An interview conducted with Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Rosalind Hall at the time of release of their album When the Vines That Walk on the Wall Turn Green.
Alice Hui-Sheng Chang
Your stated focus is on experimentation and communication, could you tell us the history of your practice/study/performance that has lead you to this specific area.
I would say this comes from experiencing artwork or performances I liked. Most of these tend to be more experiential, striking, surreal or even intimidating, which to me is a form of communication. I studied in RMIT Media Arts, where there was a great community and spirit for collaboration and experimentation. Coming freshly from Taiwan general high school education, I didn’ know what to expect in the beginning of my course. I guess it was also being in a foreign environment and an unknown area of study that I stay focused on myself and the use of abstract vocal.
A good deal of the pieces are highly attenuated by technology. As a vocalist, do you see issues with the modification of the voice by different systems as problematic for communication and connection with audiences or as part of the contemporary social condition.
As I started using voice not through public performance, but recorded at home in bed. Recorded voice to me is as direct as performing voice. Of course they take on two very different zones for receiving message. While recorded voice can be modified through the microphone placement, the type of recording equipment and acoustic space, it is abstracted and subtracted visually. The listening experience could take a rather personal and intimate path whether it is listened at home or at a gallery. In performance, the presence of a human being as the one vocal source, logically the sound becomes a song or a conversation.
The music on your album conveys itself as primarily a studio act, how have you modified it for the performance space?
It is difficult to define what I have modified as improvisation comes from the situation and the present moment for both recording and performing. During performance, the improvisation comes from not only Rosalind’ sound, but also the space and the audience. I found it easier to concentrate on making vocal calls during performance; perhaps it is because I still view it as a way of speaking. It could be difficult sometimes to record all by myself and think of what to say. It is mostly an intuitive process to begin with, concept or emotion arrive later.
Rosalind Hall
As an instrument modifier can you make a statement about what is an instrument in the context of your experimental methods.
To me, the body is the instrument and the saxophone, microphones or home made speaker instruments are an extension to the body. Initially everything comes from the body in the form of intention, breath, movement and focus. The acoustics of the place are also the instruments as are microphones and speakers that I may use in not only amplifying my sound but in changing the sound details, perspective and phase.
I am drawn to materials and systems that don’ allow total control or dominance over them. I love being surprised by results that defy my expectations. How an aluminum reed will respond to a certain embouchure or how it may change over time from growing indentations, how a material will vibrate in the saxophone bell or how a homemade speaker feedback system is affected by air pressure fluctuations or a change in resonating objects. The dialogue that is created between the instruments and performer is reciprocal, dynamic and alive. Feedback is exciting as it responds to space and air and is volatile. I view the way I play saxophone as a kind of feedback system too.
Could you give us a brief list of the instruments/programming/software/recording tools/techniques you use.
I make modifications to the saxophone by crafting individual reeds from many materials and using objects in the bell. I also build speaker sculptures that use vibrational feedback to create sound and movement. I construct simple speakers and microphones that make feedback tones with attached objects resonating sympathetically. I use two very sensitive lapel microphones that can be placed at different spots on or in the saxophone. This allows me to pick up a great deal of detail from inside the saxophone and create playing techniques for the microphones that use phase difference as a tool for perspective shifts.
As a saxophonist i presume you play in a good deal of contexts and forms, could you tell us about your other projects.
Another long-term collaboration is with Marco Cher-Gibard. We are a live AV duo. I play saxophone with visual and aural preparations while Marco uses a live video sampler to gather these and other moments into layered audio-visual pieces. Our work explores themes of infinity, multiplicity and the uncanny through the medium of improvised performance. The space inhabited by both performers and audience becomes a DIY studio, which simultaneously unveils the material conditions of the works production and offers a mesmerising and immersive experience. We are primarily a live performance duo but have recently shown a film at Gertrude Contemporary Art Space that is edited footage from a residency and performance at RMIT School of Art Gallery.
I also play in community carnival marching band, Havana Palava. We wear hot pink and play at street festivals and community events and have lots of silly fun!
Alice/Rosalind
The nature of your collaboration as a cross-continent act is both informed by contemporary communication technology and enabled by recording technology. Do you have an audience outside of those who may interact with these forms?
In the processes we used for our CD, we are deliberately interacting with the tools of our age: Internet file sharing, live Internet chat interfaces and portable recording technology. We believe many people can relate to the reliance we had on present technology in order for this collaboration to exist. The ability to send very large files back and forth in a matter of minutes and to be able to see and hear another elsewhere in the world is thanks to the global system of connected computer networks we attach ourselves to daily. We took the opportunity in our recent CD to explore the possibilities of making music together while living apart, however when we do find ourselves in the same city, we perform live together.
Your form dictates that recording platforms be used that suit the act, describe the interplay between the sound of the technology and the acoustic/vocal sounds in your sound.
The two pieces made using live chat interface, Skype, stand out as examples of our sounds and those of technology reacting and merging with each other. When we started playing together on Skype we were surprised to discover how the compression and varying Internet connection was processing our sounds and creating additional ones. We began to explore this, playing frequencies that would excite the compression threshold or blend with the wash of undulating static. As the chat interface was creating so many of it’s own sounds, we felt as though we were playing as part of a different and external environment to that of our rooms. This changed the way we played together and listened to the unpredictable sounds coming out of our laptops. We recorded the plays at each end, as well as a Dictaphone recording of the Melbourne end that provided three interpretations of the sounds to work with.
The artwork/words on your album elicit a kind or organic and poetic sensibility which often is conflated with the acoustic/nature romantic position, do you find the distinction to be problematic and the overarching popular representation of the organic/natural/acoustic in music to be false?
We worked on the album through hundreds of emails over ten months with thousands of kilometers apart. The contrast in our seasons and time zone differences were brought to our attention during this process as we relied on our imaginations to construct the other’ world. Our reality fell into illusion while collaborating so closely yet far apart with our environment and lives changing dramatically throughout the year. The awareness of all these slipped into the album package. We naturally fell into using descriptive and imaginative titles that as they unfolded gave insight into the other’ thoughts about the pieces and places where they were recorded. For both of us, our music is personal and affected by events, places and people in our lives. It was important for us to use titles that reflect this connection to our music. The titles provide a sense of place and additional strands of thought that may not come from the act of music making. The artwork behaves in the same way as the titles and was made by Rosalind’ sister, Jessica Hall, after listening to the recordings. The artwork and pieces fit well together as the humans are partly other creatures and plants as are we when we play our instruments.
Interview by Innerversitysound
