“Subject to Gesture” is a collaborative performance with accompanying text that was commissioned by Mark Greenwood of Dock Road Press, for his performance series Gramophone Ray Gun at Liverpool’s Everyman Bistro. The performance is a collaborative work for voice and treated guitars and drum that composer/performer Benjamin D. Duvall and I developed. We were introduced by Mark Greenwood, who suggested that we might work well together and offered us a slot in the Gramophone Ray Gun series he runs at The Bistro, Liverpool Everyman.

The text element was written in part using found material from a number of sources including Twitter and sports reports, and being open to the political and cultural mood of Spring 2017 in both the US and Europe. Influences and sources included training guides for US toastmasters and comments on TedX presentation styles, as well as the often violent language around the body on social media posts and comments.

A pamphlet, also titled “Subject to Gesture,” was published by Dock Road Press to accompany the live event. Benjamin D Duvall produced a diagram of the relation between the elements of the performance for the pamphlet, showing how the spoken material feeds into the guitars via vibration speakers, and how this generates responses in the sonic objects attached to the guitars and drum.

The performance lasted 50 minutes, and shifted between clearly audible spoken text, to loud feedback and complex layered sounds of strings, bells, radio static, and metallic humming.