A Little Something about Hearing Deprivation from Eric km Clark

The piece that is being premiered on Wednesday by DITHER and friends, which I absurdly titled Deprivation Music No. 5: l’amour du pain (yes, it means bread love), consists of dense combinations of chords, breathing, and repetitive fragments. Instead of over-analyzing this piece in particular, I think it will be more interesting and exciting to explore the trajectory of my use of Hearing Deprivation. Though this may not give you much of a sense of the piece that’s being premiered on Wednesday, it will make it clear that these pieces are always very different and an evolving process, from performance to performance as well as from piece to piece. So here goes…Back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, my sister used to find me in the basement of our family house in Victoria seemingly staring at nothing, which was partially true. Actually, I was staring into static on a TV. I’d stare into it and completely lose touch with reality; the noise was comforting.Many years later, in front of a TV that was off and staring into it, the idea occurred to me to block out the performers’ hearing via white noise and earplugs. And now, I have written several works that explore deprivation of senses. What evolves is a type of ‘hermetic canon,’ which is a term Larry Polansky uses in reference to these pieces. The experiment unfolds when many performers play the exact same part but cannot hear each other clearly.My first deprivation pieces were written while studying with James Tenney at CalArts. He jokingly commented that depriving performers’ hearing was antithetical to much of his compositional premise for the past thirty years, which was founded on the phenomenological premise of harmony and thus listening. He was very encouraging at a time when my various experiments with these ideas were in their infancy, and I thank him dearly for that.Listen:Deprivation Music No. 1 (mp3)Deprivation Music No. 2 (mp3)My exploration of deprivation techniques continues and I feel there is much more to explore. I enjoy the indeterminate harmonies and rhythmic textures that develop uniquely from performance to performance, and how I’m never quite sure what’s going to happen. My most recently premiered deprivation piece was O-Ring written for Object Collection’s Experimental Music series at the Ontological Theater in NYC. For this piece, I added sight deprivation with body movements in conjunction with hearing deprivation.Watch/Listen:O-Ring (youtube)I wish I could be there on Wednesday to hear the experiment unfold, as it should be quite an experience. Thanks for reading!! - km