D!V£R#!M&NT! (2024)

Premiere
Date: 25 March 2024
Venue: Phipps Hall, University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom
Performers: TAK Ensemble

This piece aims to highlight the intersubjective differences during listening by a diverse group of audience, the most prominent one being whether a semantic layer in the piece is recognised. As a post-colonial critique on the worldwide superiority of the English language, words of three native languages of former British colonies — Yoruba, Hindi and Cantonese — are included, which will only be recognised by knowers of these languages. With those words being the contextually less expected swear words, it aims to arouse in the mind of the knowers an awareness of the group-listening situation, towards the audience themselves. This partial reorientation of attention within this exclusive group can in turn influence the other members of the audience through their subtle or explicit overt manifestations.

Another layer of the piece non-exclusive to knowers of those three languages is the perception of constant changing groupings of sounds and the intersubjective awareness of this fact. These changes in groupings are to be perceived by different listeners at different points in time, depending on individual factors like attention, and some of which offers competing ways of grouping that allow divergence in perception among the audience.