BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Emerging composers (and best mates) Ben Heim and Connor D’Netto have joined forces to present ‘Light Play: an Immersive Chamber Music Experience’ as part of their new project Argo. The creative duo aims to challenge our ideas about live performance, and combines the elements of sound and light for audiences to live through an electronic-infused, atmospheric experience in the University of Queensland Art Museum. The event will also premiere multiple works by the composers.
The idea came about when Ben and Connor were on the hunt for a concept, and the plan was to collaborate with another art form “from which we would draw inspiration to compose all-new works, and create something more than simply a chamber music concert,” Connor says.
They collaborated with UQ Art Museum last year and decided to repeat the process for this project. “Their upcoming exhibition ‘Light Play: Ideas, Optics, Atmosphere’ spoke to us straight away,” Connor explains.
“In its visual aesthetics, full of patterning and colour in some cases and other works full of subtle ephemeral textures, we found many parallels to our musical language, while the variety in conceptual and emotional content of the artworks showed huge potential for us to draw on in writing the music.”
Ben adds: “Yeah, that”.
And so ‘Light Play: An Immersive Chamber Music Experience’ was born.
“The idea was to create an experience for the audience where they can completely lose themselves – to be completely surrounded by music and the exhibition itself to the extent that there in no clear focus at any point in time, enticing the audience to move about freely and experience is from any vantage of their choosing,” Connor explains.
“In the 90-minute seamless program of music, musicians will emerge from all around the audience, from unseen places, from the other end of the building, quite suddenly.”
In the space, the Connor and Ben built on visual cues to create an atmosphere in which audience members can feel the freedom to shift their focus between music and art, exploring different spaces without feeling obligated to stay in one area for the entire duration.
“We wanted to create an event where people are free to view the art and music in from their own, chosen perspective,” Ben says.
So why are the elements of sound and light so often brought together? Isn’t sound powerful enough when stimulating the senses? According to Connor, combining the two is a “natural progression”.
“Music, in a live setting, is never just an aural thing after all. We don’t just hear a concert – we also see the performers doing their thing, and the visuals can often be just as engaging and bring so much to the overall experience. This is often forgotten.
“Light is such a powerful visual force. It has the capability to completely change the atmosphere of any experience, and has so much creative potential – why wouldn’t you want to harness it?”
According to Ben, as Western consumers of audio-visual media such as film and web content, we’ve simply become immune to experiencing both visual and auditory stimulation together. But in dissecting these elements and re-imagining them through their new exhibition, Ben says he’s become fascinated by the way the combination can “draw a listener into a musical experience and produce a much more memorable connection to the content”.
Some of today’s most successful concerts are arguably a result of musicians pushing the boundaries of what’s considered conventional, removing audiences from their comfort (or discomfort?) zones in the concert halls and placing them in surprising places. Connor says this move is important for creating necessary options for concert-goers.
“For so long, ‘serious classical music’ (whatever that really is) has lived almost exclusively in the concert hall, and its pinnacle has been the symphony. But why does it need to be this way?
“Don’t get me wrong – I love going to see a great orchestra, sitting in the concert hall as the lights dim and that magical, religious silence falls over the audience in anticipation of the beginning. It can be a very special experience. But if it’s the only experience, well, it loses its magic.
“It’s important for there to be more options, more variety – it keeps the audience on their toes and interested, giving them the opportunity to experience something new.”
Ben adds that this is an exciting time to be a composer. But one must wonder what impact this will have on the creation and presentation of larger scale works like the symphony. Perhaps they’ll be left behind in the midst of it all, as people venture away from the concert hall?
“As for the symphony, I still think there is a heap of room left to innovate. Some amazing audio-visual, staging and presentation concepts are definitely conceivable,” he says. “The issue I foresee is that orchestras are much less willing to be innovative than chamber ensembles as the organisations that run them tend to retain much less progressive views.”
But it’s not all doom and gloom.
“It’s really great to see innovation in the art music world again and especially the branching out into collaboration with other art forms. To me this has the potential to usher in a new wave of art music and cultural expansion.”
Connor says he and Ben have been “best mates” for a couple of years, having first met in second year uni when they were made to write a cover of a Beatles song (they chose ‘Girl’). Over the years, they’ve bounced ideas off each other and this May decided to officially team up as Argo – their duo through which they collaborate on events to showcase their works, co-write and perform, and make plans for various projects in the future.
Their newest project ‘Light Play’ sees the premiere of three of Connor’s works: ‘Susurrus’, ‘Traces’, and ‘From the One Who Knows You Best’. The works will be pair instruments with elements ranging from electronic soundscapes to coloured neon lights.
“All works are premieres and very tailored to the space in both a practical and a musical/artistic sense,” Ben says. His works showcase live electronics and acoustic sound manipulation, with ‘Crossing Paths’, ‘Black Light Songs’ and ‘Etudes for Electronic Percussion’.
“The electronic soundscape that underpins this entire concert will also be in surround sound, and will be controlled remotely via touchscreen,” Ben says.
See Argo’s ‘Light Play’ on October 30, for times and locations go to bit.ly/argo-lightplay.
Image supplied.
