Instrumental infrastructure: sheet materials, gesture and musical performance

Thin sheets of material are suspended and placed around the space: tracing paper, silver ac- etate and aluminium panels. Smaller aluminium panels rest on low plinths, overlapping but not touching one another, surrounded by layers of tracing paper laid beneath them. Before being sounded they are still, flat, bright. The flat panels are first activated by rice dropped in single grains, and then cascades. The paper is touched with fingertips and nails, swept and rustled, before being scrunched and dragged across other material surfaces. The larger aluminium pan- els and acetate sheets are suspended vertically, hung like mirrors in two rows. Speakers placed behind these hung materials project prepared electronics and acoustic sound. Miniature mi- crophones hidden at the performer’s wrists are brought close to the sheets of material, tracing lines and shapes on their surface, first simply picking up otherwise inaudible frequencies be- fore later being used to induce feedback loops with speakers set behind the hanging layers of aluminium and acetate. Sound itself activates the acetate sheets, which tremor and rustle: they are sounded by sound. Shards of reflected light are thrown around the space, making sound vibrations visible. A performer moves between the corridors created by the hung materials that make up this instrumental infrastructure, glimpsed between the mirrored panels as they are sounded using hands, mallets, superballs. The flickering light now resembles rippling water as the performer moves forwards. Half hidden from view, a single sheet of tracing paper is folded into an origami paper boat and placed in the fading pool of rippling light