An instrument for playing with samples from freesound.org, with a set of accompanying text scores that can be used to process your performance of this. Suitable for performance in a group using mobile phones as loudspeakers.

A string quartet dress in wet suits, sitting on chairs on the dry sea-bed in Dublin Bay. They perform a theme and variations (improvised from a set of instructions) as the tide begins to rush in around them. The performance ends for each musician only when the water reaches their neck, making it a durational piece reliant on the speed of the tide. Afterwards, the saturated instruments will be retrieved and the composer will attempt to save them by leaving them to dry naturally. This process will also be recorded and shown on this website. Unsalvageable parts will be repaired using driftwood, and the piece will be performed again next year.

A typist transcribes texts contained in a Fluxkit into musical notation, which is displayed to performers (and audience). The music notation, along with the typed text, is then used as a framework for improvising by a group of performers. 



To play this piece, you also need to get or make a Fluxkit. A Fluxkit is a collection of event scores stored in a container (e.g. Water Yam by George Brecht). I made the piece with the Fluxkits Kirkos created in 2016 in mind, and used one of these to play the premiere. If you don’t have access to a Fluxkit, you could make one, for example by cutting up parts of the Fluxus Workbook (freely available online e.g. on the Monoskop website) and placing them in a box.

The first performance of this piece was played by Lina Andonovska, Hannah Miller, Adam Collins and Yseult Cooper Stockdale (as Kirkos) on 25.06.24 as part of an Irish Composers’ Collective concert in Unit 44, Dublin. I was the typist for the performance.

The software used for this performance (ChatMusic) is currently only available by request. Please get in touch if you're interested.

Excerpts from Reality was written for a Crash Ensemble performance held in UCD, and draws on text from Reality Hunger, a text which is itself made from found text (hence the piece ties in to Stolen Music). In my piece, text drawn from the book is depicted on a video screen as clouds of particles arranged into the text which dissolve gradually and rearrange as music notation (which is algorithmically derived from the text). The video screen serves as a score for the performers, who are expected to interpret the overall visual and semiotic impression (notation, text, colours, movement) and use it as a source for improvisation. As the score is also improvised (by the composer, using an interface which allows selection of specific passages of text as well as control of various visual parameters and the algorithm used for translating into notation), a complex feedback loop between composer, performers and video arises: agency becomes distributed across the performers and composer in a way which is difficult to unravel. As such, it is an attempt to place the composer in the midst of performers as a fellow improviser.

Circum is an experiment in creating a silent, animated score: the visual element is supposed to be visible both to the performers and the audience and it acts as the entire "text" for the performers. For the musicians, the video inspires them to create sound, generating a feedback loop where their actions are affected both by the video and the sonic choices they have already made. For the audience, however, sound and sight unfold simultaneously. Circum is also my first attempt as an Irish artist to get into the world of James Joyce - probably the most important Irish artist? My transitions, which sit between pieces focused on specific episodes of Ulysses, transverse the entire text (backwards) in several ways, treating Bloomsday like Groundhog Day. The animated score is made of text transformed algorithmically into music notation, both displayed using particle systems