Sound Scripts
Abstract
The thirteen Tura Totally Huge Festival of New Music was held in Perth, 19-29 Oct 2017. The Festival included numerous performances, residencies and workshops, as well as the Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference, 26 Oct 2017. The following article provides a critical overview of key performances within the Festival. The 2017 Festival was particularly notable for immersive works which offered what one might call phenomenal experiences, particularly Michael Pisaro’s A Wave and Waves and DCC: Glitch by Kouhei Harada, Mitsuaki Matsumoto and Shohei Sasagawa. A Wave and Waves and DCC: Glitch harnessed the fully embodied and located experience of aesthetic material, providing a combination of literally felt sound, an active perception of duration, and the sonic dramatization of space. The compositions of Anne LeBaron did not entirely fall outside of this paradigm. The most striking element of her works, however, was the way that she blends together what Gary Rickards characterised as the “progressive” wing of US and international art music in the 1970s (Harry Partch, György Ligetti, etcetera) with outrageous fun and open-ended, semi-improvised provocations, close to her early work with the neo-Dadaist, avant-garde rabble rousers Raudelunas. Where A Wave and Waves and DCC: Glitch tend towards sublime immersion (always problematic for the politics of art), LeBaron works to activate playful reflection through humour, pleasure and (at times) outrage or discomfort. Also discussed are the alternative musical-poetic histories offered by Ros Bolleter (Quarry Music) and the reconfiguring of mainstream, post-truth discourse through musical AI (Mississippi Swan: Daybew by Rick Snow and Chris Tonkin).
Recommended Citation
Marshall, J. W.
(2019).
From the Phenomenal Sublime to Critical Play: Sonic Approaches to Engagement at the 13th Totally Huge New Music Festival.
Sound Scripts, 6(1).
Retrieved from
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/soundscripts/vol6/iss1/6
