The Arts in New York City
Spellbeamed. Yes, I was definitely spellbeamed to another time and place. Why do I say that? Well, this performance was certainly very peculiar and bizarre, if those words could accurately describe what I saw and heard.
All I really knew going in to this performance was that this was an avant-garde type of performance. This perhaps was not the first of this kind of performance, but it was my first time experiencing such a strange production. I have never heard of such sounds and noises being made by anyone before. This being said, I actually enjoyed it to an extent. Granted there were dissonant moments, but there were also some cool things that the performers did.
I must say the whole thing did strike me as strange but at the same time I thought it was really interesting. In the first part, two women, Shayna Dunkelman and Zeena Parkins, were dressed in white coats and white gloves that made it seem like they were researchers or archeologists looking and examining the items in front of them. Some of the items in front of them were a brush, horsehair, and ribbon. Ms. Parkins proceeded to pass items to Ms. Dunkelman, who “played” each item on a harp laying on its side. I liked the different sounds each object made; the “artifacts” made interesting and unexpected sounds as they were “played” on the harp. While this was going on, a woman, Ms. Joan La Barbara, portraying the dead Walter Benjamin using a voice modifier, was reciting one of his essays. It was hard to understand what she was saying; I only heard bits and pieces like the words “bookkeeper” and “collector.” At times I found it difficult to focus on one woman, but all in all, I thought it was a really cool piece of work.
The performance then proceeded to the stage, where there were musicians from Ne(x)tworks Ensemble and JACK Quartet who played violins, trombone, and harp, just to name a few instruments. These players played both traditional notated music as well as music in the form of pictures. As pictures came up on the screen, each player interpreted them and produced different sounds. Some of the images were paper clips, coins, and a bus. They all were very expressive, intense, and powerful in their playing and movements as they played their music. I give them credit for being able to play in what others may call the “wrong way” because often times when one knows how to play the “right way” it makes it harder to play anyway else.
Some sounds that the musicians produced were dissonant; other sounds were really, really strange. At times I felt a bit overwhelmed by how many different sounds being made at once on stage, but there were also times where I felt I could enjoy the music. The part I really enjoyed was when I saw the piano player, Stephen Gosling, interpret into music a black dot that came on the screen. He played the piano with such power and intensity. I could barely see his hands. I thought that was amazing; I wished I could play like that. The part of the performance I found to be really strange and haunting were the noises coming from Ms. La Barbara’s voice. She seemed to be making sounds I never knew were humanly possible; I don’t know how she made them. Other noises that were produced sounded like when bombs drop in cartoons and the turbines of a plane. It felt so real; I felt like I should be on a plane and taking off.
The use of pictures as music during the performance was interesting. It actually got me thinking about how pictures could have been used as notes. Ancient civilizations, like Egypt, used pictures, hieroglyphics, as written language, why not use pictures as notes? It seems odd to do that now because we have become accustomed to seeing music as 5 lines with black round circles on them, but pictures could have been used as a representation of music; pictures could have been just as valid, perhaps not for use as musical notation now, but maybe it was back in ancient times.
Although many people did not like the performance, I enjoyed watching them play music in a different way. I do agree that it was weird, strange, peculiar, any other type of word along those lines that you could think of, but it was definitely interesting. I certainly don’t think I’ll be forgetting it anytime soon.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
I really loved your word play in the beginning. I didn’t even think of analyzing the sound of the music as the musician’s interpretation of the given picture. And your idea of using pictures as notes is also interesting. It makes me wonder how each tiny picture would be interpreted by various musicians. Would these “picture notes” be universal, or would there be different “picture note” languages (especially because hieroglyphics were Egyptian)? Just something to think about.
You bring up a good point. The artists used the objects and the pictures in such a way that nobody in the audience would have ever been able to imagine. This performance was all about looking at things from other perspectives. Likewise the way they played the harp with the objects was something completely unique. I was talking with Professor Minter after the performance and it occurred to us that many parts of the performance could have been improved on the spot. The objects selected to be used on the harp, and the interpretations on the imaged projected, and the images themselves could change for every performance.
This review really puts to words the thoughts that were running through my head. Spellbeamed was interesting, almost captivating, solely because of its strangeness. I spent nearly the entire performance wondering why so obviously talented performers would want to make music that was so offensive and just plain awful. There’s a reason you don’t typically hear music like that, right? This review really answered that question for me. They play their music in order to provoke our interest, to mess with our minds. In that they definitely succeeded.
I thought your comment about the picture as a “note” was very interesting. We do live in a highly visual culture now, where images have become primary over text in many areas of life. In this, you could definitely say we bear a strange sort of resemblance to a culture like that of Ancient Egypt, with its hieroglyphs. That being said, I though the visual nature of our culture actually limited the effect of the picture as a device of meaning. There were certainly many striking images presented throughout the performance; objects that were compelling – that seemed to transmit their profound meanings and many-layered histories with directness of visual perception. But the images were still, in many ways, small and two-dimensional. Projected onto the walls of the small, largely unadorned theatre space, they may have dazzled twenty years ago, but competing in modern eyes against the million objects bursting at us from screens all day, I thought they lacked the power and sublimity that might have developed into truly great art.