Michael Cooms
Michael Cooms is a PhD candidate in humanities and communication arts at Western Sydney University.
The PhD project is called "Musical Consciousness" and explores how musicalities produce lifeworlds and becomings. The project draws on non-representational theory (including affect theory and phenomenology) to build an ontology where selves, worlds and relations are created on a foundation of dynamic musicality, produced in imaginative encounters among matter, people, animals and nature, well beyond the invented cultural forms of music. We develop an understanding of how the musical consciousness can inform a 21st-century critique of psycho-social pathologies.
As well as performing in and directing theatre and cabaret (the mongrel's medium) for over twenty years, Michael is also an experimental writer. His performance soundtext, The Visitor, was recently published with a recording, in La Trobe University’s online journal Writing From Below.
Michael studied music composition at ANU with Larry Sitsky and David Worrall. He holds degrees in music (UNE), philosophy (Macquarie), media and cultural studies (Macquarie) and a Diploma in Business (Sydney Institute of Technology). He was a part of the Q Theatre workshops for several years, and has also studied creative writing and literary theory at UWS Nepean, and performance studies at Sydney University.
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Supervisors: Anna Gibbs, Paolo Diego Bubbio, Alison Downham-Moore, and Chris Fleming
The PhD project is called "Musical Consciousness" and explores how musicalities produce lifeworlds and becomings. The project draws on non-representational theory (including affect theory and phenomenology) to build an ontology where selves, worlds and relations are created on a foundation of dynamic musicality, produced in imaginative encounters among matter, people, animals and nature, well beyond the invented cultural forms of music. We develop an understanding of how the musical consciousness can inform a 21st-century critique of psycho-social pathologies.
As well as performing in and directing theatre and cabaret (the mongrel's medium) for over twenty years, Michael is also an experimental writer. His performance soundtext, The Visitor, was recently published with a recording, in La Trobe University’s online journal Writing From Below.
Michael studied music composition at ANU with Larry Sitsky and David Worrall. He holds degrees in music (UNE), philosophy (Macquarie), media and cultural studies (Macquarie) and a Diploma in Business (Sydney Institute of Technology). He was a part of the Q Theatre workshops for several years, and has also studied creative writing and literary theory at UWS Nepean, and performance studies at Sydney University.
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Supervisors: Anna Gibbs, Paolo Diego Bubbio, Alison Downham-Moore, and Chris Fleming
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Published Papers by Michael Cooms
In Mirroring and Attunement, Kenneth Wright suggests that “…an art work in progress is both maternal extension of the self, and a self in formation … an interweaving of impulse (spontaneous gesture) and meaning … alive with gestures and answering forms” (Wright 2009, 53). An art work that interrogates the boundaries of language and music exposes the simultaneous resistance and desire, dependence and dissolving of language and music. The Visitor applies contemporary music composition techniques to words, including additive structures, augmentation and diminution of motives, hocket, set permutations and interplay. This is not original — many writers have composed words musically (such as Joyce, Eliot, Beckett, Shakespeare, Tibetan mantras and Greek choruses) — and language, like life, has inherent musicality. However, in this piece the techniques are deployed to reveal the dialectical dissolving of language, egos, relationships and desires while they attempt to come into being. I suggest that language and music constitute subjects, bodies and sexualities in formation, and language and music are always interweavings of impulse, gesture and meaning. Through language, sound, music (and other phantasy served scum materials), language and music come into each other and un/ become our relationships, sexualities, bodies, encounters.
Queered musilanguage, melochamberplay bittrashrantpoem, The Visitor is a mongrel. tap tap. scarcity creates desire. of whom? The encounter which attempts to form language and others, a libidinal contagion, attempts to constitute a subject, thus admits it is not one. crash… The only solution is phantasy, malformations of transsexual flowering wonder served scum. We met us. Paradise possible, hmmmmm.
Conference Presentations by Michael Cooms
This session scopes this project of research, taking Jung’s principle of individuation (later appropriated by Deleuze), as a key paradigms for this study, proposing that music is integral to processes of individuation, and thus essential to understanding the health and pathologies of individuals and societies.
'The Psychic Life of Music' is a reference to Judith Butler's book 'The Psychic Life of Power', music being the particular kind of social and psychic power for research. This project I am sketching will therefore attempt to follow Butler’s lead, in attempting to transcend the dialectic of the psychological and the sociopolitical.
Bio
Michael Coombes is a PhD candidate in music and philosophy at the School of Humanities and Communications Arts at the University of Western Sydney, where he researches the role of music in the development of subjectivity. He studied communication at UWS, music composition at ANU and ethnomusicology at UNE, completed his honours thesis in screen music at Macquarie University and completed a Diploma of Business from Sydney Institute of Technology. Michael has worked as a musician and performer in self-devised theatre and cabaret for over twenty years, and is also a business analyst and writer for Telstra Media.
Bio
Michael Coombes is a PhD candidate in music and philosophy at the University of Western Sydney who researches the role of music in the development of subjectivity. He studied music composition at ANU and ethnomusicology at UNE, completed his honours thesis in screen music at Macquarie University and completed a Diploma of Business from Ultimo TAFE. He is also a Q Theatre acting graduate and has composed music for theatre and film. He also contracts as a business analyst and corporate writer for Telstra Media.
Bio
Michael Coombes is a PhD candidate in music and philosophy at the University of Western Sydney who researches the role of music in the development of the self, and the relationship of musical practice to psychosocial pathologies. He studied communication at UWS, music composition at ANU and ethnomusicology at UNE, completed his honours thesis in screen music at Macquarie University and completed a Diploma of Business from Sydney Institute of Technology. Michael has worked as a musician and performer in self-devised theatre and cabaret for over twenty years, and is also a business analyst and writer for Telstra Media.
thesis by Michael Cooms
In the last few decades, screen music has been established as an important field of research. The importance of music in affecting audience readings of moving images is now well understood, yet there is still much to be learned about how screen music works.
This thesis develops our understanding of how screen music functions rhetorically, in terms of its relationship with the image. All screen music relates to moving images with a degree of correspondence or distanciation, that constructs a film and its audience within a particular field of cultural practice. Metaphor, explicit or not, is produced by the montage of music and image.
A review of screen music scholarship and terminology developed in the last three decades suggests that a discourse has been created that has largely excluded screen music practitioners; as such, the thesis attempts to present a model that can be applied to both analysis and creative practice. Analysis of various examples reveals both a heterogeneity of practices in how screen music functions, as well as a global conversation using musical signs and meanings.
Thinking through the paradigm of screen music as montage, metaphor and metonym, in relation to screen image and action, allows us to think anew about what makes music radical or conventional. Conclusions also briefly consider future research directions, such as how analysis of image/sound relationships in screen cultures can inform an understanding of the psycho-social functions of music in everyday life.
Scores by Michael Cooms
The starting point for this piece was reading composer Rob Davidson's PhD thesis, where he talks about using tonal ideas but in own way to manipulate ideas.
Piece establishes Bb, Db, Eb as key tones, also the intervals established by those tones established as key intervals. M2 & m7 become 'consonants' in this piece, P5 & P4 tend to be avoided. Tritone becomes a consonant as it is a stacking of 2 m3s, which are consonants in this piece. B & Ab are introduced, to build a pentatonic mode. Initial material is augmented/diminished with additive rhythm. A tone row is introduced in the oboe based on the initial notes/intervals - I wanted the challenge to combine atonal & modal materials in one piece. Some moments could have developed, but for this piece the point seemed to be to keep moving on to new ideas.
The flute & clarinet work together, influenced by the Balinese 'kotekan' technique for interlocking parts - each part has 2 notes, 1 sounded together with the other part, the other note when the other part is not sounding. The simultaneous can be the same (making a 3 note kotekan) or different notes simultaneously (making a 4 note kotekan). I have move notes around sometimes from strict Balinese technique where I thought it help build the musical texture.
Conceptually, the piece is also influenced by Indonesian musical & social model of the individual leaning on and woven into the group - a tonic for pressure to fail or succeed as an individual, gaining strength and identity from others as well as the self - also influenced by Heidegger's notion of being as always being in the world and time, in a context, and acceptance of this. Therefore the texture at any time is as important in this piece as any individual part. When a part does shine, it is still woven into context of other parts.
I generally avoid exact repetition - any time something sounds like repetitive minimalism I changed it. This constant evolving change is also a Balinese influence, but I am trying to synthesise a personal response.
The piece is slow work and I find it takes a few days to build and get the texture right for just a few bars.
It also strikes me that the insistent typewriter like rattle of the piece has some relation to very bad insomnia I have had lately - an observation rather than an intention.
Dynamic is marked p - should be overall soft, some contrasts and swells may be inserted by performers, but I want to leave it to them, same way the gamelan leader makes such decisions in rehearsal. Phrasing is indicated by beaming and rest separation, so I didn't feel was necessary to insert phrase signs.
Barring is imposed to assist reading, but is more a continuous stream.
element is very dynamic, aspects such as original generative pitches and rhythms are more static as they are then subjected to live manipulation by the pitch-bend wheel. The piece also explores the “effort” required for a live keyboardist to manipulate the wheel in tandem with keyboard playing, sometimes using some phasing of melodic cycles against different length pitch bend cycles; occasionally melodic material and the pitch bend are repeated in parallel cycles, exploring the subtle variations caused by the impossibility of the live playing to repeat exactly the same pitch bend in
repetition.
For a medium size jazz ensemble (originally for the UNE jazz ensemble (therefore the non-standard combination of instruments)).
Papers by Michael Cooms
In Mirroring and Attunement, Kenneth Wright suggests that “…an art work in progress is both maternal extension of the self, and a self in formation … an interweaving of impulse (spontaneous gesture) and meaning … alive with gestures and answering forms” (Wright 2009, 53). An art work that interrogates the boundaries of language and music exposes the simultaneous resistance and desire, dependence and dissolving of language and music. The Visitor applies contemporary music composition techniques to words, including additive structures, augmentation and diminution of motives, hocket, set permutations and interplay. This is not original — many writers have composed words musically (such as Joyce, Eliot, Beckett, Shakespeare, Tibetan mantras and Greek choruses) — and language, like life, has inherent musicality. However, in this piece the techniques are deployed to reveal the dialectical dissolving of language, egos, relationships and desires while they attempt to come into being. I suggest that language and music constitute subjects, bodies and sexualities in formation, and language and music are always interweavings of impulse, gesture and meaning. Through language, sound, music (and other phantasy served scum materials), language and music come into each other and un/ become our relationships, sexualities, bodies, encounters.
Queered musilanguage, melochamberplay bittrashrantpoem, The Visitor is a mongrel. tap tap. scarcity creates desire. of whom? The encounter which attempts to form language and others, a libidinal contagion, attempts to constitute a subject, thus admits it is not one. crash… The only solution is phantasy, malformations of transsexual flowering wonder served scum. We met us. Paradise possible, hmmmmm.
This session scopes this project of research, taking Jung’s principle of individuation (later appropriated by Deleuze), as a key paradigms for this study, proposing that music is integral to processes of individuation, and thus essential to understanding the health and pathologies of individuals and societies.
'The Psychic Life of Music' is a reference to Judith Butler's book 'The Psychic Life of Power', music being the particular kind of social and psychic power for research. This project I am sketching will therefore attempt to follow Butler’s lead, in attempting to transcend the dialectic of the psychological and the sociopolitical.
Bio
Michael Coombes is a PhD candidate in music and philosophy at the School of Humanities and Communications Arts at the University of Western Sydney, where he researches the role of music in the development of subjectivity. He studied communication at UWS, music composition at ANU and ethnomusicology at UNE, completed his honours thesis in screen music at Macquarie University and completed a Diploma of Business from Sydney Institute of Technology. Michael has worked as a musician and performer in self-devised theatre and cabaret for over twenty years, and is also a business analyst and writer for Telstra Media.
Bio
Michael Coombes is a PhD candidate in music and philosophy at the University of Western Sydney who researches the role of music in the development of subjectivity. He studied music composition at ANU and ethnomusicology at UNE, completed his honours thesis in screen music at Macquarie University and completed a Diploma of Business from Ultimo TAFE. He is also a Q Theatre acting graduate and has composed music for theatre and film. He also contracts as a business analyst and corporate writer for Telstra Media.
Bio
Michael Coombes is a PhD candidate in music and philosophy at the University of Western Sydney who researches the role of music in the development of the self, and the relationship of musical practice to psychosocial pathologies. He studied communication at UWS, music composition at ANU and ethnomusicology at UNE, completed his honours thesis in screen music at Macquarie University and completed a Diploma of Business from Sydney Institute of Technology. Michael has worked as a musician and performer in self-devised theatre and cabaret for over twenty years, and is also a business analyst and writer for Telstra Media.
In the last few decades, screen music has been established as an important field of research. The importance of music in affecting audience readings of moving images is now well understood, yet there is still much to be learned about how screen music works.
This thesis develops our understanding of how screen music functions rhetorically, in terms of its relationship with the image. All screen music relates to moving images with a degree of correspondence or distanciation, that constructs a film and its audience within a particular field of cultural practice. Metaphor, explicit or not, is produced by the montage of music and image.
A review of screen music scholarship and terminology developed in the last three decades suggests that a discourse has been created that has largely excluded screen music practitioners; as such, the thesis attempts to present a model that can be applied to both analysis and creative practice. Analysis of various examples reveals both a heterogeneity of practices in how screen music functions, as well as a global conversation using musical signs and meanings.
Thinking through the paradigm of screen music as montage, metaphor and metonym, in relation to screen image and action, allows us to think anew about what makes music radical or conventional. Conclusions also briefly consider future research directions, such as how analysis of image/sound relationships in screen cultures can inform an understanding of the psycho-social functions of music in everyday life.
The starting point for this piece was reading composer Rob Davidson's PhD thesis, where he talks about using tonal ideas but in own way to manipulate ideas.
Piece establishes Bb, Db, Eb as key tones, also the intervals established by those tones established as key intervals. M2 & m7 become 'consonants' in this piece, P5 & P4 tend to be avoided. Tritone becomes a consonant as it is a stacking of 2 m3s, which are consonants in this piece. B & Ab are introduced, to build a pentatonic mode. Initial material is augmented/diminished with additive rhythm. A tone row is introduced in the oboe based on the initial notes/intervals - I wanted the challenge to combine atonal & modal materials in one piece. Some moments could have developed, but for this piece the point seemed to be to keep moving on to new ideas.
The flute & clarinet work together, influenced by the Balinese 'kotekan' technique for interlocking parts - each part has 2 notes, 1 sounded together with the other part, the other note when the other part is not sounding. The simultaneous can be the same (making a 3 note kotekan) or different notes simultaneously (making a 4 note kotekan). I have move notes around sometimes from strict Balinese technique where I thought it help build the musical texture.
Conceptually, the piece is also influenced by Indonesian musical & social model of the individual leaning on and woven into the group - a tonic for pressure to fail or succeed as an individual, gaining strength and identity from others as well as the self - also influenced by Heidegger's notion of being as always being in the world and time, in a context, and acceptance of this. Therefore the texture at any time is as important in this piece as any individual part. When a part does shine, it is still woven into context of other parts.
I generally avoid exact repetition - any time something sounds like repetitive minimalism I changed it. This constant evolving change is also a Balinese influence, but I am trying to synthesise a personal response.
The piece is slow work and I find it takes a few days to build and get the texture right for just a few bars.
It also strikes me that the insistent typewriter like rattle of the piece has some relation to very bad insomnia I have had lately - an observation rather than an intention.
Dynamic is marked p - should be overall soft, some contrasts and swells may be inserted by performers, but I want to leave it to them, same way the gamelan leader makes such decisions in rehearsal. Phrasing is indicated by beaming and rest separation, so I didn't feel was necessary to insert phrase signs.
Barring is imposed to assist reading, but is more a continuous stream.
element is very dynamic, aspects such as original generative pitches and rhythms are more static as they are then subjected to live manipulation by the pitch-bend wheel. The piece also explores the “effort” required for a live keyboardist to manipulate the wheel in tandem with keyboard playing, sometimes using some phasing of melodic cycles against different length pitch bend cycles; occasionally melodic material and the pitch bend are repeated in parallel cycles, exploring the subtle variations caused by the impossibility of the live playing to repeat exactly the same pitch bend in
repetition.
For a medium size jazz ensemble (originally for the UNE jazz ensemble (therefore the non-standard combination of instruments)).