Performance 3: Boreen Pt

I’m very pleased to be reflecting on this most recent performance. In many ways, this one was my favorite yet. Within it, I incorporated each element of the feedback reflections that I have described in previous entries, arriving at a work that felt well rounded, welcoming, and passionate. My mental state throughout the performance was clear and inspired, the audience was warm and receptive. I even arrived at some new performance techniques related to the tree-as-instrument. 

This time, the I delivered my performance a little further south on the lake, at Boreen Point. Boreen Point is more accessible, with a road that runs along the foreshore, with houses and a yacht club opposite the lake. The road passes several small beaches and a park before heading into the local campground. I performed on the last small sand cove before the campground, where a short wall of rocks and a bench provided ample seating for the audience. The area is a little more lived-in than the pristine Elanda Point; I cleaned up a handful of cigarette butts in the sand and wafts of beer spilled somewhere meandered through the air. The view of the lake included a few anchored boats looking worse for wear. Regardless, this was still a special spot for me; this is where I would often come on my breaks while working at the Apollonian Hotel up the road in 2022. I arrived early and took my time setting up while groups of Floating Land attendees wandered up and down the road for a range of activations by the festival, including artist talks and a Tree Interview Walk led by Fiona Harding. I briefly joined Fiona’s tree walk and was given the opportunity to impersonate a great, big, gnarled paperbark on the neighboring beach. I recreated the sounds I have heard in paperbarks throughout this project - deep ‘klok’ and clicking sounds, immersed in swishing waves - Fiona was surprised at how close this was to the voices she had heard the trees speak in!

At my little cove, there were no trees with root systems entering the water above ground. There was however a young paperbark on the northern edge, with a winding branch that extended over the beach. I attached my contact mic to this branch and found that despite no clear connection to the lake, I could still hear the sounds of waves through the wood… The internal worlds of these trees is constantly fascinating! The sounds of the lake must travel through roots underground as well. Amplifying this sound took considerable gain, and it was challenging to tune it out with an EQ, but the with gusts of wind the leaves and twigs collided with one another to create a chorus of resonant percussion that was easily audible. While setting up, I tried singing into the branch - an experiment reminiscent of my singing within the wood at the Noosa River - but this time with my mouth connecting to the bark itself. The resonance was powerful, I could sing along the branch and hear my voice travel through the fiber and gain early-reflection like qualities that implied a kind of internal space. I noted this to attempt in the performance later…

A crowd gathered, extending along the rock wall, and waited patiently for the performance to begin. The audience was mostly older Floating Land attendees with one or two young families and a handful of young musicians. I welcomed everyone, acknowledged Country, and began with very subtle drones, focussing my attention on the approaching ripples and the colours on the lake. In the absence of collaborators like Julia and Sachi, I have found relying on the lake for comfort to be just as supportive. Simply pay attention to what is happening out there - and the monologue can fade. The wind picked up during the first half of the work, causing wooden textures to emanate from the mic’d branch, which I fed through a delay to create clouds of texture complementing the drones. About 15 minutes in, I realised I had not found a stick to attach my clip contact mic to! I wandered out of the performance area and traced the shoreline along rocks to the south, hoping to come across something useful. The most perfect stick revealed itself - a beautiful delta of twigs, emanating from a broken branch a little thicker than my thumb. The piece resembled great big graceful antlers. Perfect! I brought it back to the performance area and attached the mic. I fed my arms through the twigs, performing this found-instrument from the inside, molding my body to it. It felt powerfully serendipitous, powerfully connected. 

Following this, I picked up a zither and faced the audience. There had been half an hour of interrupted drones and texture. I strummed the zither and hummed, occasionally vocalizing ‘Ohms’, holding the zither against my chest to feel its vibration in my body. I had decided to use the zithers in this way, holding them up to the mic rather than using the pickup and guitar jack, partly to simplify things, but also to welcome the zither into a more complex sound environment in which it’s proximity could be modulated and it could be blended with my voice. This is how Salamit Ali Khan performed the zither and sung, it seems, from photos of him performing. The wind blew and the branch sounded, sparking an idea. I stopped - taking a moment to address the audience, and spoke over the drone for the first time. I pointed to the tree mic and explained what it was and what we were hearing from it - “Twigs and sticks and leaves dancing together in the wind”. Later, Cameron Deyell, who was in the audience, identified this as a key moment. He said that by speaking over the drone, I relaxed some tension in the audience, permitting talking. This plays into the theme of behavior on stage - how extending the action of performing can give permission to the audience to act naturally, to not be beholding to performer-audience roles and expectations.

I performed the tree twice this time. Janine had quelled my anxieties from the previous week, telling me that the tree performance was in fact very interesting, and that she was disappointed that I only interacted once with the roots in the previous performance. The first time, I explore the branches, the twigs, the leaves, even the sandy ground beneath the tree, discovering an expansive palette of textures and envelopes across the different parts. I could even tap individual leaves like drums, creating truly surprisingly distinct tones. I didn’t send it to the delay as heavily this time - I felt that this overwhelmed in the previous performance - keeping the signal drier helped to highlight the range of timbres. The second time I performed the tree, I sung into it - deep, repetitive Ohms, finding the root note, and hearing an octave overtone of feedback sneaking in - I tried to maintain it, finding a real rich drone between my voice, the timbre of the tree, and the overtones coalescing elsewhere in the system. This moment seemed to have quite some impact. I also tried a little harmony, moving up to the fifth and down to the seventh, playing with beating around the microtones. I was nervously excited, experimenting with this new form!

There was a third performance of the tree - though not by myself. Another key element of this iteration was a brief intermission, taken at about the 90 minute mark, where I turned the system down and addressed the audience again. I told them that the performance was going to take five minutes of silence to give the environment centre stage, and that if people felt so inclined, this would be a great time to leave a voicemail. I am yet to listen to the new voicemails! The audience largely erupted into conversation, and several people called the survey phone. I meditated in a kneeling position with my back to the audience. After some time, when I could hear the conversation turning away from the environment or the performance, I slowly began to reintroduce sonic elements. When I spoke into the mic, the atmosphere switched back to one of witnessing. I told everyone to feel welcome to perform the tree! Many people gave it a go, but none were more fascinated than two children, Koa and Reef, the sons of my friend and collaborator Javier Leon. Javier told me later that he was afraid the boys would approach the tree violently, without the requisite subtlety, but their approach to the tree turned out to be unbelievably delicate. Javier was amazed at how the performance subdued their afternoon hyperactivity, and at how this extended into their interaction with the tree. I played the harmonium while the initial rush of people experimented with the tree, then returned to the synth once things had calmed down. As I crafted the final harmonies and drones, and emotively performed the branch, Koa found intuitive new ways of activating the tree; pouring handfuls of sand over the branch, dragging twigs across the bark, rummaging through the leaves - He was entranced! Reef ran around the tree spilling potato chips from an open bag. 

While this happened, I had my ‘sonic youth moment’ in the final crescendo; the branch held above my head, arms outstretched, staring into the sky, feeling each touch of the branch shimmer through the resonator and echo into the delay, layers of harmony interacting and retreating into the distance. The sky shone with spectrums between red, orange, and deep blue, as the sun fell behind the audience’s heads, and we gazed into the oncoming night of the east. My overwhelming feeling was one of resolution - resolution through connection - and I think the interactive element of the performance played a very significant role in this. As I stood, extending upwards with my great big graceful antlers, launching into the sky, the kids and and select members of the audience took turns singing into the branch and playing with its features. The sounds of this echoed through the patch, and I responded by pushing my hand into the twigs of my branch. This part of the performance felt truly networked, I had given over agency, and had facilitated a direct connection between audience and environment, one that was truly novel, revealing unheard sounds through unknown tactility, giving rise to real discovery and creativity. I reveled in the moment as it unfolded. 

To wrap up, this performance was especially gratifying for how it reflected learnings and reflections from the prior iterations. It walked the line between being impartial and being welcoming, featuring key moments that both directed attention towards the scenery and permitted behavior from the audience. Facing the audience for solos, talking over the drone, and offering interaction all significantly bolstered ‘welcoming’ in the work, while facing the lake, and the site-responsive mis-en-scene all seemed to widen the attention from myself as performer to the broader environment. I think the most magical aspect was the invitation to interact with the tree - this really helped audiences understand what was happening, and led to some unique person/nature encounters that forefront sensitive and delicate interactions with the non-human. I look forward to expanding on this element.

unformaTTED NOTES:

Transcribing the voicemails - thinking about Francois and his work - his methodology. Thinking about what Cameron said - audiences and artists have let each other down by not engaging deeply with one another. Thinking about what audiences want - what people need - what communities want. The qualitative inquiry in this project is proving to be so much more than just research, it is a line into the community. A direct feedback. It highlights what is important and points out future directions. So the work is not only responding to the environment - but the much broader ecology. The people in the environment, the actors, the community. By being iterative, the work can respond in real time. It also seems, potentially, to push people to reflect - you really hear them think in the voicemails. Pregnant pauses, reflection, consideration, questions asked of those in their vicinity. It really is quite a magical medium for surveying. 

Francois knocks on doors, asking people what it is they want for their community, or if they are interested in having an artist come and produce a work for their village. He asks them if they will accommodate an artist. He has secured funding to produce a project, had the community reject it, and had to reapply to the funding body after changing the project to something the village desired. This is such a beautiful antithesis to the one way conversation aloft a stage. 

Orientating to what people want - where they are - what they value. Is this how we create experiences that people can feel passionate about? Fostering connection to place - to the environment - requires a passionate experience with and within that place and environment. That is what the work is doing - this is how it creates the connection - but this comes from the quality of the experience, of the aesthetic experience, as much as from the technological or interpretive responses to place - These are avenues to access the aesthetic quality - as well as somatic for the audience.