces reflect those contrasts. Combining photographs of Australia with textual recollections of England, and each of them posted to a different recipient, they sit somewhere between art, imagined music and poetry and explore remembered and imagined sounds.
Homesick Piece No. 1: At 42 degrees Celsius
for Edward Henderson
Homesick Piece No. 2: After days of torrential rain
For Timothy Cape
Artwork commissioned by Janet Oates for the exhibition ‘Closet Music: Imaginary Soundworlds’ at The Proud Archivist gallery and cafe in Haggerston, London (14-28 September 2015). The brief was to create a new black & white work to the idea of “what does music look like?” and the subsequent print was exhibited in the exhibition and reproduced on vinyls for window display at the venue
Sounds We’ll Never Hear is an installation which explores physical recording media’s issues of longevity, how sound and imagination interact, and visual contexts for sonic content.
The installation was prompted by seeing Rose Finn-Kelcey’s The Magpie’s Box (1977) at Tate Britain. A box containing a range of magpie-related materials, including a reel of tape described as ‘audio tape of magpie sounds’, Finn-Kelcey’s work prompted me to think about how a recording in this context can never be heard because it’s been incorporated into a visual artwork – it is no longer a sonic object but a visual one. That led on to how the viewer is entirely dependent on the artist’s description of the recording to shape how they think about it (what sounds they might imagine, how they view it in the context of the rest of the work, etc.) – their experience is formed second-hand, as it were, because they cannot just pick up the recording and play it.
Sounds We’ll Never Hear takes these concepts and works with them in a playful way. Presented in archival boxes, padded and lined with felt, each recording is displayed with a card which tells the viewer about the sounds on it. The presentation of these recordings as a) damaged beyond use and b) as part of a visual artwork doubly negates the possibility of the statements on the cards ever being verified. Are the labels accurate or do they mislead us? We’ll never know…
So far, Sounds We’ll Never Hear comprises three items from the SOUNDS WE’LL NEVER HEAR archive, sourced from charity shops and a personal collection. Click to view larger images:
ARCHIVE #1094: Margaret Thatcher whistles ‘Greensleeves’
ARCHIVE #676: Rolf Harris performs a wobbleboard lullaby
ARCHIVE #1902: Rehearsal sessions for a death metal album by Damon Albarn
Sounds We’ll Never Hear on display at “Bastard Assignments at Lawrence’s Place”. Photo by Alex Waespi.
The parksong series – a series of experimental vocal works – are musical compositions presented in the form of visual art prints. Drawing on verbal scores, visual representation and subtleties of language, they are visual art which is music; recordings which cannot be listened to; scores which do not explicitly invite performance.
Developed as part of her 2013-14 MFA research project ‘At the Borders of Music, Art and Text: Exploring an Interdisciplinary Approach to Composition’, the development of parksong explores Caitlin’s interests in music, visual art, text and the challenging of artistic fear through a lens of amateur practice and private musical experience.
The series comprises four works, the first three of which were developed during the project:
parksong (A3)
the line of my voice (A4)
i sing myself a circle (A3)
private static (A4)
The graphic elements of each piece are drawn or created manually, then scanned into photoshop where they are combined with digital text before being professionally produced as giclée prints on heavy art paper. At present only a single Artist’s Proof exists of each piece, although there are plans to produce an edition at some point. If you would like to know more about these works and the edition plans, or to request notification when editions are available to purchase, please contact Caitlin.
Sepiascape with Grey is a graphic score commissioned by Valentina Pravodelov for her MMus vocal recital in January 2014. Destined to be performed in the context of a programme of darkly urban popular music by bands such as Massive Attack, Portishead and Joy Division with a backing band of guitars, keyboards, backing vocals and drums, it incorporates a short text which mashes up a single line from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland with words selected by the composer:
under the brown fog of a winter dawn
wasteland
never-never
unreal city
The score was created using sepia acrylic ink (using a dip pen with copperplate nib, and as a wash) and black watercolour overlaid with digitally created handwritten text.
Four Black and White Pieces is a set of four graphic scores ‘for any number of performers or imaginations’. Created for the Closet Music ‘Travel Pack’ project, which was looking for postcard-sized pieces which could be used by travellers to imagine their own music, even if they didn’t read musical notation, Four Black and White Pieces is also appropriate for (audible) performance. The four pieces can be performed in any orientation, either sequentially (in any order) or simultaneously. If there is more than one performer, they can either all work from one Piece, from different Pieces, or from the same Piece in differing orientations.
As with my other graphic score works, the interpretation of the images is entirely up to the performer(s) – my interest in this form of notation is in enabling performance, and in seeing what performers bring to the work. I don’t specify certain elements to represent certain musical concepts because, in my control-freak way, I feel that if I want a melody that is ‘this’ shape, I should just write out the notes myself. I love hearing performers create sounds I wouldn’t ever have imagined with these pieces – every performance becomes a composition lesson.
Four Black & White Pieces on display at the Closet Music exhibition. Click to view full-size image
