In this container of works I bring together three compositions. The first, Drawing 10 red+black (2020, 2024), uses a narrow attentional tunnel to focus in on the act of drawing while sounding. The second piece, Ecstasies of Rooms (2020), is motivated by atmospheres to voice with space and objects encountered in space. The third piece, sound mattering study, Elisabeth in the Hague(2021), uses a wide, imprecise type of attention that leans into atmospheres further - moving towards the idea of incoherent sensation, but not yet articulating it as such.   
 
The works presented here are early artistic strategies that query what to do with felt intensities that are present while sounding. They are all created in the two years of the Covid 19 pandemic and carry with them some remanants of that historic period: processes of development happening online, using domestic settings as sites of expression and spending time in isolation. Working away from live audiences suited me quite well at the time as I was coming to terms with the pandemic creative pivot that had thrust my own voice and bodily experience into the heart of the enquiry.
 
I spent most of these two years vocalising at home by myself. The early vocal improvisations of that period were tentative and mostly resulted in tears, screams or uninteresting expressions that tried to mimic what I thought of as a 'good' sound. The beginning was painful and confronting but necessary. I kept going. Weekly sessions turned into daily sessions that turned into many continuous hours a day. Once I reached an extreme durational practice things started getting interesting. My voice and body started softening, melting with the exhaustion, letting go of control.
 
Being unable to hold a steady focus for hours without much stimulation, my body started drifting around through space, looking for sensory pleasures that voice could connect with. I would move through different rooms of my house, I would pee or eat, I would lie down, dance or grab random objects to interact with. Voice slowed down all of these interactions, accompanying both moments of sensory connection as well as in-between moments of inattention. To sound while unfocused became a captivating thing.
 
In the works in this container, I create using this durational process of sounding but I do so in isolation, keeping my body away from encountering audiences directly. I do this to respect the amount of risk I am able to take while exposing an expression that is figuring itself out. I work here with varied types of attention: open and restricted, hyperfocused, inattentive, wide, distracted while erratically bouncing between things.  
 
Drawing 10 red+black (2020, 2024) records a particular moment from within one of the durational vocalising session, one in which I hyperfocus on drawing while sounding. This kind of voice carries within it fractions of a more fragile and marginal expression that previously struggled to make itself heard when given centre focus.
 
Ecstasies of Rooms (2020) collects parts of processes that lead to interesting results in my durational sounding, refines them and offers them as audio instructions for participating audiences to enact in their own domestic space. In this piece, my experiences combine with my collaborator's, Christine Cornwell.
The last piece, sound mattering study: Elisabeth in the Hague (2021), unpacks this durational process and names it as Sonic Drifting. In this piece I work with a trumpet player I hadn’t met before, Elisabeth Lusche, in the context of an online contemporary classical music summer school. Together we construct an audio-video piece that finds Elisabeth drifting through her domestic space using her trumpet.