Dessiclip rust-dust
Scratching fronds a-jambed ascent
To geo-flat stepp
Aguiginate cut
Veined florid droogness descent
Incising said-meant
Groon-boon petalled slink
Darting pit-a-pat on sol
To secret shaden

Morgaine Rire // Luna F. Redelinghuys
a trans*species collaborative sound practice
Dessiclip rust-dust
Scratching fronds a-jambed ascent
To geo-flat stepp
Aguiginate cut
Veined florid droogness descent
Incising said-meant
Groon-boon petalled slink
Darting pit-a-pat on sol
To secret shaden
Floraginal in
Matter of vertacular
Swish-swash footedness
Flankèd muchly of
Songtress aviformulous
Natters in arbor
Lain-laid-love-lie on
Downward montane patch-in-grown
With wide-eye far-view
Plume hapt-scraping bark
Pigmented wit adam eau
Subtending blank blat
Floss gris drown atop
Clip-cloppy berg cascader
To rock-a-boom roots
shock white shadow, rests his paws
on purest snow, splayed across the
eggshell floor, with two blue daggers
sheathed by lids, closed by half
to keep his gaze, and i reach out
behind his ears, across his back
down to his plume, gently curled
around his feet.
i feel the hum
contentest creature, now the azure
fully hidden, falling down
upon his side, inviting me
to stay my course, to keep his bliss
with constant rhythm, his body stills
then subtly moves, i sight his pads
as limbs extend, and wi’tend’rest stretch
bites!
loolee-loolaa, loolai-labeaux
loolay-loolow, looloo-labelle
pad left right (krck) swipe (mrrrp?) paw left right dip … touch … brush … left right stare (sniff) wait to see hear touch tilt head (lean in) lunge feint pad swipe (spit) round and round (dart) up down (meep?) claw gnash back (brrr) tilt to back at back round (swish tail) and round left (ffft) right pause … pause … stare (eck) wait (rrrp) tap tilt raise still pause … cutflashknifeknivesattearacksharpstrikewingslashclashcrackshell flutterbutterflitflydartupdownleftrightcirclestopflapstoptrytorun dab … flick … swat (monch!)
i crave the Stars mimicking the tears i cannot see i left Her not by choice though i have forgotten many of Her subtleties which are in the waning Moon which silently shouts yet refuses to answer except as i phase as She feasts on my own carrion and asks me to lose in affirmation of Her imminent infinity if i listen i love Her because my love, Her love is fleeting not between presence and absence, rather presence in the gaze of Her eyes absence in the cloak of night my love for Her is fleeting as the quiver of fire as the cutting wind as the turmoil in the depths of the sea as the brilliance of the Stars which i saw but have long since burned and the nebulae which cradle my soma i love Her through and past the absence of these Stars a true absence for i can see neither Her tears nor Her shroud they instead strip Her naked and clothe Her in their obfuscating light for they cannot imagine Her except in their buildings, their cities, while the tombs, the sepulchres, the joyous places of Her body devoured by the Raven yet living flesh are cut down and forgotten by they who know nothing of her embrace nor demands of her adoration nor her loss who want the simplicity of a sky devoid of sight She is my Mother, i Her hidden face craving the waxing Moon to touch as a penitent coming to a priestess or a sibling coming to an ever-changing lover missing
“And where does the newborn go from here?”
what are the possibilities for Pregnancy “And” Birth
if the newborn can depart and deconstruct
if the Coitus against the meeting of two {three, four, five, n, n+1}
rather “And” a third body {1 + 1 = 3i}
the third “And” body which sends the newborn on their (plural and singular) way
what are the impossibilities if the newborn always returns to the
same place
“And” becomes “only”
despite a plethora of replies and links
structured by “only”
because the “go from here” terminates
“And where” // “And when” // “and And” //
(i was born in 95 of that middle of in-between
(when there was no thread
(no optimisation
(no arbor
(tentacles and wires round
(and round
(“And” round
(in the web ring
(how might we speak of a middle in of at in-between
(of the newborn “And”
(when the
(where the newborn always in ?
“And where” // “And when” // “and And” //
collated into the thread always in reference reflection not refraction)
“And” becomes a singular)
since the newborn “where can it go” always goes to a stream of posts)
in short)
and we react but do not Fuck)
for that requires a “We” even more expansive and grounded than “And”)
but all we have is a heavenly vertical onward march of individuated histories)
short writing short videos with reduced fields of reference)
which are only even the singular vertical “I”)
and the net always links back to this “I” is organised and structure by this “I”)
only “I” or “I” not “i” or “j/e”)
and “And where does the newborn go from here?” if the conjunction is so limited?)
“The net is vast and infinite” {not if 1 + 1 = 2 and 2 << 1 + 1}
“And where” // “And when” // “and And” //
This paper considers the possibilities of what might be expressed in the relationship between practice and research. In particular, that if we are to situate ourselves as practitioners in historical relationship to the styles of other practitioners, or ourselves as researchers in historical relationship to our own practice, then we must contend with the differential semiotic relationship between these styles. Questions of aesthetic relationships, that is where we are distanced from an already constructed past, are flawed in their proposition in that they ignore where the signification of these practices is only meaningful once undone or even contradicted by future practice. Thus, the central question of a methodology of practice-based research becomes not how our research and writing might accurately reflect or affirm our practice but: how might our research deny such revelation, reiterating our practice only within a structure of denying final signification? In this way, any research methodology of practice is always in truth meta-methodology of practice as the production of non-meaning and research as performative practice.
This theoretical critique is presented alongside an auto-ethnography of my recent PhD experience; that the explicit and tacit expectations of practice-based research in the academy (indeed, any institution) hobble one’s being-in-the-world; that a desire for a reproduction of the neo-liberal politics of today’s university is incompatible with the differential structures in which practice-based research truly dwells. Ultimately, this paper is founded in and gestures towards an anti-disciplinary, anti-humanist mode of practice-based research; that “reflective” or “representational” methods are ethically insufficient in the twenty-first century. Certainly, while a rigorous analysis of one’s practice is desirable, such rigour cannot be conflated with a desire for clarity. Rather, it must dwell in the queer mists of non-clarity and the very silence we inhabit which is deformed into music.
http://www.c21mp.org/events/practice-research-in-21st-century-music/methodology-and-practice/
Let this email be a refutation of the normative psychology of Autism.
Let the etymology of Autism — to be within one’s self — be sundered where this email touches our fleshes across space-time-matterings. Our solipsisms touch through our heterogeneous experiences; we recognize a need for a language which opens out our interior, yet stops short of the pathologizing language which simply redoubles barriers. I name this true language stimming, echolalia, idiosyncratic vocabularies, prosopagnosia, alexithymia, and many others besides.
We know in our souls that Autistic being is the infinite spooling out of the self, forged with the reciprocal extremity of the world’s sentience — of course, this is the true ontology of the world; the Autist is the one-in-two-in-one (argument and co-ordinate; point-to-line-to-plane) who is conscious of this.
Let us write our bodies, our minds, our souls in the full recognition of the harmonic resonance of such think-do-livings.
Let us sing for ourselves.
(17/05/2023)
System Shock 2 remains one of the most lauded and influential video games of all time. While its genre is generally characterised as horror and action role-play, I suggest that this is an insufficient description. Rather the game is a tension between horror and ecstacy, agency and helplessness; these paradoxes are exemplified by the audio design of character dialogue. Our entanglement with the game operates in two directions: our “limit-experience” of the game world, as characterised by the multitudinous, medusoid sound of The Many and the cyborg connectivity of SHODAN’s emotionless affect; and our “limit-experience” as the player, our agency in building our character and our ability to give voice to these entities through our interaction with the UI. Yet the protagonist remains silent, and even as we project into the game world we are faced with certain expressive impossibilities. By contrasting the voicefullness of the non-player characters and voicelessness of the player character I identify the true ‘horror’ of the game as lying in a tension between a desire to join the chorus of The Many and the fact that we cannot chose to do so. If The Many is comprised of multiple voices, then is our silence another expression of these voices or their antithesis? If The Many is a distinct, Gestalt voice, then is our external silence is more closely related to SHODAN’s simultaneous cyborg interconnectedness and singular god-like megalomania? Does the audio design include our silence, or is the player outside of the game’s sound?
This paper was presented at the Ludo23 European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound
https://www.ludomusicology.org/ludo2023-programme-and-schedule/
This portfolio of compositions and commentary takes as its subject the musicking body and the entanglement of embodiment and composition. The five practical projects are all centred on a constellation of concerns about the musicking body which the thesis develops. The first chapter is a phenomenology of my creative practice, starting with my body sitting on a chair, at my desk. From this stationary position I draw out a series of continuities, discontinuities, and resonances, showing my composing body to be always entangled with all the material conditions of my practice. The second chapter, through a discussion of embodied perception, proposes that this body is a doubling of intense unification and indeterminacy. I begin with John Cage’s advocacy of ‘sound without purpose’ — sound that does not serve a predetermined outcome — and suggest that this implies that the musicking body is indeterminate and also syncretic. Synaesthesia and psychosis serve not only as ways of to approach this ‘sound without purpose’ but also as descriptors and inspirations for my practice. The third chapter situates the previous two in social contexts, particularly regarding gender — drawing heavily on the work of Hélène Cixous — and the limitations and opportunities presented by the Coronavirus pandemic. This thesis concludes by acknowledging the limitation of my research-practice, particularly regarding race, and by suggesting some new avenues and considerations for this research-practice to take in the future.