TIC Singers in Social Dreaming Experiment

1. Create “snowflake” seating so people are in non-aligned concentric circles giving space to gaze out beyond the circle.
2. Listen to music – collective listening for 30 minutes, extracts from snips of recordings from previous concerts.
3. “Sentence/phrase pooling in dream space” having listened.
4. After break come together in semi-circle for discussion to look at convergence and themes
5. Facilitators’ feedback
6. Present findings externally as needed.

Social Dreaming 4.12.16.

TIC ‘dreaming’ on the first year working together.

Singers present
Helen
Sarah
Veronica
Alain
Kate
Dilara
Alistair
Martins
Irene
Yan
Sylvia
Alain
Uran
Davide

Jenni – conductor
Fanny – manager
Karolis – filmmaker

The words spoken…

Form without form

Pale
Telling the world what it’s like to have a body

There is a crack in every voice
A group of individuals who can make the sound of the world

feral to sublime
More than sum of its part
Really listening to each other’s uniqueness Playing with time

Language

Constantly changing shapes

Completely in the moment in its wholeness

Singing through laughs – cries – breath – singing life

Speaking to the world about our bodies, minds, individuality, voices, and everything that connects each other

Latency

Shaking the status quo, people’s emotions, to let them know that there is something really deep, sensual

Boiling, morphing, life of its own – attainable
Perfect taste of how you can be yourself but more than yourself at the same time

Showing that without rules you can create something magical that connects to the heart

Drop of immediacy that permeates everyone in the space

Feels hard to describe – like describing a prayer – no analysis can ‘be’ it – like trying to create a spiritual connection, belief in god. That’s what I’m feeling know (lack of word). That’s why i choose to talk about my inability

Feels like home

Feels like family, tribe

Individual and collective evolution. Progression. Vulnerability and sensitivity

Exploring the extremes

Intuition is a way to communicate, build a relationship between the singers, the conductor, composer and each ind of the audience

No matter what we do, form we take, we’re praying and listening to the different songs. Feels like faith – can’t really describe it. Faith is in the air.

Songs and music exist Vitality

Sense of danger, walking on a tightrope, dangerous place. being in the group and feeling the – meeting the beast, meet supported

I’m allowed to make mistakes and it’s good. I’m allowed to feel and sound fragile and it’s good. I’m aloud to be loud, laugh, cry, connect, and it’s good; Thank you

It’s interesting listening to all the pieces. When I am in the choir, I have a sense of my being, being alive, awake. Heightened awareness of myself. Listening – I see the whole, I am a cog. We are working together. It’s really useful to feel both.

I feel something ?settling. Every time something seems to settles, it goes off track, in an organic matter

Forming and being formed at the same time – give and take

Tension between feeling v comfortable and uncomfortably interweaving, quite magical to listen to – and be part of it. It’s a different experience

Weird and normal

Gaining confidence in being uncomfortable

I think of dance, movement all the time. Like a natural consequence

I see van gogh paintings

I see villages, communities, people doing things together, harvesting, celebrating

A moment when there was mourning and sadness, suddenly something broke off and a celebration began. A carnival in the village.

Celebration of every human condition

Fascinating how much we can communicate – with everything, our body, our voices. Each feeling. It’s a privilege to be part of a group that can deal with such freedom without being scared, of being judged, of sharing. You can feel pain in our voice, our body, and suddenly we heal each other, something beautiful happens

Embracing the beast
The critical self conscious ear vs total freedom

I have a sense of how totally present everybody was. People so fresh, committed. You can feel it when you are in it, but you can also hear it.

Realisation of brave vision
All voices are v different from each other but they blend so well together. It’s weird.

Yes, I enjoyed listening to myself and not always being able to tell myself apart. Like a picture

There was a v aggressive moment. And it felt OK!

The breadth of emotion – incredible – we all collectively raise – makes you want to burst, raise your hair on your body – pool of thoughts – listening back – some notes were utterly incredible

We are healing, each one of us, not just as individual, but I do feel we do something for the world

Collectively hoping for something to happen An invitation to the audience; a call

Collective belief. Like theatre. We allow them to go “ah, oh!”. That’s why the feedback is so good.

It’s v different listening and doing! I can feel the presence of the group when i’m singing – but I can’t feel what the audience is listening to. It’s a nice surprise to listen to us. How many colours, thoughts we are saying without words.

I sometimes think we are offering a kind of model to humanity – of existing together, having your own voice but fully listening to the others and co-creating. Turkish poet (Nâzım Hikmet Ran): “free and independent like a tree, in brotherhood like a forest”. This is perfect existence.

We are being conducted – there is a being who is not making a sound but organising us. That’s another factor. In the mix. Another element. To this idea of singers co- creating. Jenni holding the whole thing.

That’s they key. The guidance we need as a group; otherwise it would be just individuals. Interesting – but we couldn’t create the strong atmosphere, colours, without conductor.

Listening back, i was astounded – heard so much going on. I realise the transitions, what J is doing. Sometimes it moves along

You can tell that nobody had a clue, something, of what would happen. We were fragile and a bit scared. But we are contained, (safe)

In a world – we are a living proof that embracing each individual difference, embracing, celebrating our difference, all? the prison of our individuality . we can live together in that big forest and we have a great gardener.

We have to sound v different. If we all have the same ideas, it would be (boring). It’s also a process of remembering. We create with our memories.

Being in a hall of mirrors, sonically. distorted , stretched, wide. You throw something out, it comes back to you in a different way. Closest thing to magic.

We make really weird sounds, not mainstream, but v real, earthy.

You can hear something more of a person when they’re not singing in a convention or role. You can hear something more real.

It’s nurturing that v healthy childish curiosity to join in

We make those strange sounds but not in a lofty avant garde high art place. It’s childlike wonder. Raw experience ; not showing off.

I feel also that if i want to do something quite simple it’s alright too. It’s not about upping yourself. I welcome this

Contrast is interesting. From obscure to accessible.

Before every concert if I had to be worried about something i would have been – i hope i will find something new to give. I have made peace with this fear. I am never the same, the group is never the same, J’s conducting is never the same. No need to fear being the same.

If you are in the moment there are no mistakes. No need to be scared, it’s just us.

I give myself a hard time if I feel “could have been better, could have done this or that”, but then I think, it was in the moment.

Even though I have been through the process – listening back, I couldn’t quite believe – “how are we doing that”? Sense of wonder. This must be what the audience feels like!

First track i recognise it from the vortex – I felt like a parent of a 1-year old! I have managed not to kill the child. Deep emotion.

There was a development – form the first track

Agility. Supporting each other. I hear that this has developed. With time you learn how to truly throw yourself into the process

Also trusting each other. The more we work together; jenni ‘s honing allows us

When I’m not really happy with what I’m doing, it’s when i’m out of myself. But sometimes it can be a matter of sanity, to withdraw – then jump back in;

i was surprised, from our first gig we were already delivering quality. We’ve learned a lot in the process. How to jump in and out, be in the space and feel good about it, be less judgmental when something sounds less good. I can be honest with myself. But listening back it actually sounds totally fine; not “wrong”

Familiarity of being on the stage together. Like a family. The shape we make on stage, our bodies together. We have grown. Also getting used to getting an audience watching. Then you build a relationship with audience

Taking on the challenge of collaborating more, offering more ideas, working dynamically in different formats, venues, … invigorating and unsettling. Sense of expanding into a more free space. Expanding, and needing ground.

So much to explore in how we compose together. All recordings are so consistent, yet different. We have a quality that holds us together. Eg; TIC -Chamber is v different format, but has succeeded in being “us”

I think of the age we’re in – internet, globalisation. This choir emerging now – makes sense – as a mini network – connected together. I create something and give it to you, and now it’s yours. It’s all very now.

I have felt for a while that new movements, genres, is not what needs to happen. We need to come together as a constellation to create. In the moment together

It also feels very analog, in a digital time. Precious

Cleveland using effects on his voice. That was bizarre! And we were trying to be all as bizarre as we could. Dealing with artificial sound. But still felt connected. Sometimes one voice comes out of the texture without being “solo”, but it gives guidance to the others, a shape to a blob of sounds that otherwise would have no meaning

Periods of soup are inevitable in between fresh moments / ideas. Out of the soup comes the new ideas. Hot bed

Or you need pre existing structures. Or, the last piece – Through the Veil – that’s like microwave, already ready, just need to warm up!

But we need to always reinvigorate the scripted ideas with the same spirit, ethos. In the soup!

Then club vocale when choir brought pieces. Opportunity to explore what we could do with the group. A live experiment. The results were fascinating. Gosh, there’s so much we can do!

First concert Vortex – maybe because i’ve heard these tracks lots, they sounded like classics to me! My dad writes Irish tunes, the way they explain how it happens, they say it comes from the fairies – blur between what’s composed and what’s already there. We’re drawing from a pool of music.

An even bigger soup!

(Jenni) my role: the call to bring the group together and to realise a part of my creative hunger – when i am in the conducting role, there’s – Stravinsky: exact appetites that are being satisfied by the decisions i am making in the moment. I’m also aware of exact limits. I read that when I was 18. “A composer will know that he/she is one, if, by composing you are aware of your exact appetites and in realising those exact appetites you are aware of their exact limits”. When i do the conducting I am trying to satisfy these appetites. The palette is not a score, it’s the instrument of the human voice, body, being. That’s the score; a step which has taken me years to get the confidence to do. This reminds me of what I wanted in my 20s! This being, entity, the experience of working with TIC. I tried many different ways throughout the years to do what you have now articulated today. I attempted many compositions over the years. Never before with a group of improvising human beings! A leap, bringing all the different things I’ve ever done, all in this group.