steven whiteley

The piece seeks to explore the relationship between words as phonetic sound objects and words as semantic, communicative devices, as well as how changes in dramatic action and speech affects the audience's perception of the acted-out role or 'character.' Some devices I am interested in using have to do with phrase repetition– where continuous repetitive utterances transfer the listener's attention back and forth between a word's meaning and a word's phonetic qualities; sentence deconstruction– where a phrase is deconstructed to individual words, then to syllables, then to individual letters, then reconstructed back again; speech with character change– the alteration in sound quality that the phrases take on based on the different dramatic 'characters' the actor embodies and the way the visual and auditory acting devices affect the audience's perception of repeated phrases; character juxtaposition– the investigation of the aesthetic of drastically juxtaposed rolechanges and quick emotional shifts and the way in which that affects how audience engages with the actor's character.

For Carl Jung, the ocean is an archetype that symbolizes the vastness of the unconscious mind. He writes, “the ocean is the favourite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.” The ocean-image as associated with primal, pre-conscious life is also found in Greek myth, which expresses that life emerged from the sea, the mother of all creation. In the way of Shamanism, drumming is used to induce a range of trance states through repetitive rhythms, serving as a conduit for navigating the multi-layers of the psyche. In this altered trance state one may experience “journeying” to other realms, filled with vivid imagery, symbols and spirits.  ;,, ;, ',, ,',,'', ,' ,',',,, ' journeys into the subconscious or deep self as expressed in western psychology, and the “Lower World” as expressed in Shamanism. ;,, ;, ',, ,',,'', ,' ,',',,, ' is an exploration of percussive and electronic sonorities, rhythms and colors and their relationships with visual rhythms and colors – images of the sea, nostalgic memories and thought fragments – to investigate “journeying” practice, and traversing the vast, torrential waters of the mind and the subconscious.

\ \^ \^\V\ \>\ \< \>\ straddles the liminal space where consciousness resides in limbo between the cyberbody and the biobody following a time of absorption in virtual reality. This state is known as “alternative world disorder”: a state of “perceptual nausea” and an “acute form of body amnesia,” which can lead to the “rupture of the kinaesthetic from the visual senses of self-identity… a lag occurring between the virtual body and the biological body” (Michael Heim). Suspended in this space between the virtual and physical, it is unclear as to whether this is a state of paralysis and dissociation or a transcendence of the body-mind. The cognitive responses and processes ingrained in the virtual world step out of synch with those of the physical world–thus we find the human being merging, yet still being out of phase, with the machine.

*Video was taken from found family footage, a collection of super-8 film shot in the 1970s by the composer’s grandfather, compiled, edited, and processed by the composer.