Marta Beauchamp
TTFL part 2 (2024) - 10.10.24
bb15, Linz. 10.10.24
10.10.24
I came slightly late to the performance. We were told it would start after the cigarette was smoked, but apparently we were being too amusing for the cigarette to be smoked at the correct speed. Worst of all blunders, we came chatting into the beginning of the performance.
It was immediately interesting. Electronically controlled ping pong balls chittered, creating staccato rhythms around a self-made desk laden with computers, cables and loop pedals. There was a cello prepared, delicately coloured flags lined up along a wall and long cardboard tubes at the ready. The performer, Marta Beauchamp, was moving about barefoot, adjusting things. She had colour coordinated toenails.
It took a moment to adjust to the new mood. I sidled across the space as Beauchamp moved some flags into play. Got my coats off. Got focused.
bb15 is a bit of a weird space to play in. It consists of a large boxlike room with a slightly raised section at the end that contains the bar stage right and corridor access stage left. Rather than placing herself front and centre, Beauchamp had chosen to place the brain of her performance (the makeshift desk with computer) left of centre, near the entrance corridor. This placement created a dynamic performance space that allowed her to move into the darkened box room among the audience, or to move about more freely in the open space between bar and brain.
This was a sound performance, centred around the motif of the ping pong ball. But in the expanded sense of encompassing movement, visual and spatial elements - and even music. (!) The composition was choreographed, well thought out and carefully composed, allowing randomness to play off against more controlled elements in a way that focused my attention, kept me entertained (not a dirty word), interested and amused. It ticked a lot of my boxes.
I cannot remember the precise order of events. Several moments stand out:
A true surround sound experience, the ping pong balls were connected to solenoids positioned all around the space (x,y and z), creating delicate, distorted rhythms. You know that weird echoey percussive sound a ping pong ball makes sometimes, maybe when it glances off the edge of the table? THAT SOUND. Like it’s rattling inside of itself. Beauchamp had composed a series of different rhythms for this active percussion, which she varied throughout the performance by way of some software. Against this chittering backdrop, she moved about the space, setting up and repositioning elements, setting up additional feedbacks and other sonic elements.
At some point Marta placed a long cardboard tube facing into the boxspace with a microphone nested inside its back end. It began to feedback. She moved her cello into the space, facing off against the tube. She found the same tones on her cello as were reverberating from the tube and played them back to it, to us, in different octaves.
She brought the flags – longer than they were wide, into play. Raising them up and lowering them down over the end of the tube at different distances from it, creating harmonies, feedback, resonances. When finished she laid them on the ground, creating simple, bold shapes that fit well with the sonic elements. We were inside a painting. The flags were coloured purple that faded out to white. Of course the tubes were circular in cross section, echoing the ping pong balls. They were cardboard coloured but with neat painted white ends.
At several other moments Beauchamp produced a pair of ping pong balls on threads attached to white rods that she allowed to skitter across the floor, adding controlled randomness to the rhythms rolling around us with flicks from the sticks. She conducted the balls to left of body, to right, letting them fall over and over to the floor, dancing for us, skittering noise. This precise openness gave space for the eyes and ears to enjoy as one picked up the layers of similarity and deciphered the sources of the sounds. When finished she lay the rods on the ground too then, their lines lining up with the downed flags. Composition expanded.
This precise thoughtfulness fit with a sense of layered simplicity over the whole piece. I was never left wondering where this or that sound was coming from. It never became too much to compute. I was generally able to figure it out, and in the meantime I could genuinely enjoy the sounds that were being produced.
There was a quieter section in the middle of the piece where Beauchamp bowed across both tubes with rapid strokes, one after the other, to little visible effect. Then with the click of a pedal the sounds came back to us, enhanced. Having been shared ‘as is’, intriguing and somewhat underwhelming (in a nice way – as a lull in proceedings) this frenetic energy was then used as a backdrop for further compositional layering. The cello built up tones. The balls chattered away.
The cello was utilised several times throughout the work, in more and less musical ways. This frenetic bowing. Those echoed tones. Towards the height of the performance Beauchamp used the automated ping pong rhythms to introduce a plucked groove on the cello that had my nodding me head and tapping along - something that most sound performances tend to eschew for reasons I cannot fathom but believe are related to some kind of po-faced über seriousness. This work was serious, but not po-faced. It was playful, explorative and curious. Darting.
Having moved the cello into the back of the boxlike space, this melodic rhythm was repeated a second time, and then kind of dismantled by being turned into a series of scales on climbing semitones. This was the only point in the performance that for my taste could have been less cerebral and more pleasurable, if Beauchamp had opted to create a new melody rather than a musical exercise. But in the context it worked, and served to demount the peak. Cresting rhythms and reduced sonic content accompanied a tidying away of all of the elements. The flags returned to the wall in an orderly formation, the tubes moved out of sight. Throughout, one could observe Beauchamp’s movements and enjoy them as an almost dancerly part of the piece. She held herself modestly, one part of the whole. Everything came to rest with some final tones from the cello back at the rhythm desk.
According to the text, ‘The composition explores the phenomenon of entertainment of the transcription-translation feedback loop (TTFL), a fundamental time-keeping mechanism present in virtually all living beings, through the lens of a publication (Pittendrigh and Bruce, 1959) on the relationship between day-night cycles and the TTFL.’ That may well be. It was not directly apparent how this information had been translated into what I experienced, though it was clear that there was an underlying structure informing and shaping the work. I like this way of converting information into art – to shape and inform rather than to overwhelm with ‘knowledge’. The structure of a knowledge can inform other structures.
What conveyed in the moment was a successful spatial audio visual exploration that created a space to rest actively and enjoy with all the senses.
pīng pāng!