Proposition 6a: ceci n'est pas une machine de guerre (Refrain) - for fixed media, with optional amplified piano and live electronics

Proposition 6a is a practical and artistic production on the plane of immanence as an appendix to (i) move ‘beyond’ the five propositions of psychoanalysis (Deleuze, Desert Islands, 1974), (ii) the nomadic war machine, and (iii) the musical refrain. It makes a contribution to knowledge through the unique synthesis of these established ideas into a new embodied outcome by means of the formal considerations governing its composition.

Following the example of Deleuze and Guattari, who suggest that, especially in collaboration, each individual is always already ‘many’, the [zygote] project examines the network of possibilities created within situations which seek to negate traditional concepts of authorship. It tries instead to interrogate deterritorialised lines of flight generated through the collision of multiple modes of what it might mean to become authorial, a theme and dynamic that all elements of this REF submission are investigating, each in their specific context., All sounds utilised in the work were created by the destruction of an antique piano through interaction with various electrical and mechanical tools and objects, as means of exciting the instrument to produce sounds beyond its associated/expected sonic palette, until nothing but its metal frame was left in the living room. Despite the resulting artificial and processed sound quality of the piece there is no DSP treatment beyond minimal EQ and a single instance of reverberation., The work was jointly composed in equal measure with Professor Martin Iddon (University of Leeds) under the [zygote] moniker, with Saario working on the production as well.