Self-less / Vibrant Sheen / Violent Impulse – Briana Marela Lizárraga MFA Thesis Performance

briana marela

A collection of 3 pieces sharing common ground on their minimal gestural qualities, use of the voice, and melody in relation to performing live electronic music. They were all created using Max 8 and machine learning with Wekinator. Performed and composed by Briana Marela Lizárraga. In Violent Impulse, Joel Skavdahl is performing as well by walking around the space placing and adjusting items on cymbals that have surface transducers resonating them.

Self-less starts with voice and using a custom made Arduino bodysuit I constructed this year, outfitted with toggles and 2 accelerometers to control parameters of the piece.
This piece is a conversation with myself examining self expectations placed on my creative process.

Vibrant Sheen uses voice and pitch as gesture to unfold vocoded synth arpeggios. A piece about experiencing love in a mature and stable form. I have always been drawn to the image of the water bearer of Aquarius, the role of pouring out and distributing water from a vessel that is carrying life-giving wisdom. Being in any long term emotional relationship with another human being involves an accumulation of wisdom that must be balanced from person to person. In this piece I am the water bearer and fulcrum between two bowls that when picked up evoke imagery of a scale. Weighing the water and wisdom it will take to give to nourishing a relationship I care very much about. Then using the bowls with transducers placed on them underneath to turn them into speakers to echo out this gathering of musings through its watery filter.

Violent Impulse uses my voice and synthesis sent through surface transducers placed on cymbals around the concert hall to create a surround listening experience. This piece is the first time I’ve made work about my experience living with Misophonia, which is a Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome. There wasn’t a lot known about Misophonia when I first started experiencing it as a child, the term wasn’t introduced until the early 2000s. Misophonia is linked to hyperconnectivity between the auditory and limbic systems of the brain. It may be a form of emotion-sound synaesthesia and is related to Anxiety, OCD, and Tourettes. It emerged intensely for me as a young child, and after a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy it now usually only comes on strongly for me when I am under stress or in small closed spaces with triggering sounds. I have had a lot of shame and sadness involving this syndrome as it invokes an involuntary response of anger and rage in response to certain sounds that are triggering to me (often caused by mouths). As a person who strives to be a kind and understanding person in the world, it feels in contradiction to my natural personality. The lyrics of this piece reflect from a childhood memory of becoming aware that my experience wasn’t something others were experiencing. All of my present day work in sound relates to emotions, processing new and difficult emotional states of my own development as a person. In Violent Impulse, using my mouth/voice to resonate cymbals to trigger items placed on them and seeking control over soft sounds that become distressing is a way for me to process one aspect of my Misophonia.

Thank you to my teachers James Fei, Laetitia Sonami, Zeena Parkins, and John Bischoff for all their help and guidance. Thank you to Joel, Yoko, Lula, and Aaron as well for loaning me their cymbals.

Lyrics:

~Self-less~
I put in my whole self, and I catch a glimpse of what is selfless
This is self-work, this feels selfish
I am sorry that I make excuses, I only have these delusions
Waiting for some wandering light to let me cast a shadow on rolling tides
I can’t compare to those I admire
You see in me potential, I see a lie I’ve told myself my whole life
I believe, I do believe, you believe in me
I’m trying to, I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying
What if this is all that I can do, and I’m not enough, to really find something new
I only have myself
What can I bring you when I have nothing else?

~Vibrant Sheen~
Your eyes that know me, fine tuned to notice
a vibrant sheen surrounds me, our love is growing up
You see what’s wrong, vision of the sun
wide and deep, the road not easy
but I want all my days to end with you
and follow through with every spark of something good
I could show off, how well I know our secret understanding

~Violent Impulse~
I know there’s something wrong, I know, I know there’s something
And I can’t stop it from happening, I can’t control your mouth
Violent impulse involuntary, I can’t control the sound
They don’t hear how it hurts me, a normal sound is a cloud of poison
I could drown in a wave of fury
I don’t always have the strength to separate my sense of pain from hate
I’ve wished this curse to go away, but it’s always waiting there to sustain
How can they know what it takes for me to stay present and able, to do everything?
I’ve suffered in silence with the sound inside my head, so loud.
I know there’s something wrong.

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