Singapore Arts Festival Blog

On the String
4 Jun 2010 / Esplanade Theatre Studio

Atsuhiro ft. The Analog Girl & Zai Kuning
5 Jun 2010 / Supper Club

String Theory, depending on who you ask, can be a revolutionary way of thinking about the world, or a pompous piece of quasi-science. At its simplest, it posits that all particles in the universe (even the tiniest, tiniest ones) are made of vibrating strings and membranes of energy. At its most complex, it is a unifying theory of quantum physics and general relativity; involving bosons, fremions and ‘world-sheets’; with implications for parallel universes and the like. Yes, whatever.

On the String is an unusual production – part installation, part concert. Unfolding over nine movements in just under an hour, it’s an emotive distillation of String Theory, taking the audience through the imaginary sounds of smaller and smaller particles, until they arrive at the primordial strings themselves. The sounds are generated through two room-sized string sculptures: the “corridor” and the “canopy”. The first is a tent-like frame with strings of different material stretched over it, played by scraping and plucking; the second is a tall pole tethered to the ground by thin rubber strips, played like a yacht’s mast, with the artist holding it and leaning this way and that. The sounds generated are fed through computers, altered and emitted through an array of speakers surrounding the room. The experience is at once intimate (the audience sits in a U-shape around the sculptures in the small Esplanade Theatre Studio) and cavernous, with thunderous amplification and searing, soaring notes. Other conventional string instruments such as the pipa, harpsichord and violin provide embellishments at various junctures.

Admittedly, in attempting to give us a glimpse of the unknowable, On the String is a romantic notion, much in the same way that contemplating the infinite universe is romantic. Indeed, composer / director / performer Joyce Beetuan Koh played the string sculptures with the awe and reverence that should come naturally from apprehending the very stuff that everything is made from (i.e. strings). But some of the production’s beauty is lost in its over-intellectualisation. One almost gets the feeling that the team behind On the String spent too many days holed up in a basement preparing for its debut. Koh’s programme notes, while lovingly crafted, are voluminous and highly technical. The post-show dialogue revealed much of the thinking behind the elaborate setup – which was all but lost on most of the audience. Apparently, the strings on the canopy were carefully tuned to achieve all the harmonics of G – the harmonics representing various elemental particles, thereby exploring the relationship between music and quantum physics, and so on. A little fancy considering that an audience member was unsure if the sounds were coming from the canopy, or if the entire performance was mimed to pre-recorded, computer-generated noise.

So that’s On the String.

And then there is Atsuhiro Ito. In stark contrast to Koh’s subtatomic romanticism, Ito’s performance is all street cred, no explanations and no apologies. His weapon of choice is a regular fluorescent light fitted with an electromagnetic pickup (like those on electric guitars), played by applying different voltages with a pedal. The sounds created – essentially static hums and hisses – are distorted and amplified, creating dense, bass-heavy sawbuzz noises. Despite the lack of visible calibration on the Optron – as Ito calls it – he wields it with great skill, controlling its bursts of noise with precision, alternately coaxing dark squelches and buzzes. All this he does with minimal theatricality, gazing downwards as he works his array of pedals, allowing the Optron to light his grim visage (which, with its deep lines, looks great when lit from below). With an instrument like the Optron, it’s so tempting to go right into lightsaber comedy, but Ito steers well clear of that.

Ito’s collaboration with The Analog Girl was a sensible one – his intense, low-end rhythms sat well with her stylish, linear electronica. Ito’s collaboration with multi-faceted artist Zai Kuning was a little more inspired, since you can never be sure what Zai’s going to pull out of the hat. Their first number together was mesmerising – a long, sparse, mellow, fingerpicked semi-acoustic guitar piece with mantra-like vocals from Zai. Applying the Optron here would seem like stapling paper with a sledgehammer, but Ito used the lightest of touches, adding low rhythmic blips while bobbing away serenely. The Analog Girl rejoined them for the closing set, resulting in more cacophonous hard electro. You know you’re in for something when a club passes out earplugs before a gig, and the strange bedfellows of Zai, Ito and The Analog Girl certainly delivered on that front.

Don