Resonators
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri
Text: John Godfrey
I first encountered Marianthi’s work when I heard Ensemble Mosaik play her beautiful piece ‘Operator’ at Heroines of Sound, Berlin, in 2015. This was a piece that used various small devices that induced vibration in the ensemble’s instruments by diverse means; I don’t recall the instruments being played in conventional ways at all. I adored the subtle, complex sounds that were achieved in this way, and was excited by Marianthi’s use of systems that create a certain amount of unpredictability.
Marianthi creates work in and between several disciplines. Some of it is concert music, some installations, and some - like Resonators - has qualities of both. In collaboration with her partner Pe Lang — a visual artist whose work is very much worth checking out (website, example) — she creates sonic sculptures (e.g.s 1, 2), devices with which to interact with conventional musical instruments, new instruments and devices that process sound through analog means.
An important characteristic of these devices is that they produce somewhat unpredictable results when employed. There’s a tantalising balance between the chaotic and the expectable that leads not only to fascinating sonorities but also to an interesting approach to performance. Resonators, which we commissioned with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland, offers an opportunity to contemplate these ideas in more detail. Here is Marianthi’s description:
The idea was that the turntables could run by themselves as well as be the subject of the performer’s activities. The ‘installation’ version of this piece has been given a separate name - Resonators N2 - and a separate entry in Marianthi’s CV/worklist. In ‘our’ version, the performers follow a sequence of actions in which we add and subtract various items as the piece progresses. At some stages, we place items into holes into the turntables which rub against the surface/membrane, producing cyclic noise that comes and goes. At others, we place pins into the surface in order to rub against the edges of the rotating disk, and at others we stick pins upright into the surface and rubber tubes (‘tentacles’) into the disk, so that the tubes strike the pins and produce a variety of thuds, clicks and percussive pitches.
In Resonators N1, a performative sound installation/ composition for Quiet Music Ensemble (five musicians), Papalexandri uses vintage hat pins and flexible ‘tentacles’ combined with a motor-driven perforating rotating disc (turntable) mounted on a surface/ membrane (foam board) and amplified by a contact microphone. Each of the five almost identical sets, designed in collaboration with Pe Lang, is also equipped with a mini-loudspeaker. The rim edges of the disc with which the pins make direct contact to produce sound are filed so that different rhythms are produced. To control the sound produced by the tentacles, the performers remove and reinsert pins around the rotating disc. Randomness and control resonate in this piece. Due to the disc’s perforations, miniature tubes of varying sizes can scratch the weighted-down amplified surface, resulting in cyclical loops. They are mounted on five microphone stands that are arranged in a circle to create a surround-sound experience.
Here’s a brief extract from the world premiere performance at Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2019 that gives a taste of what I’ve described as it manifests in practice…