Pressure Project 3
Posted: May 7, 2026 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Storytelling through sound
Themes
- Decisions
- False Dichotomies
- Search for meaning
- Pretense
I wanted to explore the idea that we spend a tremendous amount of time seeking meaning out in the world, when what matters most often happens closest to home. This value in combination with the shared context of the assignment provided the initial framework for the experience. With this in place I worked out my score fairly quickly. The experience would present two options where audience members could try to pick apart the meaning of the story being told (which would be devoid of any direct meaning).
My experience began in the ACCAD Hallway. My introduction to the experience was tightly scripted and carefully crafted to avoid any explicit imperative instructions:
“Welcome home. You may choose to go through the door to the motion lab. You may choose to go through the door to the classroom. Each space contains a different experience.”
During the performance, one classmate asked if they could go between rooms. I hadn’t anticipated this question, which was a fairly obvious one in hindsight. I replied that they were free to make their own decisions.
Each room had a non-sensical musical composition that I had created. I like to run through a process with music where I start with a dumb idea and pour effort into it. Aside from being a fun exercise, it allows me to compose music without the stress of trying to make meaning. I developed this practice after becoming disenchanted with trying to make meaningful music or music with a message. I make music for fun, but I would cringe years later when I’d listen to a younger iteration of myself trying to be profound or expressive or whatever it was that I was trying to accomplish. The author had died and I was making up my own meaning when listening to it anyway, so I reasoned that this approach was just as good as any other I was trying out. And oddly – because my effort shifted to the construction and away from being self-conscious or self-involved, I enjoyed listening to the songs more. How could I not, when it gave us such tracks as the pandemic era Appletini with my Homeboys? (I actually would have preferred to use this song over the second song below, but there is an actual story to be derived from it, and I wanted to use tracks that were completely devoid of meaning to capture the spirit of this project).
Fue is a song that I recorded on my iPhone years ago as a joke for a close friend I met years ago in a college French Class. The lyrics are:
Du beur, du beur
Le voyaguer
Du beur, du beur
Le voyaguer
Du beur, du beur
Ma petite ami
Du beur, du beur
Avec moi aujourd’hui
(X2)
Du bœuf
Du bœuf
Du bœuf
Vous ne voulez pas ce bœuf
Which translates more or less (with what is probably very poor grammar, I’m not that good at French)
Some butter, some butter
The voyager
Some butter, some butter
The voyager
Some butter, some butter
My girlfriend
Some butter, some butter
With me today
(X2)
Some beef
Some beef
Some beef
You don’t want this beef (formal pronoun)
It’s stupid. I love it.
Here, listen.
The second song was called Pareidolia (A Confession 4/4). It was originally constructed using vocal samples in 2021. I spent several hours editing this one for Pressure Project 3 just to change the song’s structure a bit. There’s nothing particularly interesting in this song. When I made it I was trying to evoke the idea of someone trying really hard to make something overly artistic, deep, and meaningful (basically taking a jab at myself as a teenager). It’s not a particularly good listen.
The main point of this story is that while you’re out trying to milk meaning from the world you’re missing the real story. As soon as I had given the instructions I began to pull up a video of my daughter and I doing bedtime stories. It was important to me that I didn’t “cheat” and wait for people to leave before pulling it up. If someone had stuck around long enough they might have heard the sound and stuck around.
During the reflection period I refused to replay the story time file because that’s the point – you missed it. Nobody in the class actually heard the story, however several people walking through the halls did. This actually made me more uncomfortable than expected. I had considered the high probability that people without the context of the class would walk by during the performance and saw this as a major plus… as reinforcing the point that I was trying to make. While you are missing the story other people to whom the story means nothing are likely catching glimpses. While I had anticipated this and liked the prospect in theory, the actual experience of letting this play out while other students walked by was intensely uncomfortable for me. I don’t like to let my phone play audio where others can hear it and potentially be disturbed by it. I had made a commitment to let the story run for its full length without interruption.
I also recognized during the reflection discussion that while the idea behind this project was to kind of deride my own self-indulgent and pretentious pursuits over more meaningful even if more mundane experiences, this conceit itself was very self-indulgent and pretentious. It also felt a little preachy. I did not like the experience of denying people the opportunity to listen to the bedtime story (opportunity feels like a strong word here), but it felt conceptually important for the point I was attempting to make.
For the first time I will reveal that the story in question was in fact The Little Engine that Could, for what it’s worth.