Jakub Rataj: Between the Words

The crackling of bamboo, ripping of stems, and crushing of leaves is what the first part of “Between the Lines” is composed of. I was being cruel to such a fragile, yet solid plant (the bamboo I have been destroying like this had already dried…), and this is how I handled the sound recording as well. The organic sound object gradually became transformed into a mechanical, artificially constructed sound entity – just like bamboo groves turn into artificial lay-bys of a metropolis. By means of tearing and cutting heartlessly, I changed the original, “natural” sound into a broke-down machine which sometimes gets jammed – into a small robot who knows that he has already been replaced by new, better models, and yet he is trying hard to keep up with the rhythm of time.

I have used the poem called “One Artist” by Vladimír Kokolia as construction material for the composition “One” which is for seven instruments and electronics, and it came into existence at about the same period of time. I was seeking that which is hidden between the lines of the poem, and I found smacking and breathing. Breathing in as well as breathing out carries in itself natural tension that is created before the word comes out, and the release that follows the utterance. This empty space between the two parts of discourse is in reality filled up with expectation of receiving information that would not come, and instead of that, it becomes an autonomous sound independent on the meaning of words, thus creating the second part of “Between the Words.”

Recordings of the city soundscape represent the third part of the composition. These are sonic images of individual places which are being sketched in more and more detail, just like when you paint a moustache and a top hat on the picture of a fish seller, or when the petanque ball makes the nearby church bell ring out.