Tchnienie (Breath) - Katarzyna Gacek-Duda, Rafał Rudawski

Time, which is the beginning and the end of the stream of air, is measured here by two old clocks. The progress of the 35-minute-long composition is reflected by the clock’s minute hand. 

1. Brightness

The event starts with chaos and brightness, implied by the interpenetration of extremely shrill sounds, which illustrate how the air’s evolution is born through breath. Starting with random notes, breath is constructed here by the flutes as historically the first music instruments on Earth: pipes made of bone, clay, and later wooden ones. The spacetime of that birth is enveloped in streaks of transformed electronic sounds, accompanied by the first independent beats of the rhythm. The instruments that represent the birth of rhythm are similar to primitive African rattles and drums with animal skins. 

2. Breath is Born in Symbiosis

When the sound objects producing reverb or delay effects are born, the clock’s minute hand moves to twenty and the very intense instrumental sounds briefly form a symbiosis, which however disappears and disintegrates into space after a while. 

3. The New World

A new world is born after the massive sound attack. In this world instruments such as flutes are applied unconventionally. The language of breath is born, meaning the flutist starts speaking into the instruments, uttering words without any particular meaning. 

Gradually a union of air, speech and sound emerges. At the same time, we hear transformed birdsongs. Some of them are played backwards and at a frequency about a dozen Hz lower than natural. In the background, there are Irish bagpipes and various percussion instruments that build rhythmic tension. 

4. Time Has Passed

When the minute hand shows thirty-five, both air and sound recede into spacetime, and the flute breathes for the last, seventh time, which is a symbol of the transitory nature of the world, strictly related to time, sound, and air. 

Katarzyna Gacek–Duda