The Skin Listens Too is an improvised musical performance work which centres around a large three dimensional graphic, real-time score. The score hangs in space and is activated from within. Inside the lantern, orchestrators arrange and guide the work in realtime, making choices in response to unfolding improvisations, and using torches to illuminate the score. Around the lantern pairs of performers form a circle. Instrumentalists are paired with “translators” who effectively act as their eyes for the duration of the piece (instrumentalists are either blindfolded or have their eyes closed). Translators read the score as it illuminates and then transcribe the symbols, gestures and shapes, onto the backs of the players using household implements such as pencils, chopsticks, and spoons. The instrumentalists then respond - in whatever way they see fit - to the marks being made on their backs, interpreting the score through touch. Each pair is assigned a colour on the score and told to only play or respond to the illuminated symbols in their assigned colour. 

This process of interpreting through touch deliberately mirrors the way in which the score was generated. To create the 288 drawings my central collaborator - visual artist Georgia Spain - and I performed a long form version of the “back drawing” game. We took turns inscribing shapes and marks on one another’s backs whilst the other person would draw what they were feeling; attempting to translate the marks as faithfully as possible.

The Skin Listens Too examines the role of touch and platonic intimacy in musical performance, responding in particular to white western culture’s often fraught relationship with physical contact and asking performers to interrogate the relationship between sound and their own body. 

Ensemble 113 Performers: Abi Lee, Georgia Spain, Clyde Saniga, Matteo Pasquale, Ella Pasano, Hendrix Hamalainen, Clio Greig, Ella Dawson, Rachael Hobbs, Liam Harper, Junaid Eastman, Amy Archer, Sasha Kaiser, Oscar Lush
Video documentation: Emmett Lagrutta
Fabrication assistance: Marcus Carne 
Engineering and mixing: Oscar Lush