“Florid Organum”
Michael Prior
7 Mar → 5 Apr 2014

Florid Organum refers to a twelfth century polyphonic composition technique where human voices are accumulated over time, each new voice moving faster or slower than the original to create an evolving harmonic and rhythmic structure.

The first of a series, this work furnishes West Space with an ensemble of temporal appointments, fabricated from recycled materials and repurposed automata. As characters in an absurd drama, objects act together to create an evolving matrix of anticipation, tension, comedy, harmony and discord. As the early compositions of Léonin and Pérotin would break the syllables of just one word (Hallelujah) into complex arrangements for multiple voices, Florid Organum uses minimal components to construct a kind of cognitive polyphony, using the intrinsic qualities of each material to create a diverse sculptural and sonic vocabulary.

Michael Prior’s practice is located between the sonic, sculptural and performative. His work employs strategies of fabrication, organisation and mechanisation to explore musical structures in material forms. Aleatoric method is applied to a physical manifold (objects, the body in space, sound generators) to create self-developing compositions and social exchanges. MP has exhibited installation works at PICA (2009), MONA FOMA (2010, 2013) and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2007-8). Since 2001 he has performed in Helsinki, London, Edinburgh, Berlin, New York, San Francisco and locally for sound programs such as Liquid Architecture and the Now Now.