Feeling Along…

Feeling Along…

Duration: ~15 min

Instrumentation: Five Portable Instruments, Fixed Electronics, Live Visuals

Technical Specifications: .wav 48kHz stereo audio, HD 1080p video

Performers: Padideh Ahrarnejad — Tar, Dora Wang — Bamboo Flute, Wesley Shen —Sho, Nikki Huang —Percussion, Clara Nguyen-Tran —Viola

‘Feeling along...’ is a piece where musicians perform barefoot and feel their way across a multi-textured performance surface created by stitching together carpet off-cuts, linoleum tiles, stone tiles, and other common flooring surfaces. The semi-improvisational score, comprised of cards and a set of game rules, guides performers across the performance surface.

Performers translate the textural responses they feel to sound through a predetermined set of instructions given on the cards. To enhance the visual experience for the audience, projections utilizing an digitally distorted live webcam feed should be shone onto the carpet surface from a raised platform.

I created ‘Feeling along...’ as a means to mature as a composer, both in the types of scores I create, and in the incorporation of live visuals, theatricality, and non-musical props within my compositions. While I have created graphic scores in the past and have experimented with limited text-based scores, I have never combined these mediums to create a composition that includes elements of chance, as well as requiring the performers to mentally translate one sensory experience to another.

Following in the Chance/Game score tradition pioneered by composers such as John Cage, ‘Feeling along...’ aims to both explore a human sense (in this case touch) not often associated with musicmaking, and to break down the often traditional strict composer-performer dynamic, by providing a flexible and semi-improvisational score to performers, giving them a unique medium in which to be creative and to collaborate with one another.