Immediacy and New Material Ethnography in New Music and Sound Installation

This PhD aims to expand and rethink relationships between sources of instrumental sound, physical instruments, their performative and cultural contexts and modes of presentation, this through practice- based research work contextualized by a written thesis. The central creative articulation of the PhD will be the production of a large-scale performance-installation embedded within an art gallery space. This work will feature modified musical instruments, reclaimed materials, and purpose-built, designed 'object- instruments'. The work draws inspiration from the ubiquity and malleability of typically nonmusical objects and physical materials (e.g. plastics, mechanical devices, resonant sonic bodies). This project strives towards an unrefined, imagined ritual of material elements that, whilst animated by their own movement and self-sonification, will form part of instrumental/notated projects and workshop presentations completed throughout the PhD.The aim of this PhD is to determine practical and theoretical ways to bring the act of making (building/composing) and the act of receiving (listening/engaging) music as closely together as possible. This immediacy will be explored through the research programme, below, but also through a practice- based research outcome that heightens the immediate impact of the work by focusing the ears and eyes solely on material sounding bodies. This in turn helps to provide the framework within which current and vital discourses surrounding material culture, materialism and ethnography will be studied, integrated and expanded upon. To ensure that the work has impact beyond the contemporary music scene, intensive workshops will aim specifically at audiences beyond those that typically encounter contemporary experimental music. They will offer accessible ways through which to understand contemporary material culture and musical ethnography by highlighting the sensual, sensory and affective qualities of performance-installation. The thesis will reflect on the aesthetic nature and value of my own work in contrast to similar works in the field. It will also consider how critical research methodologies of contemporary sound installation can engage broader audiences, further expanding the reach of new academic musical thinking. Throughout the research, built 'hybrid-instruments' will help emphasise the potential of self-sonification and mechanical performance. These divergent assemblages will be fused to form a convergent system of interconnected sonic bodies. This type of work links most closely to the mechanised works of Jean Tinguely, the object-assemblages of Ryoko Akama and the performance-installations of Eli Keszler. In the final work, interactions between instrumental materials will be clearly heard (as well as felt and seen), producing a concentrated sensorial experience, aiming towards similar intensities and intoxications as found in musical ritual and ceremony e.g the ritual uses of music in East and West Africa (Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, Papa New Guinea), Japan (Gagaku and Noh Theatre), the shamanic musical traditions of Tibet and Siberia, along with the Ghost Dances of North American Indians (Kehoe, 2006). The initial research questions focus on how my own work will extend beyond contemporary music into larger artistic/educational organizations. Within this questioning, I will address the ethical problems that arise when contemporary art is presented in contexts of ritual, primitivism and cultural ethnography. I will navigate these issues to explore viable approaches to imagining such ethnographies and ritualisms from a contemporary, Western viewpoint. Writers engaged with will include Bruno Nettl, Alice Beck-Kehoe, Steven Mitthen and Paul Berliner. The Sonic Materiality Lab (SoMa) in Bath Spa (my second, supporting institution) will provide the framework through which to present all research to a network of fellow practitioners and theoreticians.