P2 I: Jennifer Torrence: On I/O

By Jennifer Torrence

As I write this Jan Martin is busy putting the final touches on the score for his new solo percussion work, I/O (referencing input-output). I see this score as a history of our interactions, an archive of encounters, conversations, and improvisational games that Jan Martin has since massaged into a sturdy form and settled down onto paper. It is one of the last inputs I will receive before I offer the world premiere performance in September. We have collaborated on this piece for over a year now, with Jan Martin bringing in his usual treasure chest of antiquated and new-fangled technologies in combination with his fascination for accumulation and musical flocking. At the center of the piece is a (simple yet always wonder-awakening) body-sized mirror. The performer sits next to it, facing it in profile, with one arm and one leg “doubled” in the reflective surface, while the other half of the body is hidden away, busy with the sound of the unseen. Our experimentations searched out the child-like games of optical illusion: the disorienting effects of an extra limb (or two) getting mixed into the piece’s choreo-percussive interplay, and the joyful suspension of disbelief that lets the mind get caught in a reflective web of deception.  

In our early discussions and improvisations, Jan Martin offered the conceptualization of feedback as an aural analogy to our play with optical reflection: they are both situations where the input-output-loop closes, giving way to a reinforcement pattern that makes one become the same. The ingredients for feedback are often present in Jan Martin’s work, whether it comes out of toy walkie-talkies or, as is the more classic case for the guitarist in him, a plethora of amps and hot-to-the-touch micing. In I/O, optical reflection, games of imitation, and a bevy of microphone-speaker loops combine into a performance nothing short of a cyborg-esque sleight of hand. The performer’s body transforms into a conjuring, pulsating feedback choir (she flocks).

The feedback flocking hits the gas in I/O with Jan Martin’s new gadget the addcorder (made with Mads Kjeldgaard and Eirik Bleikesaune), which is a pedal designed to record and re-record cuts in time that are then placed on top of each other, accumulating in place like strata of sediment. In I/O, Jan Martin uses the addcorder to record (to remember) a history of differences in repetition. As the stacked accumulation takes hold, the repetitions give way to something greater than the sum of its parts: the small but consequential differences between each “take” interact (and interfere) with each other, suggesting other ways of listening to this collapsing “then” and “now” (the loop closes).

Feedback is, at its root, a practice of material interaction. For the performer it’s a tuning-in process to sense the limits of the loop as it closes in on itself, to feel out the necessary distance between microphone and speaker, and to adjust the pressure of the contact mic against the surface of the mirror. All this to get that characteristic singing (yes, sometimes screaming) response. I love the sensitivity of this interaction, its wild unpredictability, and the response-ability that underpins the essential playfulness of I/O. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Jan Martin, we know that interaction (and the debris of memories from those encounters) is key to understanding his practice. I can say I have met few people more deeply invested in understanding the nature of socialization amongst both human and non-human life. At times the relationship between composer and performer grounds his compositional strategy, like when he invites the performer to place their indelible mark on the piece with their musical memories and a few of their favorite things. I/O isn’t built quite like those pieces, but I do like to think of it as a kind of catalog (in five sections) of some of the favorite things we found in our days of inter/play.

But of course there is always the potential for interference within sosio-musical games of interaction. Sometimes I wonder to what extent my role as collaborator is about making interference possible, to provide a resistance that can produce necessary differences. I don’t mean being a devil’s advocate. I mean being, within the collaborative process, the obstacle the metaphorical wave (be it sound or light) can encounter in order to bend its form and interfere with itself, thus becoming the differences within. I certainly see the composer as playing this diffractive role in my own artistic process. I don’t work with others in order to meet my mirror. I want transformation, the unexpected, and possible worlds.

With the world premiere of I/O just weeks away I am reminded of yet another powerful set of inputs Jan Martin and I are about to receive. The energetic force of the audience (the interference, the feedback, the resistance) sure has a way of bending things into new forms. I’m fascinated by the way an audience’s energy can really get in and disturb all one’s best laid plans. How they have the potential to break open and shatter (and also reinforce) the private conversations Jan Martin and I have been having. The encounter with the audience has the potential not only to surprise but also the potential to change the piece forever, adding yet another layer to this history of differences in repetition. To be transformed by encounter. This unpredictability is, for me, the joy of performance. And everything I understand Jan Martin’s practice to be about would suggest the same: his deep trust in the indeterminacy of true interaction and his curiosity for the not-yet-imagined. For isn’t it so, as anthropologist and mushroom enthusiast Anna Tsing suggests, that such indeterminacy makes life possible?