Counting 2015
World Premiere: ABC Classic FM live broadcast, Australian Computer Music Conference, ABC Studios, Sydney, NSW, Australia,21 November 2015.
Subsequent presentations:
Creative Collaboratorium, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, December 2015.
Classical Music 'Hyper-Production’ and Practice-As-Research Conference, London College of Music, University of West London, UK, 30 January – 7 February 2016.
Process: A Sonic Arts Forum, Arts Centre Melbourne, VIC, Australia, October 2017.
Counting 2015 is a work for voice, electronics and visual projections exploring the affect of numbers in contemporary life. Numbers are no longer cold calculations, but have become a central part of how we convey emotion, recognition and connection. From the quotidian emotional power of metrics to the body counts tallied by new human rights movements, such as Black Lives Matter and Counting Dead Women, numbers are entered into our phatic repertoire. Drawing upon improvised and extended vocal techniques typified by the work of composer Luciano Berio and vocalists Cathy Berberian and Diamanda Galás, Counting 2015 uses the extremities of the human voice and live processing to highlight the complexity of our new found sensibility to numbers.
Datasets related to the Syrian Civil War were shaped into a scrolling graphic score for voice and electronics. Through a process of crowdsourcing, videos of people counting were sourced from social networks as the generative audio-visual material from which the work is made.
Drawing upon the trajectory of web artists like Jonathan Harris, Aaron Koblin and Eric Whitacre who have used social media as a key point of connection with audiences as actors within their work, Counting 2015 asks its participants, contributing via Facebook, to reflect upon the emotional and human consequences of numbers they encounter in that space. In this way the composer acts as curator and facilitator of a discussion in online communities, where participants are both audience members and performer-collaborators.
Online Contributors
Alison Albany
Wojak
Benjamin Loomes
Brendan O’Connor
Ciara Foy
Dave
Deepali Bhaat
Dirk Flinthart
Goda Akuockaite
Harry Somsen
Houston Dunleavy
Inka Rantakallio
Jerome Williams
Jessi Lewis
Juana Beltran
Laura E. Goodin
Lee Kien Fei
Lisa Dethridge
Mark Doyle
Mark Parry
Matthew Lambert
Max Carbo
Michael Montanaro
Nathaniel Finley
Reuben Lewis
Steven Cooper
Tarita Botsman
Tony Yap
Vaein
Vasileios Gourgourinis
Vikram Mohan