1999

58      m. couchon’s last flight (as seen through binoculars) 1999 CD 8m

m. couchon’s last flight (as seen through binoculars)  was made for Tissue Culture & Art’s film Pig Wings [2003] (right), in which they speculated: ‘the rhetoric surrounding the human genome project and xenotranplantation made us wonder if pigs would fly one day and if they will what shape their wings would take.’ The physical project used ‘differentiated bone marrow stem cells to grow pig bone tissue in the shape of the three solutions for flight in vertebrates.’ 

57      horology 1999 Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano, Marimba and Percussion 8m

h o r o l o g y belongs to a branch of my works that use a nine diigit cypher as their generating principle. Essentially the proportions of this sequence [532214451] determine the structure of the music at many different time scales. Some are perceived as formal structures, some a phrase structures other as melodic structures and so on.
The interactions between these identical patterns, expressed as it were at different tempi, and the way they are perceived relative to one another led me to the title for the piece - horology - the study of the measurement of time. Also  I hoped , a fitting subject to contemplate for the work’s  first performance in a  Millenium Celebration Concert by the Los Angeles based California EAR Unit.  h o r o l o g y’s other Millennial conceits include notes to the percussionist to assemble their batterie from 20th Century flotsam such as digital clock radios and cartoon bearing coffee mugs, and the Coda section which is marked ‘cuts to the same band still playing the same piece a millennium later...’.      Listen here.

56      See Saw 1999    Voice, Miburi, Drum Machine, Sampler and Bass
55      electronic big top (with Cathie Travers) 1999 voice, cl/sax, accordion and two percussion 28m (for skadada’s dance/theatre production electronic big top) 
54      Oubliette 1998 guitar  3m
53      Giving birth to thunder 1998  flexible 32m (For Nanette Hassal’s dance work Giving birth to thunder)

52      other planet 1998 soprano, clarinet, cello (percusssion) and video  4m

other planet (also known as en bateau) was first performed in the multimedia performance five over three in 1998. The text was in response to an unusual, disorientating dream. In this case, the commonplace travelling experience of dislocation felt upon awakening in unfamiliar surroundings, was intensified by the fact that, before opening my eyes , I believed myself to be at a party on the deck of a Ukranian registered Ice Breaker - ominously called Titanic. One of the passengers/party-goers had just handed me a letter in a faded envelope upon which was inscribed (in light blue pencil) the words en bateau. This piece was written in an attempt to capture some of the atmosphere of that strange voyage. The DVD version feature evocative images of the moon above the (almost) empty North-west coast of Western Australia.
Listen here.

51     counting | shaking  1998 soprano, soprano sax, cello, electronics and video 12m

Counting | Shaking grew out of a solo saxophone improvisation using a digital delay, created for dancer Tara Bollard's work Reclaiming Spirit. This expanded version with voice and cello and was written for the 1998 dance/music performance five over three and is a homage to French poet/Artist Henri Michaux’ mescal inspired journeys into his own neural pathways.   In 2002 I began working with the Tissue Culture & Art group (oron catts, ionat zurr & guy ben-ary) at SymbioticA an art-science research unit at UWA. There was a strong connection between this work’s text and organic musical development and that of the living cells images that are the focus of TC&A’s work. I constructed this movie as a kind of Score for the music from images tracing the ebbs and flows of a culture of fish neurons.
Listen here.

50     songs of [virtual] love + war 1998 soprano and DVD 18m

songs of [virtual] love and war was first presented as part of tura events company's production 5/3  at PICA August 25 -29  1998. The texts for songs  began as an  experiment in intercutting love texts (by Pablo Neruda and Federico Garcia Lorca) with articles on virtual warfare (by Sci-Fi writer Bruce Sterling from the pop-culture magazine THE FACE). These elements developed into a metaphysical narrative charting an emotional journey that explores the notion of the digital interface as a kind of false 'other-made-real'. The work is performed with a video of incredible images by digital artist vikki wilson.  Listen here.

songs of [virtual] love and war

I
 somewhere in the dark net the voice speaks to me surrounded by empty digital silence

and eyes open out oceanic eyes there in fragments colour gazing absent eyes moving nervously over the pixelated sea

something of anguish and rage delirious and silent heavy armour with the wings of a bird

the murmering binary beat of the heart encased in its own cold net

murmers ruggedly digitised signals from my eternal recording angel bearing cryptic acronyms words digital wreckage smoking lieing in surrender retreating into silence

night drenches with its crushing invasion and you like a weapon begin to show the eternal thirst that flows from any angle

at any time you like a weapon a shifting road gone blank

II
 I have the sky the atlas with dream wings light house road dark afternoons dark following your silent signs

across the thin blue net that holds up the sky I follow from silent signs a pattern

cryptic wreckage recording sealed words your message arrives with the burning perfume of the future

I accelerate myself to join with you my skin moves faster than time

and all the currents that pulse through me carry your signature I align every pattern in me to your angles to break the code

to shatter the sky

[your fire delirious rage perfect yes a heavenly moment of rage forged with black solitude that nothingness quickly gone time empty fragments white gone oblivion reached from your body your fire beats my heart with its silent wings your open eyes burning overwhelming crossed with its thirst somewhere]

to choose the eroded pattern the choice between the thin blue shattered body and the silent terrain

III. 
white and black your white skin your black hair forming the solid outline of the fluid world zero and one

white and black full of opposites curved the way time folds around the edges of a dream in every direction the horizon suggests the indefinable expansion a curve with an unmeasurable angle your irrational number

white and black your body the flag of a foriegn country where the ocean has turned white and the population is asleep lost and asleep a sea of faces floating below the surface your body is their collective flag dream waving above their heads above their closed eyes

in some moment that arrives like a silent movie of the future from a room where the clock's hands bend back

we are together filled with that strange energy and there in that moment its not enough that you have a body and I have a body its not enough to touch your skin its too finite too defined and if I could dissolve the world and collapse all matter and language that surround us wrap myself inside you every particle that forms you every particle that connects to you through your forehead to the shrouds of light that cascade through you learn the tidal shapes there moving dark patterns that well up unexpectedly search for a light to still these storms or drown there in the dark you around me

but I remain here separate senseless and solid observing this image you fixed in this holding pattern traversing intact the void between wave and number

you disappear behind this name the image I construct of you absently talking to you as though you were present

IV
now here nowhere I am here empty but present still but moving thinking I'd followed you here followed you here to find you empty you my name you who I find when I search for myself written in the patterns on my skin [why do you only open your mouth when I open mine?] more empty than a shadow my dark recording angel [shadow or reflection how could I distinguish this mutual vacuum when you keep repeating everything?] perhaps I am a pale ghost silently moving on the wrong side of the sky in an invisible trajectory

and I am full full of your emptiness [or you are full of mine]

V

in the night I gather up the sky I gather it around me wrap myself in this curtain of constellations put out every star one by one I put them out

the stars your eyes [that I close] one by one your eyes lost child - self or other [your voice can never tell me]

I extinguish each star and wrap myself in the night's wings wrap myself and close it and close the light close it

thinking you'd remain in that degrading holding pattern out of sight foreign matter to silence every wave to zero every number each chemical neutral

and then its quiet I hit this silence like a wall like I've fallen from a bridge I hit it with every nerve and cell of my body

[my body as it exists and as it believes it exists]

its impact a sudden momentary writhing in a vacuum and from this place with unnatural slowness

from this silent point observe the ritual disintegration of my body

while I can still see them I want ask them where they're going my hand is laughing [why is that?]

and there another hand and another like a hindu statue I grow limbs as fast as I can tear them off other bodies hidden in my body mirage after mirage around the void I begin to forget

I forget and they're overtaken words and body by the spreading pool some essential darkness spreading out

a lost name

a dream written on the insides of my eyelids swamping the faint voices of the dead that move through my body the voices

memories of selves or others other selves lame limping other selves greying out ghost-like embracing the equally dark

at this zero point where all sound and light are jettisoned I wait again in this familiar darkness but the stillness continues to move my eyes adjust to the light defining form again from emptiness the void becomes solid and I climb beyond the sky to another void only to define this new darkness and rise once more in infinite repetition until its impossible to tell whether I'm transcending or just transforming the same light to darkness flickering with the appearance of motion the choice to move only from zero to one and return turning back

I'm circling these twin stars black and white

lv 10.07.98

49       Fluttering Image 1998 Tenor Saxophone and Dancer 12m
48      those short hours 1998 vox, guitar and bass 5m