When I was asked to develop a new section of the piece, I set myself one rule:

Nothing comes in from outside. No samples or synthesis. No sounds that don’t already exist within the dance studio. I didn’t want to introduce a sense of ‘artificiality’ into the piece, detracting from the grounded nature of the performance.

I asked Violet to simply move. No choreograph or brief, just the instruction to use the space however she wanted while I recorded – staying completely out of the way. Skipping, running, collapsing and scraping sounds were all recorded over the span of roughly fifteen minutes.

Listening back , the was an incredible ‘kinetic’ feeling within the recording- perhaps due to the raw, unprocessed nature of the sounds. Respecting this quality, I decided that (uncharacteristically) I would leave the recordings untreated (aside from some slight equalisation tweaks) and begin to compile these sounds into a pattern of percussive movement.

Example of some sounds recorded in this session:

In this sequence, I tried to respect the individual qualities of each sound – such as not trimming the long, drawn out tones of floor board creaks.

An example of a sequence I constructed: