Links text:
This chapter outlines the making of new work for the 2019 Coventry Biennial. Extending previous work through the exploring of qualities of haecceities and quiddities in the sound/stuff, looking for the specificities and how they might inform and support how we understand microelements in the soundscapes. These microelements gathered at Twin Spaces the process of which described through reworked autoethnographic commonplace notes from the time. I consider ‘me’ in the work, both as embodied researcher and as part of and activator of the sonic-environment.
The dual spaces and haecceities and quiddities, linking into the investigating of the Smooth and Striated (Deleuze and Guattari 2004), the potentials of spaces to shift from structured to place of affect, that image might scaffold an understanding/way into sound and in an always emergent and developing brining elements into my approach.
The scaffolding of text in the drawing together of the first draft of the chapter and rough Research Catalogue page, informing how the thesis came together finally in this form.
I reworked the materials into a dule screen piece for a later exhibition, and constructed presentations and an early introduction to chapter tests in the developing of my thesis/RC approaches.
(this chapter does not have 'background gathering audio' - as the undercroft audio starts on entry - emulating the way you could hear it as you went up the stairs to the space it was shown in and is audio of/from my gathering in that space)
Haecceities and Quiddities in the mix of approaches:
I had encountered the description, ‘Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects, more than one of properties’[1] (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 plateau 1440) It spoke to my interest in spaces of/for affect and linked to ‘event’, and introduced me to ‘haecceities[2]’, following a little looking, finding quiddity[3] as a synonym, both terms from scholastic philosophy, their descriptions felt redolent to some of what I am ‘looking for’ as qualities in my ‘microelements’. They are similar but different notions, that most simply put, the ‘thisness’ and the ‘whatness’ of something. The ‘thisness’ in my gathered materials the qualities that make something distinctly as it is and linked to the specifics of the location and time, the ‘whatness’ linking it to and giving a kinship with similar things, make it recognisably what it is. These are of significance to my research, in relation how we recognise and distinguish, as parts of how we are ‘linked in to’ materials where there is no narrative, and so are things to be explored and ultimately utilised in relation to the making of spaces of/for affecting atmospheres and embodied response.
In this praxis I intended to gather sounds that were the thisness and the whatness, that felt particular and specific, and so linked and gave a way in to ‘themselves’/what I had constructed with them. Additionally, I had in mind things drawn from l the previous investigations including; working with/for affect, microelements, moments, event, details and multitudinality. Working on the edge of knowing and through my affect heuristic. I utilised different types of microphones and camera set ups to gather a specific detailed ‘view’, as well as the surrounding atmospheres, the generality of the space. I planned to make a work where I brought sounds together, while retaining a separateness, not being merged, but merging, while also moving and shifting to inhabiting the space.
[1] I look at the smooth and striated later in the chapter.
[2] Haecceity: Philosophy - that property or quality of a thing by virtue of which it is unique or describable as ‘this(one)’. The property of being a unique and individual thing.
[2] Quiddity: Philosophy - the inherent nature or essence of someone or something. A distinctive feature; a peculiarity. (both from OED – 2004)
An always developing approach:
Reflections and discussions:
I visited the space several times after setting up my work, the earliest of these just before the show opened, was when I first saw my pieces with the rest of the work in the space. During two of my later visits, there was opportunity for informal discussion and feedback, making available to me what others saw/experienced in my work. My own reflections were mixed, some elements of the set-up were outside my control, the space was damp so the images kept curling, I repeatedly had to visit and try and ‘resolve’ them, I wondered if they would have worked better as separate to the speakers, maybe in a book[1] or as larger prints[2] . I was not in this work making an installation, more sculptural sound emitting clusters, I felt the visual linking between stands, players and wires made them more of a ‘constellation of stuff’ which spoke back to setups of earlier works, but visually they didn’t sit well with everything around them.
The sounds worked in the spaces, moving through them and merging with the sounds around. The seepage down the stairs linking to things learned in previous works made, drew people up, not quite knowing what it was they were hearing in the sounds from The Under Croft. The Row sounds combined into the space, this was where they were from, they included traffic recorded with transducers on the window and traffic sounds was also ‘live’ in the space, but the work additionally brought in sounds of drilling, banging, making, voices, discussions, decision-making, as haecceities and quiddities of/from the prior activity of the space coming together with the now in the space of exhibition.
Comments included that “the images on the speakers, meant I leant in to look closer and then could hear that track and its details more than the others, so I then moved around and closer and back… experiencing all of it together and then parts individually”. For some then, the images activated movements and shifts, another was that The Row work was “more inviting”, and that The Under Croft felt “oppressive”, which might describe qualities of the spaces and the differences between group human shifting activities towards change and a single person in a closed space with electrical and recording equipment.
Details and images as links:
I am not making mimetic pieces for people to understand as a representation of ‘an idea’, I am making spaces that trigger affects and memories/responses, that are active, seep and merge with, alter and are altered by bodies and the environment they are in. I worked with the qualities of this/whatness and added images as a ‘scaffolding’ for ‘recognising’, to set up a push/pull loose tethering. In the informal feedback, the comment that the images made someone move closer and lean in to hear the detail, reenforces this as an approach for eliciting an active (both physically/bodily and mental) engagement.
Scaffolding text:
Considering my ‘scaffolds’[1] for textual activity, and while re-reading The Smooth and Striated, I began to think of this potential for folding/transformation of spaces between states, how this could support my making of spaces in the art works, in relation to the notion of a ‘okay space’ to write in for this ‘bodymind’. A free writing, autoethnographic, note taking approach, that feels ‘doable’ with later structuring and editing; the ‘scaffold’ which supports the later editing and restructuring activity, allowing for the early open approach. I began to work on the text within all this in a freer way, with the aim it could then ‘hold’ some of the felt sensed stuff, and that the later ‘structuring’ would support it to explain my developed knowledge and thinking to the reader, through its movement from one to the other.
In the considering of my approaches to writing ‘this up’, the ‘texts’ that have made most ‘sense’ are ‘Ordinary Affects’ (Berlant and Stewart 2019) and ‘The Hundreds’ (Stewart 2007) They have a number of commonalities, small ‘chunks of text, positioned with others, this correlates to my making of spaces in installation art works, I began to developed further my approach of ‘scaffolding’ the ‘thesis’ with a how I ‘make’[2] and learning from the papers and presentations I had already delivered.
Recognising that as text is a ‘not making sense activity’ for me, I must twin it with – pin it to, an activity that I ‘feel’ and know. I began to approach my text in the same way as my drawing together of materials for ‘pieces’, plan the shape, tone, colour, pace, movement and shifting[3], listen/watch elements of the works and materials gathered, ‘be’ in the space of the doing and thinking through my bodymind again, and write there. This also consolidates the holistic approaches working across all areas of my methodology for making with/for affect and I opened myself a space for ‘making’ this text[4].
I began to develop Research Catalogue pages as chapters, not a housing for the practice, but as spaces that could ‘hold’ the work more in keeping with the ‘work I make. Spaces where the diagramming, the materials, the text elements and my voice could come together in a shifting and open way containing potentials for active engagements with the ‘reader’. This chapter was the first that I made ‘test’ versions of in this way, and the diagram on this page, is from the earliest version.
[1] scaffolds as supports, flexible things, but enough to give me an armature, of sorts, a ‘working area’; these might be a diagram or sketch, a ‘timeline’, perimeters around where, with what and for how long I gather, a mapping of a space to another.
[2] This process (writing ‘up’) is also one of realising/learning, at times re-realising/re-learning, working on this section in draft has made me aware again that I need to utilise the approach I have to editing video and sound, and constructing spaces. Use this as part of the approach I have to working with text, the gathering of materials, the processing through – all of it, as a useful analogy for me to think about, but also in the ‘nuts and bolts’, doing.
[3] Note from 2022 when first writing this: The delivery of a talk I was invited to give at Newman University for their Humanities Research Group, felt like it held this, as did some of the doing/thinking paper. But when I only have text, it is too static, I lose my place, there is no linking for me. It requires more of a ‘diagramming’, a ‘picture’ of the ‘space’, more materials on the RC pages, I am wonder about the ‘introductions’ being audio, More multi-layered, more how I would approach a talk, with pace changing and emphasis shifts, images, video audio and spoken word.
[4] I also attended a research workshop around practices to support spaces for writing for neurodivergent people, this included free writing exercise, linked to somatic practices, which reinforced my developing ideas and gave me additional approaches to/for working with not against this bodymind.
The TWIN spaces:
The Row, a disused NHS clinic across three floors in the city centre, was being converted into the main hub and an exhibition space, made up of a mix of what had been small interview spaces, waiting areas, offices, and corridors, with windows overlooking the shopping street, a roadway and roofs. The activity/sound was a combination of the reconfiguring, meetings, discussions and deliveries. My work would be shown in this space, on the second floor.
Across several visits, I gathered with different microphones and photographed details. Using contact microphones on the windows and on boards used to make the new space, with omnis on walls, open to the space, and a coil mic for electric hum and buzz. Finding street sounds, carpet tiles being removed, sawing, drilling, hammering, snatches of conversations and meetings, batteries charging, light switches, and water heaters. I photographed the floor, windows, residues of previous use. In the materials both the micro and macro of a space is in a period of change and flux.
The Under Croft, a medieval merchant’s house cellar, left behind and underground as the city developed, is silent except when being accessed through the city archives when an airflow system and lights are turned on. I was acutely conscious of being the maker/instigator of the auditory atmosphere I experienced on my single visit, in my notes describing he visit as “mainly hum, me in space moving, photographing and writing,” an “interesting hour of disappearing into what I was doing with no one else in the space”.
Gathering the space and me/my activity simultaneously; hum, breathing, shifting the tripod, the camera shutter, omni mics and camera at ear/eyelevel. I paused, considered my’ activity, set up a hypercardoid, and sat and wrote in my notebook,
recording the sound of me handwriting parts of these notes, and then with a coil mic, the lights, my camera and the sound recorder, ‘recording’ the internal sounds of the recording.
Affect, sound and text:
I spoke earlier of the way sound is often described by what makes it e.g. a bird singing; through discussions around this work in Coventry, I recognised very clearly the link with affect which is often explained via a description of what triggered, or a retrospective understanding of the emotion as a result of the affective ‘moment’ e.g. the sadness in watching an animated story of a melting snowman (Massumi 2009)
The sound and the affect are somewhere around these, not being ‘seen’ directly, while being seen ‘too’ directly. Bhunnoo (Carlyle and Lane 2013 p.183) describes ‘materialized sound’, which ‘operates’ in the ‘gap between the experience itself, and the language by which we articulate it’, I am trying to find this space for/of a ‘materialized’ affect/sound language, one that does not ‘squash’ and remove the ‘nature’ of the ‘stuff’ am working with, but which gives a possibility of sharing with others the thinking and experiencing. In early tests for this chapter, I explored if chapters may be video essays of sorts, considering my presentations and papers, but this still felt to ‘set’, too far away from the form of the ‘practice’.
The Smooth and Striated, Plateau 1440:
While developing Early Tests & Experiments, I read The Smooth and Striated (Deleuze and Guattari, plateau 1440; A Thousand Plateaus 2004) this informed my emergent approach of scaffolds as something to ‘support’ the undertakings of working with and through affect/affecting atmospheres and sound, and then trying to, in part, share my understanding through text. These ‘materials’, have a slippiness, a changing shifting nature, that needed a ‘space to be held’ for the activates. The chapter also links smooth to affect and outlines the constant collapsing between the two spaces, informing my understanding of the potentials of shifting between states. I aim to explore and explain my understanding and the link between this text and my/the use/usefulness of ‘scaffolds’, using paraphrasing and quotes from the text.
I use scaffolds in the construction of my ‘spaces’ so that my ‘mapped/planed’ ‘striated’ outlines, when the (micro)elements[1] I draw together in them are active, might collapse/translate into a ‘smooth space’. This speaks directly to the description of smooth and striated as a ‘nomad’ and a ‘sedentary’ space, not of the same nor opposite nature, existing only in mixture and relationship, and constantly being translated/transformed from one to the other.
The transformations and differences are explored as several simultaneous questions,[2], including ‘what interests us in operations of striation and smoothing are precisely the passage or combination, how the forces at work within space continually striate it and how in the course of its striation it develops other forces and emits other smooth spaces’. Considering this in relation to sound (generally and) in my practise, which shifts and moves, initially relating wholly to its origin, becoming a mingled interrelating ecology, and expanding into other spaces. It becomes something of ‘there’ and ‘here’, both changed and the same. Its porosity and shifting nature allowing bodies to meet it and be changed (an event of affect?)
I see the technological and maritime models as most analogous to my approaches, the technological is the process of making fabrics – or the qualities of my spaces. Supple solids’, woven fabrics are striated having; two elements warp fixed, weft mobile, with different functions, delineated edges, and a top/right and bottom/wrong side. Smooth fabric, such as felt, ‘proceeds altogether differently’, it is an ‘anti fabric’, an entanglement of fibres, in principle infinite with no top or bottom, not homogeneous with continuous variation. The maritime model gives a clear description of the shift between the ‘states’ or spaces, describes the mapping of oceans, planned trajectories, points of known location as the striated space and the moving between points as the times in smooth space.
My process involves my working in a space with a sensing ‘openness’, utilising my ‘affect heuristic’, ‘looking’ out for the ‘stuff’, (micro)elements to gather, which are in part details and atmospheres containing the haecceities and quiddities that makes that space/place as it is/I am experiencing it in that/those moments.With those weaving/constructing spaces, setting these up around ‘mapped’ points, maybe of ‘knowing’ for a viewer, that give trajectories and ways of travelling with the materials. Into an entangled, heterogeneous ‘felt’, space where ‘stuff’ can shift and move and shape a space itself, porous to the environment and bodies around, I/us/it shifting from striated to smooth[3], making something of/with those (micro)elements and be in a place of felt/sensed embodied response.
[1] haecceities and quiddities, atmospheres of ‘stuff’
[2] the simple oppositions the complex differences, the defacto mixes, the passages from one to other, that they are not symmetrical, they can move in both directions, but with different sorts of movements etc. It is suggested that we need to envisage several models as a way of understanding these, which are like various aspects of the spaces and the relations between them. That these are not the only potential models, and other types of spaces should be considered as they might communicate with the smooth and striated in differing ways. I later outline 2 models.
[3] The ‘smooth’ is a concept attributed to the composer Pierre Boulez, in Ken Okiishi’s obituary of Boulez, (ARTFORM, July 8th 2016, https://www.artforum.com/columns/ken-okiishi-on-pierre-boulez-1925-2016-229996/ ) there is a description of the way he understands this ‘smooth’ as (a) ‘point of contact between discourses of visual culture and music may be Deleuze and Guattari’s interpretation of Boulez’s 1960 concept of “smooth [lisse] or amorphous time and the proportional system to pulsating, or striated, time,” in A Thousand Plateaus (1980 in French and 1987 in English). Rereading this passage now, with the added emphasis that certain figures and concepts gain in mourning, it occurred to me that it is impossible to fully understand this concept—or gauge its plethora of politicized misreadings—without understanding some basic elements of musical performance and composition. Deleuze and Guattari write, for example, that “Boulez says that in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space-time one counts in order to occupy.” Yet one of Boulez’s most significant contributions as a conductor-composer is precisely the tension he creates between “counting” and “without counting.” Counting here refers to the process by which the musician internally counts (or forgoes counting) the beat while playing, conducting, or even composing a piece of music. One of the most basic yet always difficult aspects of interpreting a score is to know when to count and when to stop counting to generate the right combination of sensations, affects, and pulses in what is being performed. (In fact, there are moments in performance when one can stop consciously feeling the beat, even when its pulse continues to drive a forward momentum, and this is the closest I’ve ever come to an understanding of “smooth space-time.”)’
Commonplace/autoethnographic descriptions, discussions, thoughts and processes of reviewing and drawing the work together:
During the visits to gather, make, set up and while the exhibitions were open, I wrote ‘commonplace’ notes, as I worked giving an autoethnographic account of my undertakings and thoughts. I used the ‘common’ equipment I had for Dyffryn and About. The spaces both concurrently ‘everyday’ and very specific[1].
I reviewed the gathered materials in the days following visits, working quickly as I had six weeks for gathering, making and installation. Quickly recognising ‘microelements’ in the materials that could make details and atmospheres, I began to build tracks based around ‘points’ in the gathering spaces. The work developed into two clusters of tracks. The Row atmospheres were from contact mics on the windows and open mics of the space, and details from close recordings of clearing, moving and building. ‘The Under Croft’ atmosphere the hum of the space, from air conditioner and lights with some of my movements, the details close recordings of my activity, and the electric buzzing and clicking of the lights, camera and recorder.
Through discussion with Ryan the siting of two elements of the work arrived at, but what was around them as part of the wider curation of the whole, I would not know until everything was installed. There would be two groupings of speakers playing mono tracks in different areas of the second floor, ‘The Under Croft’, near the entrance, ‘the Row‘, near the windows. Simple speakers on stands, with the audio players and wiring visible, images, details from the spaces, covering the front of the speakers[2], all set up to visibly see the linking and carrying the sound.
[1] Everyday in their original use, and the mundanity of the activities happening as I gathered, and both specific in their current use and as particular as any place/space is at a given moment.
[2] My early tests on ‘nylon paper’ didn’t work, it muffled the sound too much and the images were not sharp enough, you could not see or hear the (micro)details that were what I wanted to explore – so I tried printing on thin Japanese tissue, that worked for both the sharpness of the image and sound. I explore this further in the sound and the images, later in the chapter.
The sounds and the images:
The mix of the ‘everyday’ haecceities and quiddities from the spaces in the sounds, gave some routes into the audio, but I felt the ‘viewer’ might need a gentle hand to know ‘where they were’. I had images that I had gathered alongside the sound, visually recording details of the ‘thigs’ making sound or surfaces that I attached mics to. These correlating details of gathering, giving me a visual ‘scaffolding’, here less direct than the windows in Dyffryn, but points of reference which could physically entwine with the sound when on the speakers, which I was beginning to think of as ‘sound emitting objects’
This correlation of points and details of gathering across the auditory and visual, led me to consider that the sounds and images should/could physically be entwined with the speakers being ‘seen’ as objects emitting sound, a subtle shift maybe from the kit being seen just as ‘kit’ maybe.
In March 2019 I had visited ‘FELT TIP’[1]. The show was across two rooms, both with multiple elements. The space with audio visual works, two projected pieces, KHOL and FELT TIP[2] were of most interest to me and relevance to this research. Price often makes works following research into a subject or place, ‘collecting’ up materials and ideas that link to the core consideration, but sometimes tangential. Then working them together into complex audio-visual pieces with multiple layers, constantly shifting and changing, a mix of live-action, images, motion graphics and audio edited rhythmically. The pieces were separate but by proximity linked, depending on where you positioned yourself, you could see them both concurrently, or move/shift between them. But you could always see the ‘light’ flicker of the other and the audio merged across the space.
Image credit: Elizabeth Price, FELT TIP (still), 2018.
Commissioned by the Walker Art Centre, Film and Video Umbrella and Nottingham Contemporary, with support from Arts Council England.
Unlike mine, Price’s work is narrative, ‘Her richly layered narratives explore social histories and the shifting terrain of analogue and digital cultures’ (exhibition guide). The audio in the works very different from that in mine, but I recognised in my own response to the works, that I would shift to look, then listen as a result, the visuals and audio entangled triggers directing attention. When I was making the Coventry work, I was thinking of this, in relation to something that ‘links’ the audience in, I was looking for a momentary catching of attention with my use of the images on the speaker fronts.
In a related interview[3], Price says ‘All fiction is promiscuous, in that you can have many kinds of things in a single story: discoveries, surprises, arrivals, events, etc.” I think of/describe what I am making as non-narrative, but that does not mean that her is nothing that links elements within the works, and these works of mine, even though of a place, they are not ‘documentation’ and there is no objective observing within them. They are things I have gathered in my ‘bag’ (Le Guin 2019) of ‘stuff’, from a specific place, but embroiled with the ‘stuff’ from all my travels, so maybe I am weaving fictions? For my spaces to draw a body in, there needs to be a ‘hook’, and maybe a small part of this is an entanglement of the image and the sound into something that is half recognised, and that you then want to understand more, and that want to know ‘more of the story’ is at the edge of the links between the sounds and the images.
[1] Nottingham Contemporary, 16th Feb – 6th May 2019 – a solo-show from Elizabeth Price, featuring all-new works: two immersive video installations and a series of large-scale pinhole photographs
[2] KHOL (2018) 4 channel digital video projection, 5.30 mins & FELT TIP (2018) 2 channel digital video projection, 9 mins
[3] Discussion between Elizabeth Price, artist Lucy Raven and Pavel Pys, Curator of Visual Arts, Walker Art Centre, March 2019. https://walkerart.org/magazine/watch-artist-talk-elizabeth-price-and-lucy-raven-with-pavel-pys/
The ‘author’ ('me') in the work, trying to ‘do things with affect’:
This ‘doing’ brought me back again to my being in all the work, and increasingly aware that all the processes are mediated through ‘me’. Mine is a deliberately subjective embodied praxis, which informs all aspects of the research, from what I chose to use, where I work and with what approaches. In ‘the under croft’[1] I am ‘noticeably’ in the work: my movement; feet on a rough floor, my sleeve against the wall, my breath, shifting position. Additionally, there are sounds because I was there; the air transfer system, the hum of lights and electricity. I have no want to de-manifest myself from the work, to hide my involvement, there is a sort of self-portraiture in what I am doing, a recording of my bodymind and its sensed response to the space, as well as an open acknowledgement of presence. I am in the fundaments of the research, decisions are driven by my response, how a place/situation, piece of writing, discussion or any input touches and affects me, what and how I sense and make sense of in all of it, and how I draw it all together.
As I work, ‘hold things in mind’ that will inform and help me ‘notice’, actively ‘listening out’ for my felt/sensed affect heuristic responses. Included in this as a considering of how to leave space for the other bodies/spaces, to ‘meet’ what I make and mingle, become porously embroiled, as ‘Isn’t an openness towards being affected what is asked for when one acts to make with something or someone else?’ (Lomax 2005 p.32 ). I want there to be a palpable sense of my bodily engagement, albeit obliquely, in the works make. My embodied approach is my best means to making spaces of embodied encounter for others.
[1] The sounds in this work were generated by me, my activity and presence, there are bits and snippets of similar sounds in all previous pieces and more in the ‘20 mins of listening’ and ‘a sort of ekphrasis’, this develops further in gathering closer and my aim for the final VIVA exhibition, to make my crip/neurodivergent embodied presence even more apparent.
