"Touch: Sensory-seekers, Forbidden touch, Contact" - 2:35 p.m., 2025
"Speaking Spaces No. 1: Heterotopia" - 25:00, 2021
A NEW WORK (possibly a world premiere) - 10:00 (approx.), 2027
Oggimusica Meets Code 2027
Natasha Barrett
Teatrostudio
10.- CHF
Sat 10.04
20:30
Oggimusica Meets Code 2027
Natasha Barrett
Teatrostudio
10.- CHF
Sat 10.04
20:30
"Touch" was originally titled "Tails of Touch" — referring to a tail, or the fleeting glimpse of something that fades away. In English, the word “tails” is a homophone of “tales.” Here, the spoken sound is ambiguous and could suggest both. Both “tail” and “tales” are appropriate for the soundscapes I reveal in the composition. I like ambiguity. It can evoke reflection, trick you, and lead you down a new path of listening, only to make you realize you’ve been taken somewhere else. The risk is that this intentional ambiguity might be lost in translation for non-native English speakers. So, for the premiere—which took place at the MIXTUR Festival in Barcelona, which also commissioned the work—I shortened the title simply to “Touch.”
“Tails and Tales of Touch” explores touch as physical affection, as healing, and as a sensory experience. There is a longing for human contact, and its absence as isolation and rejection. There is the longed-for embrace and the sensation it brings to the body. There is the touch of the unknown, the forbidden touch, and the contact or touch of nature. “Touch” consists of three sections that flow almost seamlessly into one another: “Sensory-seekers”; “Forbidden touch”; “Contact.” 2021. I can no longer remember when I realized it: instead of hearing the dog bark, the hawk screech, the traffic, or the child, I heard the forest, the mountain, the rock face, the city. It was more than just spaces speaking through their acoustic reflections. These encounters defied normal perception and became transformative experiences during my walks through the landscape. For me, these areas now contained more layers of meaning than were immediately evident to the eye and ear.
“Speaking Spaces” is a series of works that explore alternative conceptions of shared space. Not knowing what to call this first composition, I stumbled upon Foucault’s concept of Heterotopia as a mirror, which seemed to embody much of what I was experiencing. “Speaking Spaces No. 1: Heterotopia” is a journey from a forest to a winter shoreline.