InnerEye Research
How purely do we experience sound?
We hear colors, we imagine and maybe draw shapes for what we perceive as music structures, we glance at scores with amazement and think they would always be there. And as if they have always been there. What if one day none of these facts were possible? Making music and internalizing it without any visual connections, hearing it without the visual dimension. Just hearing. Just sound. Pure sound. Sound in its strongest presence.
If light can create space (make us aware of it), why can't we rely on sound to make it happen? How would the history of our culture have been if we had let ourselves guided by other senses than the sight? Opening the doors to a whole universe of yet unexperienced colors and senses, venturing into a world of limitless imagination where not always the surface is the one which shows itself to us. Into the different shades of darkness – a darkness which is not horrifying, sad or apocalyptical; just oppositely, a darkness which leaves us possibilities to hear not only what it is, but what it could be, what it could have been. Darkness which carries all the possibilities of our senses and rescues our imagination from the captivity of visual appearances of the matter.
InnerEye is a research project exploring game pieces and non-visual score. As action research I have engaged in the concept from two stand-points:
1.-performer (premiered in The Hague, 2013) - collaborative work with composers Benjamin Richter, Petra Strahovnik, Aurelie Lierman, Momoko Noguchi, Akiko Ushijima, Juan Marco Albarracin, Cristiano Melli. They have all composed pieces that I had to learn and perform without using visual inputs.
2.-composer (premiered in Vienna, 2016) - collaborative research work with Dr. Adilia Yip for her research project on applying west-african balafon techniques on modern marimba playing.
InnerSight Etudes are the result of an artistic research collaboration between Cornelia Zambila and Adilia Yip (marimbist, researcher) for her PhD project focused on applying principles of balafon music to contemporary marimba playing.
InnerSight for the composer a follow-up of the project InnerEye, where pieces were composed void of any visual inputs and supposed to be performed by memory. This led to the development of many game pieces and music games techniques, also on experimenting with nonconventional effects and blindfolded performer.
Cornelia applied these skills in developing the Etudes for marimba with accompaniment, which have been performed in Belgium, Austria, California, Portugal, Hong-Kong a.o.
The results have been very important for my development as a composer, InnerEye having been an opportunity to study music games and game pieces (which, without having intended initially, have been the results of the compositions) from inside out, first as a performer and than as a composer.
Below you can download the result which was my “thesis” for finalizing the Master degree NAIP at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague.
-a series of music games/game pieces written on cards which can be combined and re-mixed.
Presentation video of research.
https://vimeo.com/user48884311
Article on Academia:
https://www.academia.edu/31993744/CHAPTER_FIVE_INNER_SIGHT_ETUDES_ADILIA_YIP_AND_CORNELIA_ZAMBILA
InnerSight Etudes excerpts performed at PhD Defence of Adilia Yip, ARIA, Belgium
Video: (piece starts at 37.30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqYveuh4Ed4
Audio: https://soundcloud.com/cornelia-zambila-composer/innersight-game-piece-for-marimba-and-accompaniment