Super Critical Mass

Super Critical Mass (SCM) brings together local participants to create site-responsive sonic fields in public places, working with identical sound sources and generative instructions. Thus, SCM is an ongoing experiment in how humans perceive, relate to and interact within public space. Using the active ingredients of sound, space and social connections in creative workshops and public performances, SCM examines the nature of particular locations (their use, sociopolitical function, acoustics, topographies), of community (how it builds or falters, who it includes and excludes), of networks (emergence, order and chaos, self-guiding feedback loops) and how sound functions within these factors (how it resonates, dissipates, attracts and repels.

That Thing Between Us is a spatialised work for community voices, featuring a body of regional participants that has accumulated since 2015. Super Critical Mass (SCM) brings together temporary communities to create ambient sound states in publicly accessible places. Each ‘orchestra’ is made up of one type of sound source, whether musical or everyday: 30 ceramic bowls, 50 voices, 100 brass instruments. That Thing Between Us is a study into interdependence. As is typical for SCM the work is planned but unscored and emerges from internalised instructions. As the human voice is organic, each singer must rely on one other to establish and maintain pitch. This creates a dynamic feedback situation reminiscent of early social works by Pauline Oliveros or Cornelius Cardew, a rich and ever-changing sound portrait of a society in action. 12-12.40pm Saturday 8 April