Despite providing a standard for perfection, metronomes possess their own inadequacies and imperfections. Mechanical metronomes used alongside each other would quickly fall out of sync, each one continuing on ahead or behind the others. Rather than setting it aside as an error, this piece centers itself on this desynchronization.
For a musician, being able to execute a beat in compliance with a metronome is still an indicator of a certain level of proficiency. It made me think, why do we follow the metronome if each of them is so different? Each of them is supposed to be perfect yet each is unique. Then how to know which is the right one? The mechanical object with its peculiarities dictates what a musician should do. These thoughts transport me to the rules and expectations of everyday life that many of us comply with because it is “the proper thing to do”. Society could be seen as an assemblage of metronomes that dictates rules and forces into certain behavioral patterns. Sometimes we escape those demands, sometimes they get to us, whereas time slips through our fingers like sand.
Performers: line upon line (Adam Bedell, Cullen Faulk, and Matthew Teodori)
Audio Recording: Eddie Criswell
Video Recording: Andrew Stoltz
Composer, Mixing and Editing: Inga C