Breathing in B Flat

http://deepyoung.org/current/breathing/

Breathing in B Flat

Documentation of a live performance. The small figure in the middle
is really there during the performance. All the rest of the figures
were there at one time, just not during the performance. The voice of
the middle figure controls the fade between the two smaller black
figures. The louder the voice of the middle figure, the more opaque
and loud the left black figure. The softer the voice of the middle
figure, the more opaque and loud the right black figure. The voice of
each black figure controls a fade between two big faces each. The
four big faces each sing their own single note (Bb, C, D, and F
respectively). Halfway through the piece, the two black figures and
the four big faces begin a palindromic loop backwards, breathing in
their notes. There are a total of seven audio tracks: one middle
figure, two black figures, and four big faces.

In addition to the documentation of the live performance, there is
also companion audio. The audio sequence begins with the four notes
(Bb, C, D, and F), each sung the length of a single breath. Then
there is a mix of the left voice controlling the fade between two of
the notes. Then there is a mix of the right voice controlling the
fade between the other two notes. Then in the middle there is the
audio of the documented performance in which a single voice controls
the fade between the previous left and right mixes. Then there is a
second right voice mix that was not used in the documented
performance, followed by a second left voice mix also not used in the
documented performance. These are followed by alternate reecordings
which were not used in the documented performance of the four notes,
beginning with F and proceeding to D, C, and finally Bb. This
companion audio deconstructs the live performance, making it easier
to assimilate.

…..

In most considerations of object and subject, light is merely the
vehicle for transmitting the appearance of the surface of the object
to the subject's eye. But light and sound are also things themselves.
Both are matter/energy (in the sense that they are not spirit). Both
are admittedly more ephemeral than flowers or hammers, but not so
ephemeral as to be non-physical.

If 'things' in general have been robbed of their unique and
independent agency by anthro-centric phenomenologists, then sound and
light have been especially robbed of their unique and independent
agency, even by those who claim to speak on behalf of things. Sound
and light have been consigned to the role of mere lackeys,
trafficking messages back and forth between solid objects and
subjective humans. I mean to enlist their aid as creatures of light
and creatures of sound, discovering and releasing the unique agency
of their particular thingness by sculpting these most fleeting and
immaterial of all types of material – not as mimetic transferers of
solid objects, nor as symbolic signifiers in some visual language
drama; but as stuff, as material, as things which act directly on a
human subject, immediately and in constant flux.

In "Breathing in B Flat", sound and light come from my face because
my face is something in the world that I can control semi-directly.
The performance reveals my face and my voice more as events and less
as solid objects or as tools for use. These creatures of sound and
light gather, and in the event of their gathering, they suggest a
place where humans and God might meet.

Curt