Camilla Barratt-Due: Vocal non-identities in a pneumatic post-instrumentality

Field of study: Artistic Research

This research is an exploration and development of the self-defined instrument concept "pneumatic postinstruments, which can act as independent beings on a stage and be put in connection with the body. These are specially designed air pressure-based mechanical instruments which, in a hybrid appearance, are both the instrument and what plays and moves it. The research is grounded in a vision of different vocalities and bodies, living and non-living, breathing together in a heterogeneous musical world.

The vision draws its inspiration from Queer theory, neomateriality, interdisciplinary climate research, pyropolitics, Cli-Fi (climate-fiction), Russian cosmism, Chaos Magic and mysticism.

In the pneumatic post-instrument, the air's various qualities and dualities such as volatile, chaotic, concentrated, powerful, diffuse and non-visible energy will be signified. The air is here, but also as a void. It can almost be described as a negation of itself and lives in the gap between "identity" and "non-identity".

Through the deconstruction of old instruments, textures, and bodies, Barratt-Due will use pneumatic mechanics to reflect on the energy form of air. Pneumatic mechanics are systems that uses air pressure. Fans and electromagnetic valves, scanners, sensors, as well as voices and bodies, will be part of the instrumental, technological, and performative ways to create new vocal and pneumatic music. The result will be performed by Barratt-Due alone and in collaboration with other artists.

The result will include instruments, performances, concerts, performative installations with associated performance practices and a reflects the practice, the art and the theory in which it is grounded.