Body Machine
In 1965
a man named Alvin Lucier performed a percussion work where he transmitted the data signals from his brain’s alpha waves to resonant percussive instruments—it was called Music for Solo Performer. In an attempt to recreate and revitalize his composition, this piece combines musical equipment from the past and the present to modernize his ideas and portray them through a percussionist's mind.
In 2016
a Moderation Concert at Bard College addressed the correspondence between the human body and the drum set as parallel machinery. By exploring the drum set as an extension of the human body, the physicality of drumming becomes a bodily function.
On the spectrum of human sight, peripheral vision occupies the majority. The periphery maps the space around us and guides selective attention. While I could spatially organize the drum set around me, my eyes focused on an indistinct point so that only my periphery had the head of each drum in view. This perceived sight is present in I’ll Be Seeing You (Billie Holiday) and Videotape (Radiohead), in which sight is conditional and addressed via another medium.
Photographed by Brendan Hunt.
"The human body is a machine consisting of many different interconnected machines. Each machine (brain, heart, ear, eye) runs at its own individual speed, but all function in a specific, predetermined relationship to each other.”
— The Body As Machine or Why We Are Affected By Vibrational Influences
