Miranda Whall

Dirty Composition in Three Parts began when I placed 4 sheets of acetate onto Dirty Drawing: October 2022 (temperature) on the 17th October 2022. The drawing at the stage of its development contained 15,232 digits approx. 3,968, and 2,176 numbers approx. I searched the area within the acetate for all of the data points beginning with 7, 8, 9 & 10, so for example 9.568721, and marked in permanent pen the digit 7, 8, 9, 10. I then put the acetate sheets over music manuscript paper, it was extremely exciting to realise that the data suddenly, in that simple gesture, had made music.

I have commissioned the incredible French pianist Sophie Agnel to compose, play and record a three part music composition titled Dirty Composition in Three Parts in response to the notations produced from the three drawings in the series Dirty Drawings. Sophie began as a classical musician, then moved into modern jazz and now works in free improvisation. She works in “extensive prep-piano” or “extended piano”, a radically materialist way of approaching the whole instrument, Agnel creates a surprising and dynamic personal universe that that plays with lyrical, abstract and sensualist dimensions.

Below are the 3 final notations taken from the series of 3 Dirty Drawings.

18th October 2022

6th August 2023

12th April 2023

Sophie requested to work with the notations without the manuscript paper:

18th October 2022

6th August 2023

12th April 2023

The project development:

I invited Kay Davies, the harpist who I had worked with subsequently, to visit my studio in the hope that she could make a composition with my first set of notations. It was fascinating watching her turn the dots into notes, and then the notes into music.

Kay developed the manuscript further to create Dirty Composition no.9; 17th October 2022. This composition is utterly unique, because once I had finished drawing all of the data for October the particular arrangement of numbers and dots that I used to create Kays notation are gone, i.e., covered over by more numbers. I find the ephemerality of this process extremely exciting.

“I phrased the composition with a musical bar and time signature to give it form. A key signature, dictated by the starting note was notated in black. To remain intrinsic to the truth of the original notation, i.e. the numbers which became dots transformed to notes, could not be changed. Movement or adjustment to the left or right was implemented to present an aesthetic, playable notation. The grey notes become a creative harmonic addition , as with dynamic instruction, bringing to life a composition of curious melody, explicit in its auditory ownership of the senses. Provocative and melancholy, with haunting tones.“

Kay Davies, November 2023