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Artist Statement

CAC ‘20 | Emma Miao Artist Statement

Writing and music are inextricably linked. My writing draws extensively from music’s rhythm, meter, and polyphony, its harmonies and lullabies. This summer, as an independent fellow with the Counterclock Arts Collective, I created Oscillation, an album containing original spoken word poetry backed with original piano compositions that curve and sway to their corresponding poems.

Oscillation implies duality, or one thing depending on another to move forward. Poetry & music oscillate in this album to effloresce a unique listening experience. I was inspired to start this project when I read one of my poems aloud against Ludovico Einaudi’s “A Sense of Symmetry”. I was fascinated with the music’s potential to contour to my poem. After reading, I held a more nuanced understanding of both the music and my poem.

My first piece, “Sunrise Kingdom” took the longest to create: I fiddled with music production software, debated scoring the music or improvising it, and recorded my poem countless times to get the timing. After talking to music mentor Grace Coberly, my next few pieces came a little more smoothly: I wrote & polished one poem, recorded it, then listened to the poem as I improvised piano melodies on a predetermined set of chord progressions.

I wrote for purely piano as well — my song “Ocean Hymn” is a contemporary fugue for two pianos. I actually played both of the parts in the recording: I composed & played the first voice, then listened to it while I harmonized a second voice. After a little research, I realized contrapuntal poems, or poems in which there are two columns and the narrative can be read three ways, are directly inspired by fugues. I wrote a few contrapuntal poems, though none of them fit into “Ocean Hymn,” so I decided to keep it an instrumental piece. Experimenting with the SoundTrap, I heard the different voices shift and expand into their newly created spaces. Bach would have loved this software.

In Week 5, I created a visual score for “Ocean Hymn” by contemplating the feel of the music instead of the notes themselves. After I sketched a first draft of the visual score, complete with time markings and symbol definitions, I finelined it and photocopied it onto a sheet of watercolour paper. I then gathered my brushes and palettes, replaying the song as I painted the colours I felt: blues, lavenders, yellows. This was my own form of synesthesia. Because the score is reproducible, I’ve decided to attach a PDF version to my website so anyone can download the piece and apply their own unique interpretation.

Through Counterclock, I was able to create Oscillation, which includes four pieces: “Sunrise Kingdom”, “Abaria”, “Ocean Hymn”, and “a revolution is stars and stoplights”. Oscillation is slated for release on Apple Music, Spotify, Youtube Music, and Soundcloud in 2021.

I am immensely grateful for the mentorship and community COUNTERCLOCK afforded me this summer. I have learned not just how to paint visual scores, scour music software, and pair visual and auditory cues according to implicit frequencies, but also how to be fearless & bold in creating interdisciplinary expositions. Thank you to my brilliant cohort-mates for the endless support and discussion—I have grown so much with each of you. Finally, thanks to Sarah and the COUNTERCLOCK team for creating this space for artists to explore, create, and imagine.

Welcome to Oscillation. I can't wait for you to dive in.