Alkali Collective - In Bloom (2023) by Erin Gee (Canada)

In Bloom (2023) Notes
Bloom as an expression of fulfillment: a miracle of becoming, fullness. In nature, the body is not just the self, but can also be understood as food, or fuel, for a larger motor of the living in an ecological relation. How can we know what it means, to be posthuman, or posthumanist, on this ontological level? This song is a conversation between bacteria, mold, fungus, and a recently dead human. These voices guide the listener through the after-death as their body decomposes and intimately enters the cycle of life.
VOCAL SOLOIST
Your voice is a portal to materialisms beyond our human senses, guiding the listener through the simultaneous care and brutal indifference of nature. You are a pink-collar worker of death, and you take great pride in your work. The vocalist can take some liberties with the text by repeating consonants or words for embellishment, inserting mouth sounds or unintelligible whispering, or switching between whispered and soft-spoken vocal styles. The rhythms of the text should more or less correspond to what is in the tape part: for this reason I recommend memorizing the piece by rehearsing it on headphones while taking long walks in nature.
The hands of the performer should gesticulate in imitation of ASMR performers online that trace shapes, manipulate objects, create finger flutters, touch an imaginary face in front of them, or touch their own face. There is no need to gesture constantly: try assigning different gestures to different sections of music in order to keep focus. Tracing shapes in different sizes and speeds, moving forward and backward, in spirals or from side to side, are all interesting options when performed with intention. Sections referencing the brushing of a face might benefit from a real brush prop, or you can simply brush with your fingers. These gestures reinforce the idea that there are real/microscopic hands breaking down the listener’s sensory organs, offering abstract simulations of impossible touch.
INSTRUMENTALISTS
You are a host of forest creatures, mushrooms, bacteria, slime mold, and life itself. You are not directly engaged with the listener in the roleplay, but are more like a choir that comments on the action, listens, and responds. Sometimes your presence is an imminent threat, but a beautiful, delicate one. The sounds you make can range from beautiful swells of chords to subtle and delicate bursts of noise to loud harsh interruptions. Close micing the instruments to pick up on subtle sounds of key clicks, air in the instrument, singing into the instrument, or even tapping or touching the instrument offers more creative options and is very in tune with the sonic inspiration of the work. Be careful to not sonically overwhelm the soloist when she is speaking.
Bio - Canadian artist and composer Erin Gee (TIO’TIA:KE - MONTREAL) considers music as a poetic and sensorial technology, likening the vibration of vocal folds to electricity and data across systems, or vibrations across matter.
In addition to a growing corpus of work commissioned by new music ensembles, Gee is a DIY expert in affective biofeedback technology, and considers her musical work as an extension of this research into emotional activation and emotional measurement. She is inspired by the exploration of emotion through technology such as neural networks, biofeedback devices, ASMR, virtual reality, networked music performance, and robotics. As a performer, she is inspired by hypnosis, ASMR, new age music, and the placebo effect.
Her work has been featured at MacKenzie Art Gallery (CA), Vancouver New Music (CA), Music Gallery (CA), Karachi Biennale (PK), Toronto Biennale (CA), Ars Electronica (AT), MUTEK Festival (AR/ES/CA), LEV Festival (ES), and NRW Forum (DE).