The past is singing in our teeth

How can music notation and composition engage with artworks activating memory and knowledge? These 2 compositions for an art installation by McMillan: a 20 minute scored composition for McMillan’s brass, paper and wire artworks designed as percussion, hung from a tree like structure, performed live at the opening of the installation, and a 30 minute looped composition as part of the ongoing installation of projected films onto sculpture. The composition adapts McMillans artworks for notation materials in an innovative, automated ‘shuffle score’ (Hope & Wyatt, 2016) in the Decibel ScorePlayer. It is an ‘action score’ where the performer ‘draws’ the notations using art objects, on art objects. The objects are also used to create the looped soundtrack, tying the notated live performance to the ongoing sound in the installation. The work investigates how artworks can provide materials for composition, where the resulting sounds function as an intermediary into a fictional past reinvented in the absence of women’s histories. The materials for the notation and soundstrack reconstruct a lost archive of women’s knowledges, triggering remembrance by the recovery of sacred objects and sounds. The composition animates objects, highlighting a quiet voice that demands close listening. The show has been reviewed in international media and was funded by peer reviewed Category 2 Ausrtralia Council for the Arts Funds $7000. Kunstquartier Bethanian is one of the leading Berlin exhibition spaces, and London based artist Macmillan is an important contemporary artist exhibiting worldwide.