Mx.Mechanica - seven scenes for drum set and electronics (2020)
Mx.Mechanica, for drum set and electronics, explores the drum set as a machine that a player enters into, activating it as an extension of the body, and in turn, causing the performer to become a component of the machine. The performer becomes the intercessor between the music - a sort of algorithm of rhythmic repeated phrases, and the machines sonic output. The fixed setup serves as a foil to the player, bringing out the similarities between humans and machines while also demonstrating the impossibility of the human becoming full mechanised.
The piece follows the machine through its final hour as it starts up, gets up to full speed, becomes overloaded, and burns out, rendering it completely defunct. The epilogue provides a somewhat utopian vision for the broken machine, showing the possibility of new life among the wreckage. The mechanism is depicted as a genderless automaton, harkening back to a trope of machines mimicking human characteristics. Gender - a social construct informed by the interaction between people - is rendered negligible in the interaction between human and machine, as the drum kit is a-gendered, forcing an a-gendered interaction whereby the performers gender is sublimated. This allows the performer to mirror the machine, furthering the goal of merging performer and machine.