Caution Wet Floor
Caution Wet Floor (2/23): Co-directed with Eva Thomas, Caution Wet Floor is a movement and visual arts study of revolutionary pathways, and cautionary signs. This filmic journey explores agency, boundary, and the murky depth of the industrial subconscious, wandering through underground tunnels. Within the uncanny industrial world of liminal spaces are basements and laundromats. The slip of paint on the human body, footprints, when dance creates its material artifact intentionally. The painting is a language and has been interpreted as a choreographic notation. It is an archaeology in time, with singing and soundscapes from the same basement, and grey timeless echoes, chasing. The story perpetually unfolds as the pathway revolutionizes itself — a chamber. Fear holds us back from inevitable transformations, all lines eventually reveal themselves as circles. Through movement, song, and painting, the piece questions our attachment to imagined security in pathways and beckons a surrender to the creative truths in winding sunless tunnels
https://lilyselthofner.com/climbing-lost/
Climbing, Lost by Lily Selthofner — poetry used in sound
On the sonic exploration of chambers in this hallway:
I am walking through a long and windy hallway in the basement of my building, using my flip-flops as an attempt at echolocation (and time-keeping). The metronome of my steps reflects the tension in my toes, and the slope of this perpetually down-hill hallway. I can hear my memories from earlier in the day resonating in the too-hot fan, the smell of the trash shoot’s opening being pushed around. The tensions are apparent in my movement and in my perceptions of the sound itself. Likewise, exiting the liminal space, alone in the dark, implies entering the real-world, and I don’t know which I prefer. Unfortunately, the sounds I make in this hallway can probably be heard by people in the laundry room nearby (even though that space is also quite loud). My consciousness is external as I listen to myself from afar, trying to blend in with the resonances of the hallway.
The sonic effect is irreducible to either objectivity or subjectivity – in that the sound effect describes “the sound milieu of a socio-cultural community, and the “internal soundscape” of every individual” (9). From here, I wonder exactly how conscious perceptions can also distort the physical signal, as the physical signal can distort perception – especially in the technological infinity of modernity (8). It is difficult for me to conceptualize, as I already felt that the relationship between internal and external was likewise irreducible to either objectivity or subjectivity– for example, what is the true difference between saying a mantra aloud or just in one’s head? Do others’ perceptions of my saying something, through the external space, change the physical nature of the sound, by altering its meaning perhaps? Further, in a telepathic context, how do other conscious beings (animate, moving – everything from other humans to the objects in my room) affect the nature of sound that “I” emanate? Perhaps a cluttered mind and a cluttered room are issues of sound rather than/alongside sight…
I wonder how defining sound attributes with language, or even just the conscious awareness expressed through language, changes the nature of sound. Is sound self-defining, having autonomy and agency, or is sound only an aspect of such animacy? Is language the best way to share articulations about sound, and come to the same page? Would urban noise pollution be less physically and psychologically damaging if it was talked about differently? Or thought about differently? How has the nature of sound changed with the advent of technology – doing this work without ‘conscious input?’ At this moment I am seeing the importance of teaching how to listen. I am also wondering about how my relationship to movement can change how I listen. I just read a quote from Trisha Brown (postmodern dancer/choreographer who didn’t use music with her work until much later in her career) saying that because music inspired feeling and movement within her, she felt it was ‘cheating,’ or at least distracting, to her goal of exploring movement in a ‘pure’ way. While I agree, I also think that every inevitable movement is also an inevitable sound, and alters the way we perceive sound. This ties back to the pace of my flip flops reinforcing the state of listening that was co-created by my movement, the perception of sound, and the sound ‘itself.’ Perhaps the solution here is a focus on internal rhythms, and the infinite chamber of perception.
