Evidence of “Composing” as “Making With”: New Roles, New Relationships, New Forms

Making with Trees. It was a warm day for the north of Scotland. In the wildlife area Gregor started exploring under the hawthorn tree. After a period of climbing, and exploring the holes in the trunk for bugs, he found a stick. He sat on the ground watching the others and stripping the bark off the stick, enjoying the sensation of the very smooth surface he found below. He stated the wood that remained was “shiny new” as he held it up against the tree trunk, which was much rougher. And then he noticed the broken branch low down, just below his knee, which looked different in texture and color. He hit it with his stick. It resonated.

He started hitting it rhythmically, moving the stick (now a beater) to different places, exploring the sound. He played with the height and force needed to make the branch below resonate. And then the contrast, the scraping of the tree trunk, and the hitting of the tree trunk, finding no “giving” and no discernible resonance.

I picked up another stick, and found a different branch, negotiating through eye contact if it was OK for me to join in. I played with him, exploring the beat together, exploring the branch sounds together.

We came to a dramatic finish as he played a rapid “trill” with the stick, and then he had had enough, saw a friend, and joined them to start climbing a tree again.

This biological-botanical-sonic episode of making with materials emerged. It was not planned as we entered the wildlife area. We had no prior intention of making with the trees in this way. It was both “purposeless” and “playful” The trees, the stick and the physical accessibility of the broken branch allowed Gregor to “push out,” exploring how the different materials acted, what the different textures and colors “meant” in sonic terms, how the materials changed as he played with them in different ways (peeling the bark, striking them in different ways), how the materials responded to his body (rubbing his palm, leaving bits of bark under his fingernails, bouncing in his hand as it hit the branch), and how he responded to them (changing his stance, raising his arm higher, leaning in toward my tree to hear better)

Making with Keys. A group of student teachers were asked to get percussion instruments and start improvising together. In the middle of the improvisation, Charlotte, the course leader, reached into her pocket and pulled out a set of keys. She played the very edges of the cymbals with the keys, while the rest of the group smiled—something unexpected had emerged into the space. The movement was slow, and careful. There was space and time to watch and consider what was emerging into the improvisation.

As she played louder, pushing the key against the cymbal more strongly, Ana began to react. She looked away as well as showing discomfort on her face, with her mouth opened wide and eyes scrunched tight.

I questioned later whether she was really responding only to the sound of the key, or whether the sight of a “non-instrument”playing a musical instrument in this way was “troubling” (Haraway, 2016)—her image of music, of what was acceptable, of what was allowed. This was further explored when Charlotte dropped the keys, allowing them to fall off the cymbal and onto the floor.

Ana started to copy, lifting her cymbal up, looking at the floor, and then pretending to drop the cymbal while still holding the strap, but she stopped herself releasing completely.

For this group of music student teachers, the arrival of the keys into the making space disrupted notions of disciplinary materials. The keys were not intended to be instruments, they had not been chosen from the percussion trolley, and they were not meant to touch the cymbals. However, the students allowed them to continue in the space, they allowed them to generate different ways of being improvisatory, and they explored how the keys “played” with their bodies and other materials. In theatrical improvisation there is a well-known principle called “yes, and” (Johnstone, 1979), where moving the improvisation forward requires those involved to say “yes,” accepting what.

Pretending to copy has been offered (in this case the keys) and then “and,” involving adding to, developing, and working with what results from that acceptance. In this scenario, Charlotte as the “teacher” pushed the group to accept the keys. She saw the potential in moving across the disciplinary boundaries of what counted as “instruments,” creating a transdiciplinary entanglement that was generative. Through the course of the improvisation the keys became instruments with the student teachers to the point that when they were dropped it was a moment of shock, so that Ana could not quite bring herself to follow through with the cymbal.

Making New Roles.In both “making with trees” and “making with keys,” acceptance of what was being generated in the moment of the making forged new perceptions of who was involved in the process. These changes in perceptions of roles are illuminated by who or what is seen as able to respond (response-able) within the making with, and how this ability to respond manifests.

Asking who or what was response-able in “making with trees” disrupts well-trodden conceptions of the child as incapable and powerless (Murris, 2016), where the label of learner denotes a “not-yet” being (Lindgren, 2020). Gregor’s response-abilities to make with incorporated the feel of the wood (of the stick and of different parts of the tree), the feel of the vibrations of different textures and resonances that were created, the emotional satisfaction of the more resonant sound, the accepting of the invitation to make with another human, the creation of a rhythm and the playing of that rhythm with another rhythm, and the ability to respond with form through the making of an ending.

These response-abilities position Gregor, and children, not as incapable or powerless but as “rich, resourceful and resilient” where they “[e]merge in unbounded materialdiscursive relationships” (Murris, 2016, p. 184). This shift re-sees children, not as “yet-to-become” composers, but as already young makers with, intra-acting (Barad 2007, p. 141) with their socio-audio-material worlds in processes of action with and between each other. This view of the young as makers with is inherently transdisciplinary, engaged already in exploring the world not only from a disciplinary perspective, but crossing and reaching out as “able materialdiscursive meaning-makers and problem- posers” (Murris, 2016, p. 200).

However, “making with trees” does more than re-see children as transdisciplinary, improvisatory makers with. It also repositions the role of teacher. In both experiences binary divisions between learner-teacher, child-adult, and expert-novice were “troubled” (Haraway, 2016), creating new ways of being with. In making with trees, the teacher role was to make with what was already present. I, Carolyn, was not an instigator or facilitator, but was a co-maker, a “teacher-maker,” entangling myself with all that was already in play, already in motion. We were improvising together, finding ways to make sounds in different ways, simultaneously negotiating where the making was going, allowing each of us (myself, Gregor, the materials) to have moments of leading, much like in an improvisation ensemble.

The role of the teacher in “making with keys” took on a different quality. Here the teacher introduced the keys into what was already in play. In responding to what was emerging, to the sonic, material, sensorial entanglement, she added to it, and created a role of teacher-as-entangler. That the material was “hers”—that it came from her pocket—was a material entangling of herself with the others in the group. This challenged the disciplinary boundaries and blurred the lines of personal and the professional. The boundaries of the instrument and non-instrument were also blurred. Her role of teacher-as-entangler was not one of power over “in which one body is compelled by another to behave or act in a certain way” (Bell, 2014, p. 1014) but required a different playing of status (Johnstone, 1979).

Johnstone’s seminal work on theater improvisation talks of the status games played by individuals. He argues that we embody status through stance, gesture, language, and how we use and occupy materials, and these can either allow or block the continuation of improvisations (Johnstone, 1979, pp. 36-37). Therefore, Johnstone calls on improvisers to develop a fluidity of statuses, being able to move their own status (as enacted through their embodied and material roles) up and down in response to the scene to keep the improvisation going. In both “making with trees” and “making with keys,” the role of “teacher-maker” involved status fluidity. In “making with trees,” joining in with Gregor’s making was an act of being “minoritarian” (Taguchi, 2010, p. 172), assuming a low status in relation to Gregor and his musical ideas, and allowing the materials and his making to lead. While in “making with keys” the act of bringing keys into the entanglement could be seen as fairly high status, instigating a new direction for others in the group.

The teacher remained seated, at a physical distance, and physically lower than others in the group, as she reached in toward the cymbals. This meant that reaching in toward the cymbals was significant. There was a physical and metaphorical “space” for different directions to be taken.