Hoedown at Hanks, Boomtown 2023
Musicologist Sophie Zehetmayer explores elements of music that resonate with the world. The social rhythm which we all undertake in our own unique ways, like the moped riders of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, out on their own journeys without ever intersecting with each other, kept apart by constantly blaring horns. Social rhythm connects to our working hours, economic laws, and daily scheduling. Affect and political power, representation, the body. Hate, fear, shame, disgust or happiness perhaps, aligning to affect and rhythm as theorised by Sarah Ahmed. From the Body to being embodied. SENSATION. The name of a life changing exhibition of Young British Artist’s work at the Royal Academy in London. A shark cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde. An artist can be a sensation, coming through the ranks to be a star, but also it is about how the work resonates, its sensory connections to our thoughts and feelings. Bodies replicate, take the shape of the movement, of the collective over time, morphing, changing due to feedback, resolution, and through repetition. I see this as connecting to the knobs and sliders of an electronic synthesiser, a machine which originally was trying to replicate traditional sounds but became its own instrument, with variances between makes and models due to the filters and routing of sound, the materials and the way they have been used. ADSR – attack, sustain, delay and release. Something which sounds like an operational delivery for a war machine but also to cybernetic concepts of organism. The five steps of operation in cybernetic systems: goal activation, action selection, action, outcome interpretation, goal comparison. A manmade instrument and social system in perfect harmony. Standing over a synthesiser, patching cables between the various sections so you can create your own unique sonic: oscillators vibrating, generating the raw triangular or square sound waves, which can be mixed and then filtered through cut off and resonance before being shaped by the ADSR. Synthesisers, like samplers and AI, were meant to ruin music, take away the role of the true musician but have become essential tools that vibrate with the intensity of society. The use of synths in modern dance music highlights the deep emotions they generate, where filter sweeps can take resonant sounds into the bodies of masses, vibrating core frequencies of ecstasy. In these moments we are connected, at one with the world and those around us, the tribe dancing to the same beat. Simplicity, repetition and movement. Forgetting the troubles of the world around us but just connecting on the same level. The social sonic.
