Acts of Balancing and Unbalancing

Kathy Hinde

Quiet Music Ensemble, as one might expect, have a tendency towards the aesthetics of quiet music. They are a seasoned group of improvisers, accustomed to interpreting unconventional scores and playing with unusual devices, instruments, and constructions. Their artistic identity occupies a space that sits in between a music ensemble, sound art and installation art. As a cross-disciplinary artist working predominantly with sound installation, all these elements excited me about what could be possible when we work together.

Following conversations with John Godfrey about QME’s approach to performance and improvisation, I decided to explore the area of my practice concerned with inventing and building new instruments, which has grown from my work creating sculptural sound installations.

Tipping Point

In 2014, I made the installation ‘Tipping Point’, which was commissioned by Cryptic for Sonica Festival in Glasgow. I created Tipping Point with a deliberate intention for it to function as both an automated installation and as a distributed musical instrument that I could perform and improvise with live. Tipping Point is made up from 12 glass vessels, created specially by scientific glass blower John Rowden at the University of Bristol. The vessels are suspended in pairs on mechanised tipping arms and interconnected via a flexible tube, allowing them to share a body of water. When one vessel is elevated, it empties into the lower vessel, and vice versa. As one fills, the other empties.

Sound is generated by audio feedback which is tuned by the space inside each glass vessel, as altered by the water level and based on the resonant frequency of the remaining empty space in each vessel. Inside each glass vessel is a small condenser microphone, which I assembled using EM172 capsules housed inside aluminium tubes. The microphones are strategically positioned at the upper part of each vessel, in tandem with a small powered speaker located at the base of the stand supporting the vessels, and external to the vessels. All microphones and speakers are connected to one central audio interface and laptop in order for the microphone gains and volumes to be addressed via one system. The feedback is balanced at its critical 'tipping point' through a MAX patch programmed by Matthew Olden, which also serves as an interface to interact with the system live.

The installation operates within a framework that uses probabilities to determine which microphones are active and which motors are engaged. This indeterminacy results in a continuously evolving soundscape that does not repeat. When performing live, I can control the gain of each microphone and the speed and direction of the motors that move the tipping arms. I built in a further layer to shape the soundscape via an option to send any of the feedback tones into a mixing desk to then apply effects such as pitch-shift, distortion and reverb.

The aspect of Tipping Point that intrigues me most is playing it live.

The acoustic properties of the space effect it, and I need to play with an attitude of ‘negotiation’. While I can steer the composition towards specific states, the journey to reach them is gradual, producing different sonic outcomes each time. Precision becomes elusive, and instead, I must 'shape' the sound while engaging in an ongoing dialogue with the instrument and its systems, responding to its behaviour. It feels akin to a duet with the instrument itself.

This builds on my fascination with open scores and generative systems. I’m particularly interested in creating systems that are ‘open’ and have elements of chance built in, or to think about instruments that have a range of behaviours that can be shaped and encouraged but not necessarily controlled precisely.