Presentation of new composition 'In the unknown there is already a script for transcendence', with Zubin Kanga

This presentation explores a new piece being written with Zubin Kanga that explores strategies for magnetic resonators to mediate a performative and open-ended interaction between human and material agencies: the pianist and the piano. The new piece—In the unknown there is already a script for transcendence (2018)—extends my compositional research where bowing is used as a prosthetic extension of the performer to explore dynamic and nonlinear resonances of inharmonic objects (metal objects, or ‘prepared’ string instruments) as ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennett 2010). The key research point is in composing for a performative interaction that is led by the material. Where the player’s moment-to-moment performance is primarily about supporting the agency of the vibrating object, and their choices are led by the instrument, not the human: see Pickering 1995 on ‘material agency’ and Barad 2007 on ‘agential realism’. To level the agential playing field, a terrain of indeterminacy is introduced by preparing the piano strings (with metal bolts) to make the string inharmonic, destabilizing the specific pitch of the string into multiple competing pitch-timbre complexes. This destabilising of the string opens multiple paths through its spectrum that the player negotiates through touch and listening; exploring the tipping points across a continuum of sound from stable pitches, through phenomena such as beating-frequencies and multiphonics, all the way to the dissolution of the string sound into complex timbre.

Scott McLaughlin is a composer and improviser (cello, live electronics). His research focuses on contingency and indeterminacy in the physical materiality of sound and performance, combining approaches from spectral music and experimental music with physics and dynamical systems theory to explore material agency and recursive feedback systems in constraint-based open-form composition.