A string quartet dress in wet suits, sitting on chairs on the dry sea-bed in Dublin Bay. They perform a theme and variations (improvised from a set of instructions) as the tide begins to rush in around them. The performance ends for each musician only when the water reaches their neck, making it a durational piece reliant on the speed of the tide. Afterwards, the saturated instruments will be retrieved and the composer will attempt to save them by leaving them to dry naturally. This process will also be recorded and shown on this website. Unsalvageable parts will be repaired using driftwood, and the piece will be performed again next year.

A typist transcribes texts contained in a Fluxkit into musical notation, which is displayed to performers (and audience). The music notation, along with the typed text, is then used as a framework for improvising by a group of performers. 



To play this piece, you also need to get or make a Fluxkit. A Fluxkit is a collection of event scores stored in a container (e.g. Water Yam by George Brecht). I made the piece with the Fluxkits Kirkos created in 2016 in mind, and used one of these to play the premiere. If you don’t have access to a Fluxkit, you could make one, for example by cutting up parts of the Fluxus Workbook (freely available online e.g. on the Monoskop website) and placing them in a box.

The first performance of this piece was played by Lina Andonovska, Hannah Miller, Adam Collins and Yseult Cooper Stockdale (as Kirkos) on 25.06.24 as part of an Irish Composers’ Collective concert in Unit 44, Dublin. I was the typist for the performance.

The software used for this performance (ChatMusic) is currently only available by request. Please get in touch if you're interested.

Three radios are set up at the very beginning of the piece but playing only silence. Each is tuned to a different radio station. The radios are set up in a line with a space between them, with the viola player standing in the fourth position in the line.

The three radio stations correspond to the frequencies of three low-powered radio transmitters placed in the venue. Each is connected to a channel of the multi-channel playback device.

A microphone is unobtrusively placed in the space and begins recording when the viola player starts playing.

After a certain amount of time, the first radio starts playing back the recording.

After two more periods of time, the remaining radios also join in, so a canon accumulates.

So far, I've only performed this once and the performance officially "failed" - because I forgot to sit beside the microphone, meaning it only picked up a very, very quiet signal. Once I realised, I was forced to play very quietly to compete with it (which then made the later parts of the canon even more quiet), The YouTube clip here is from that performance - it was somehow a nice effect even though my idea didn't work at all

I think the piece has legs though!

Three radios are set up at the very beginning of the piece but playing only silence. Each is tuned to a different radio station. The radios are set up in a line with a space between them, with the viola player standing in the fourth position in the line.

The three radio stations correspond to the frequencies of three low-powered radio transmitters placed in the venue. Each is connected to a channel of the multi-channel playback device.

A microphone is unobtrusively placed in the space and begins recording when the viola player starts playing.

After a certain amount of time, the first radio starts playing back the recording.

After two more periods of time, the remaining radios also join in, so a canon accumulates.

So far, I've only performed this once and the performance officially "failed" - because I forgot to sit beside the microphone, meaning it only picked up a very, very quiet signal. Once I realised, I was forced to play very quietly to compete with it (which then made the later parts of the canon even more quiet), The YouTube clip here is from that performance - it was somehow a nice effect even though my idea didn't work at all

I think the piece has legs though!