On This Night

Sound, Performance, 7 Minutes, 2019

Warning: Strobe Lights. Documentation of a performance originally using 25.4 channel audio. From 3:10 to 6:20, each of the 25 speakers in the space is playing a unique Christmas song. Performed in Rhode Island School of Design’s Spatial Audio Studio.

Below is a quote from my undergrad thesis statement, which can be read in full here.

“In my performance piece ‘On This Night’, I drew connections between noise and Christmas music. For me, both function very similarly, but are seen publicly as complete opposites. Noise can often be compared to nihilism. The noise musician Vomir describes his aesthetic as “no ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse.” In contrast to noise music, Christmas music is religious, celebratory, entertaining, and commercial. On the outside, they are opposites, but internally they share similar ambitions. 

I find that noise music has so much happening in its dense and textural layers of sound, that my inability to comprehend it becomes a sublime sensation. In contrast, most Christmas songs, be it old or contemporary share similar song structures (going from dominant chords to diminished chords) as well as similar instrumentations (such as sleigh bells and glockenspiels). Despite this opposition in structure, I find that Christmas music is often sublime through its use of harmony to create a narrative. In “On This Night” I collaged both sounds together to depict these oppositions and similarities. The original piece was performed in a space where 25 speakers were set up in a perfect dome. In the piece, around 3:20, if you were to stand in the middle of the space, you would hear nothing but a wall of noise. However, in each of the 25 speakers was a different famous Christmas song, so that if you were to walk towards an individual speaker, you’d begin to hear each song clearly. This part of the piece owes a debt to Janet Cardiff’s “40 Piece Motet,” in which 40 speakers play Salisbury Cathedral Choir singing “Spem In Alium,” composed by Thomas Tallis. Each of these 40 speakers has an individual vocalist of the choir, altering the way in which one could physically interact with the recording.”