10/06/2015 'THE PARALLELIST'. Foreword.

The present moment for 'The Parallelist' considers an imagined new music, physical theatre
performance and fixed duration sound installation; a performance based upon metaphor and
analogy. It is intended that Laura Moody, representing a telephone exchange operator, in turn
representative of human consciousness, is isolated at the centre of a system of sonic information
(relayed through a diverse collection of tape machines and loudspeakers), representing signals
which emanate from any material environment. This audio information will be composed of 1) a
basic Ground of crackling noise, such as experienced beside a fire, or whilst listening to an early
talking-movie; 2) a Field or habitat; a series of compositions created with both live and
acousmatic telecommunications equipment and other unconventional musical sources; 3) a
collection of found answer-phone recordings made twenty years ago by a girl in a stream-ofconsciousness or live diary style, and 4) an Underground segment; information only available to
those members of the audience who pick up a telephone receiver and listen. This complete
soundscape will operate as a kind of machine orchestra in support of Laura's song-based drama
which draws upon interpretations of the answer-phone messages, the experience of a female
telephone exchange operator in the early twentieth century, and the fluctuating theories of
consciousness and neuroscience of the last one hundred years.
The origin of the idea of a telephone exchange clerk as being representative of human
consciousness stems from a chapter in the book 'Grammar of Science', by mathematician and
biometrician Karl Pearson, written in 1892, just fourteen years after the world's first physical
telephone exchange was created. In support of the theory of Parallelism, which upholds the
separation of mind from matter, Pearson writes:
We are cribbed and confined in this world of sense-impressions like the exchange clerk in his
world of sounds, and not a step beyond can we get. As his world is conditioned and limited by his
particular network of wires, so ours is conditioned by our nervous system, by our organs of sense.
Their peculiarities determine what is the nature of the outside world which we construct. It is the
similarity in the organs of sense and in the perceptive faculty of all normal human beings which
makes the outside world the same, or practically the same, for them all.
If our telephone clerk had recorded by aid of a phonograph certain of the messages from the
outside world on past occasions, then if any telephonic message on its receipt set several
phonographs repeating past messages, we have an image analogous to what goes on in the brain.
Both telephone and phonograph are equally removed from what the clerk might call the "real
outside world," but they enable him through their sounds to construct a universe; he projects
those sounds, which are really inside his office, outside his office, and speaks of them as the
external universe. This outside world is constructed by him from the contents of the inside
sounds, which differ as widely from things-in-themselves as language, the symbol, must always
differ from the thing it symbolises. For our telephone clerk sounds would be the real world, and
yet we can see how conditioned and limited it would be by the range of his particular telephone
subscribers and by the contents of their messages. So it is with our brain; the sounds from
telephone and phonograph correspond to immediate and stored sense-impressions. These senseimpressions we project as it were outwards and term the real world outside ourselves. But the
things-in-themselves which the sense-impressions symbolise, the "reality," as the metaphysicians
wish to call it, at the other end of the nerve, remains unknown and is unknowable.
Pent up in his office he could never have seen or touched even a telephonic subscriber in
himself. Very much in the position of such a telephone clerk is the conscious ego of each one of
us seated at the brain terminals of the sensory nerves. Not a step nearer than those terminals can
the ego get to the "outer world," and what in and for themselves are the subscribers to its nerve
exchange it has no means of ascertaining. Messages in the form of sense-impressions come
flowing in from that "outside world," and these we analyse, classify, store up, and reason about.
But of the nature of "things-in-themselves," of what may exist at the other end of our system of
telephone wires, we know nothing at all.

Pearson states that:

consciousness is associated with the process which may intervene in the brain between the
receipt of a sense-impression from a sensory nerve and the despatch of a stimulus to action
through a motor nerve.

He describes this interval as:

being filled, as it were, with the mutual resonance and cling-clang of stored senseimpressions and the conceptions drawn from them.

These words and others from 'Grammar of Science' provided the stimulus for the collaboration,
initially conceived as a dual-mono album recording, in which the soundscape appears in one
speaker and Laura's song-drama in the other. This dual-mono recording is still an intended outcome
for the project, as is a special 5.1 surround sound edition and separately issued stereo recordings
which can be listened to independently or together, played on different systems. Ultimately though,
Karl Pearson's analogy almost describes in itself a performance/art installation using sound as a
metaphor for all the senses. His late nineteenth century comparison has presented Laura and I with
the perfect launchpad from which to explore areas of our own practice and thinking, which include:
new approaches to songwriting and storytelling, adopting techniques from physical theatre for
music performance, and incorporating the audience into the work.
We begin by considering the isolation of Laura in the centre of the space and surrounding her with
sound sources. Some of the sounds can only be heard by moving close to the signal source; others
can only be heard by physically responding to the environment (such as picking up a ringing
telephone). For these reasons we are considering a mobile, standing audience, or scattered, movable
seats. Members of the audience can choose their perspective, rather than have it mapped out for
them. Laura's cello and vocal should be heard evenly around the space, as the machine orchestra
settles down to a rattling, crackling supporting role for each episode of the unfolding narrative. The
immersive soundscape will then rise again as Laura returns to her default presence, that of the
working exchange operator, another signal in the soundfield. In this way the two pieces give and
take like orchestra and soloist, building to a surprise ending.
Clay Gold