Technical Organism is a piece written for solo flute. It uses chance to create timbral change over time. Playing techniques are chosen for their position along a clean/granular spectrum. Discrete states are chosen by chance, then the duration of the sections is also randomly selected following a set of rules. The piece achieves structural fluidity through its inconsistent layout.
This work is part of a short series of pieces written to explore performance techniques of various orchestral instruments.
The title of the piece is derived from a series of 4 drawings by Bauhaus artist and philosopher Oskar Schlemmer for his work “Triadisches Ballet”. I first found these drawings in a book published by Taschen called “Bauhaus 1913-1933”. I later stumbled across a more detailed description of these 4 drawings (from “The Theatre of the Bauhaus”, a collection of writings by Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Farkas Molnár).
At the time of writing the piece, I was influenced heavily by Bauhaus philosophy, including the use of analysis to decode artistic structures. In this case, Schlemmer strips back ideas of human form and movement to a set of basic principles, then explores these ideas anew from the ground-up to create innovative work. I explored a similar deconstruction in my piece, Technical Organism, placing different techniques next to each other so that they could be ‘showcased’.
The other three companion pieces (or movements), Ambulant Architecture/Walking Architecture, Marionette, and Dematerialization, were never finished. Maybe I will return to them.