Light Music was motivated by the scant attention being paid to women composers in the European tradition. It began as a composition in drawings. In the filming of these drawings — it developed into an orchestration of noise — whereby the intervals between the lines register as differentiated noise or “notes”. The drawings were then filmed using a rostrum camera (a type of camera used to animate still images). The movement of the camera lens — towards or away from the drawings — is heard; as the intervals between lines narrow or widen, so the pitch of sound rises or falls. The image produces sound — that is, the playing of lines is literally “light” music. In the earliest film screenings of Light Music, it was not possible to synchronise the two projectors. And so I would move between the two — in a sense conducting them — trying to keep them in time. Cinema and music tend to demand that each performance be a repetition of the last. But Light Music is more or less different each time it is screened. In a particular context, the audience becomes performers — performing within and to the light of Light Music. This is taken away, perhaps — on a mobile phone — as a digital record of the viewer as performer. The relationship of the audience to the work has radically changed: sound is not still — sound moves. (Lis Rhodes)
