Tai Shani’s immersive installation at The Cosmic House, The World to Me Was a Secret: Caesious, Zinnober, Celadon, and Virescent, is accompanied by an evocative score from experimental pop composer felicita. Responding to Shani’s exploration of anthropomorphism, surrealism, and mythologies of creation, felicita crafted a four-channel acoustic intervention that transforms the gallery space. Each speaker, placed in opposing corners of the room, plays a distinct composition representing different angels and body parts, creating a rich auditory experience. In the text, felicita shares insights into the creative process and the dynamic collaboration with Shani.
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Lilith, Dumah, Abaddon, Skellig (Lilith’s Feet, Dumah’s Heart, Abaddon’s Eyes, Skellig’s Lungs, Lilith’s Hands, Abaddon’s Mouth, Lilith as Aeolian Harp)
TUNING
Each angel is a microtonal tuning. Lilith is 22edo; Abaddon combines JI-17 and JI-20. Dumah is Wendy Carlos’ Super Just tuning; Lilith’s hands JI-12, A# 466.164. Skellig is a Vienna Baroque piano in meantone.
ANGEL GLOW
From The Rainbow and the Worm by Mae-Wan Ho, found in the library of Charles Jencks:
'German quantum physicist turned biophysicist Fritz Popp and his group in Kaiserslautern have been investigating light emission from living organisms for nearly 20 years. They find that practically all organisms emit light at a steady rate from a few photons per cell per day to several hundred photons per organism per second.'
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In late 2023, Tai invited me to create a soundtrack or score to the exhibition she was developing at The Cosmic House.
I’m drawn to the multi-layered richness of Tai’s work, her search for aesthetic totality, encompassing sculpture, painting, writing, film, sound, performance, etc. There is a too-muchness to it that is very pop and very Joycean. This search is in service of grandiose metaphors and complex interweaving narratives. My own work also often applies pop world strategies to personal or wholly invented themes; I also often wander between artistic mediums in a similar fashion. Rarely do I make a piece of music without its relation to another form in mind.
Tai described the elements of her exhibition as individual body parts, together forming a Frankensteinian body. The accompanying text described the body and also featured several angels. I have an interest in angelology and latched onto the angels in her text. My response eventually merged around these angels; I added some of my own, and assigned each one their own microtonal tuning.
I composed short pieces in each of these tunings and arranged them around the multi-channel speaker setup of the exhibition space. The opportunity to install sound in this way enabled a more complex and subtle experience than usual. Normally, grouping unrelated chords and tunings together would be counter intuitive, but in this case the environment allows for it: as you move around the room, the presence and colours of the various angels are constantly shifting. Sometimes the entire space is filled with a single, shifting chord. At other times it becomes a set of miniatures, crevices become portals. In this sense, the music represents both the Frankensteinian body and its component body parts.
As well as The Cosmic House, another house was a big inspiration to me: Dream House in New York. Dream House is a beautiful meeting of formal minimalism (the movement with which the house is associated) and a kind of psychedelic, cosmic maximalism. The music is huge, still, but always micro-perceptibly shifting, like zooming into a tiny leaf with a digital camera.
Thank you to Tai Shani, Mika Lapid, and all at The Cosmic House.
felicita
London, March 2024
