8′66″ (or everything that is irrelevant)
Film, soundtrack, 6 iPads.
8′66″ is a collaborative work created with Marko Ciciliani for the occasion of Slagwerk Den Haag's Double Music project. Inspired by the John Cage / Lou Harrison work of the same name, composers were asked to compose a piece with one of their closest colleagues.
As the title suggest this work has a certain relation to Cage's seminal work “4'33"”, the doubling of its duration. Silence, or non-performance plays a certain function in this piece, what is a closer reference is one of Cage's final works, “One”, the light film, which is the main source of the visual material, resampled and processed with feedback loops by Marko. I take a quote of Cage which I feel ambivalent about: “Rhythm is everything that is irrelevant”, ambivalent because it both clarifies Cage's aesthetic position, but also displays in my mind the difficulty of using words to describe music, the confusion of definitions. This quote is deconstructed visually as a text-film overlaid onto Marko's light film, and occasionally re-enforced with low sine tones.
This film is playing for the duration of the entire piece (9 minutes and 6 seconds). The six players are each operating an iPad, with two also operating profile spots that are positioned on the left and right edge of the stage area. On the iPads are sound and video clips which relate to two materials on the large screen - and which are triggered by the players, moving in the space of the auditorium and the stage.
first performances
- 11 November 2012 11:30 - November Music, Verkadefabriek, Den Bosch.
- 29 November 2012 20:15 - Muziekgebouw aan het IJ, Amsterdam.
- 14 December 2012 20:00 - Vredenburg Leeuwenbergh, Utrecht.
- 15 December 2012 20:30 - Korzo, Den Haag.
- 23 February 2013 14:00 - Een dag met John Cage (a day with John Cage), De Doelen, Rotterdam.