Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Image descriptions/alt-text: A stack of four embossed, tactile graphic scores/notations placed on a table. Right index, middle, and ring fingers are tracing the top graphics.
Embodied Music Club
tactile graphic scores, audio interpretations, and sound captions in visual & braille,
2023.
How does music emerge after the end of ableism, audism, visualism, and colonizing & authoritarian music practices? Through Embodied Music Club, visitors experience tactile, aural, and visual music-making. This work is an invitation to activate the whole body as a listening tool, center the body in music-making, and champion empathetic-inclusive experiences that situate music in shared listening and complex interspecies relationships.
Embodied Music Club comprises tactile graphic scores, audio interpretations of the scores by four visually diverse people (Andy Slater, a blind media artist & composer; Leyna Marika Papach, an interdisciplinary composer with presbyopia; Daniel Furuta, a musician with myopia; and Cahya Haniva, a ‘normal-sighted’ non-musician—learn more about their profiles at the bottom), and sound captions in visual and braille describing the audio interpretations.
All the media provide spaces for different ways of listening and indicate a chain of access from the tactile scores to the audio interpretations and the sound captions.
The exhibition: Sound Scene 2023, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Event: Sound Scene 2023. Image descriptions/alt-text: Two tactile graphic scores and two sound captions in visual and braille along with two headphones and hand sanitizers in a transparent container are placed on a black table.
Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Event: Sound Scene 2023. Image descriptions/alt-text: Two tactile graphic scores and two sound captions in visual and braille along with two headphones are placed on a black table.
Tactile Graphic Scores (samples)
Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Event: Sound Scene 2023. Image descriptions/alt-text: A tight-angled shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows a series of small vertical bars, a black rectangle, and some black arrowheads.
Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Event: Sound Scene 2023. Image descriptions: A tight-angled shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows bubbles of various sizes.
Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Event: Sound Scene 2023. Image descriptions/alt-text: A tight-angled shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows a stack of two different-sized circles on the right, a swirling line on the left. It also shows blurred images of a series of dashes and dots and three rows of many small circles further back.
Photo credit: Jay Afrisando. Event: Sound Scene 2023. Image descriptions/alt-text: A tight-angled shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows some emojis, including a smiling face, a dizzy face with X eyes and a black-circled mouth, another smiling face with tightly-closed eyes, and a smiling face with an open mouth.
Audio Interpretations (excerpts)
Sound Captions for the Audio Interpretations (full)
Score 01
Andy Slater (voice):
[a robot bee flies around your head,
bumping your head, hitting turbulence,
then whooshes like a rocket, and finally stings!]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[a vibrating ribbon stretching, zigzagging,
whirling, skygliding, fracturing, whining,
fragmenting, then diminishing]
Daniel Furuta (cello):
[a car racing. crashes. engine failing.
starting again. engine low rumbling.
struggling. low rumbling. becoming a monster.]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[a roller coaster of lalalalah lah
doo boo doo boo doo laaaah la la
too too toot boo roo boo roo broo la daaaaaah]
Score 02
Andy Slater (voice):
[high-speed cooking:
boiling bubbles and chopping,
poured sauce, repeated tasting,
intense sizzzzling, finished]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[thin howling wind,
wind mourning.
leaves spinning, then falling]
Daniel Furuta (sleigh bell, celesta, glockenspiel):
[happening simultaneously:
a jingling tree and
random stars popping up]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[a playground: tink-tink-tink boom
boom BOOM BOOM—doozzzz-citroozzz
droozzz dooroozz—chweeheeeheee—
shsss hzzz shsssss BOOM boom boom]
Score 03
Andy Slater (voice):
[city noise: wailing cable, vehicle horn, buzzing,
bus door fizzzz, window knocked 2x,
slurrrp, zzzzz…zZUB! SH-SH-Sh-sh-sh,
motorbike starting, slurrrping iced cube]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[like walking to avoid laser beams:
at times shivering, unsteady, firm, tight,
wobbly, shaking, trembly, easy, easy, … jump!]
Daniel Furuta (cello):
[cartoonic chase: twisting run, bouncing, swirling cord,
dragged door, slo mo scream, panic hiding, nosy hunt,
gotcha, scared, knock and bang!]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[baby talk: sirene, boo boo hum, swelling, arrow whizzz,
another sirene, babywalking, spinning, another sirene,
whoosh, another spin, whoosh, puffing]
Score 04
Andy Slater (voice):
[falling hmmm. falling daah. low grrr. soft huh.
gasping oohh! short hahaa. softer huhumm.
weak hrrrrrrrr. faint huhm. loud belly laugh.
curly troll laugh. four whistles.]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[changing music: upbeat, simple. dashes, declining.
rough, rapid. rising, short.
slight pause. rising & pulsating. slight pause. fall off.]
Daniel Furuta (gendèr):
[stepping notes: muddy. clean. sharp. clean multiple.
sharp-soft. very sharp. clean. sharp-sharp-soft.
sharp+clean. sharp and soft-to-loud]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[raised hmmm. flat hehee. raised uhmm. low hmmm.
wavy hmmm. laddery hmm. laugh heeheehee. hoooh!
calm hmmm. wavy weeeee. wavy boommm.
curly hmmphoohmmphoohmm.]
Workshop Recordings
As part of the exhibition at Sound Scene 2023, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, participatory workshops were held to give the visitors opportunities to play with the tactile graphic scores. The workshops were attended by a mix of artists, curators, a kid, and the general public. The visitors were invited to touch and see the scores and make some noise by vocalizing and making body gestures.
Sound descriptions: What you are listening to during these workshops are sound jungles in various loudness and some coordinated sounds as one conductor directs all the participants.
Check the timestamps below each recording.
Workshop 1 timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:43 Soundcheck
03:41 Free improvisation
11:48 Reflection and discussion
15:00 Pop-up directed improvisation
Workshop 2 timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:15 Soundcheck
02:28 Free improvisation
05:44 Directed improvisation
Workshop 3 timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:26 Soundcheck
03:04 Free improvisation
14:38 Directed improvisation
21:30 Reflection and discussion
24:10 Eyes-closed improvisation
28:46 Another reflection
Concept: Jay Afrisando
Audio interpretations:
Andy Slater, a Chicago-based blind media artist, composer, and teaching artist;
Leyna Marika Papach, an interdisciplinary composer from Japan and the United States who has presbyopia;
Daniel Furuta, a musician and a researcher at the University of Minnesota Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering who has myopia;
Cahya Haniva, a nonmusician and a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota Family Social Science with a ‘normal’ vision.
Sound-captioner: Jay Afrisando.
Scores and captions printed by Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
exhibition
Sound Scene 2023: After the End, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, US on 3-4 June 2023.