February 24, 2007

Kiyomitsu Odai, Music for Found Objects at Signal Flow, Mills College, February 23, 2007.

I normally wouldn't comment on student productions, but Kiyomitsu Odai's piece blew me away last night. Mixing all of the criteria for new music with aspects of theater (Anantha Krishnan's elbow diving the cardboard box, for example), the piece used common objects--wood, tools, paper, a vacuum--set to stopwatch timed actions to create a piece that intensified these usually banal (and annoying) sounds. The fact that all of these objects are used in various working class environments (conctruction, warehouses, butchers/deli, hotel domestics) hints at a larger discussion than just a Fluxus-inspired exultation of the bathetic.

Philip White, wood I
Peter Musselman, wood II
Luke Selden, suspended paper
Kiyomitsu Odai, vacuum
Anantha Krishnan, cardboard box & pipe