'Midlands' (2019), for voice, electric guitar, keyboards, string trio, bass clarinet, amplified objects, performative electronics, tape and dual video projection (48’)
- Submitting institution
-
Royal Northern College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 42B
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
1 - Composition
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Midlands’ is an immersive audiovisual work that focusses upon the radical extension of live performance through the use performative electronics, bespoke instruments, amplified sculptural objects, and multiple forms of digital media. This research builds upon my prior work, contributing to a new conception of performer-centred electroacoustic performance, extending the work of Alvin Lucier, Hanna Hartman, and Helmut Lachenmann.
The research is equally psycho-geographic and bio-mythographic, inspired by the writings of Iain Sinclair and Audre Lorde; the work is an exploration of the city of Derby and an excavation of my formative experiences there in the 1980s as a non-white child of immigrants. The work draws on autoethnography, in that it ‘self-consciously explore[s] the interplay of the introspective, personally engaged self with cultural descriptions mediated through language, history, and ethnographic explanation’ (Ellis and Bochner, 2000).
I made ambisonic sound and video recordings as I walked the full length of the River Derwent and undertook extensive recordings of Industrial Revolution-era machinery at Masson Mills, Matlock. The work also makes use of microtonal analogue and digital synthesis and novel Computer-Aided Composition techniques, such as microtonal analysis and transcription, using bespoke tools I have developed.
My use of Wavenet, a Deep Learning Neural Synthesis algorithm, during the compositional process of ‘Midlands’ has had significant impact. As a result of this research, the RNCM / PRiSM has adopted Neural Synthesis as a research focus, resulting in new software (PRiSM SampleRNN, developed with Dr. Christopher Melen), new artistic works by members of the PRiSM team that use PRiSM SampleRNN, and a pedagogical focus on Machine Learning for Music (in collaboration with the University of Manchester).
‘Midlands’ was commissioned by Distractfold and guests and premiered at the Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemässer Musik in October 2019. A video of the performance is publicly available. COVID has delayed further performances.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -