Fragment
Work in Progress
Taking what I'd written (see Introduction) I decided to start working out how a composition might be structured.
The metaphor of the record was an obvious place to start; the turning of the pot in my hands, the grooves I could feel, the potter's wheel being turned to create the pot in the first place.
There was also the sonic qualities of the shard's provenance; the break as revealed in the edges and the long period of silence (or near silence) when the shard was buried in the ground.
The important thing is that although the composition is inspired by a part - a fragment; nevertheless, like the shard it has to be considered as part of a whole, in other words, to use the words of Henri Bortoft, the whole should be imminent in the part.
Considering again the metaphor of the record, I realised that what would essentially be a linear piece would have to be 'looped', or rather it would contain repeating passages. As I move my finger down the fragment, the first ridge would be the first part, the second would then come in and so on.
Returning for the minute to Henri Bortoft, the following is interesting. In his book, 'The Wholeness of Nature' he writes regarding parts and the whole in terms of the Holographic plate:
'A hologram has several remarkable properties in addition to those related to the three-dimensional nature of the optical reconstruction which it permits. The particular property which is of direct concern in understanding wholeness is the pervasiveness of the whole optical object throughout the plate.' If the hologram plate is broken into fragments and one fragment is illuminated, it is found that the same three-dimensional optical reconstruction of the original object is produced. There is nothing missing; the only difference is that the reconstruction is less well defined. The entire original object can be optically reconstructed from any fragment of the original hologram, but as the fragments get smaller and smaller the resolution deteriorates until the reconstruction becomes so blotchy and ill-defined as to become unrecognizable. This property of the hologram is in striking contrast to the ordinary image-recording photographic plate. If this type of plate is broken and a fragment illuminated, the image reproduced will be that recorded on the particular fragment and no more. With orthodox photography the image fragments with the plate; with holography the image remains undivided when the plate is fragmented.'
If one imagines the composition as a work of 5 minutes, then the fragmentary piece of that work (the piece I am composing) would be 1 minute, but would last 5 minutes with the silence surrounding it. However I would want somehow to articulate the idea of the whole being imminent in the part and the sense of that whole being diminished in its clarity.
The piece as I have said would contain great deal of silence which is of course relevant in terms both of the part of the pot that is missing and the silence when the fragment lay beneath the ground. The part of the composition which is audible in turn reflects the extant fragment and the 'sound' of its original place in the world and its breaking.
The silence of the piece also allows for sounds 'outside' the work to become apparent, reflecting both the contemporary world and the nowness of the present in contrast to the silence of what has passed.