Kate Milligan is a Western Australian composer, designer, and musicologist. Her work engages with theories of temporality, ecology, and the posthuman, asking questions of musical subjectivity into the deep future. At the audio-visual intersection, these works often include experimental music notation, and a range of graphic, animated, and sculptural media.
We spoke with her about her new work Tactus, a new audio-visual work created in collaboration with videographer Olivia Davies and WA flautist Jonty Coy with guests HIP Company. Read more about how this new work traverses time and place in a performance where postmodern and renaissance artistic practices unite to submerge audiences in an antique, experimental, sunken sound-world seldom heard in Australia.
Q: How did this project come about? Why a renaissance flute?
Kate: Tactus came about through some longstanding friendships that eventually turned into fruitful collaborations. Jonty, Olivia, and I were all in the same ‘honours’ year at the UWA Conservatorium of Music. My compositional interest in early music developed alongside Jonty’s historically informed performance practice—we first created a work together for baroque flute in 2018. The further back in time Jonty’s specialism has moved—towards earlier music—the more my own interest in compositional time travel has deepened.
When we decided to include a visual component in the work, Olivia was the obvious person to ask. As both a composer and photographer, she has a deep knowledge of how form might manifest in sound and in sight. Together we were able to embed the same transformations in both the audio and visual components of Tactus. I’m proud that we have achieved tight integration of the compositional, visual, and historical parts of Tactus—and it’s so wonderful to collaborate with mates!
Q: What about Tactus excites you?
Kate: For me, the most exciting part of Tactus is the role of the water. The flute was recovered from a shipwreck, having been submerged for 500 years. In that time, the wood was made fragile, but remarkably kept its shape—a process of simultaneous destruction and preservation. I’m fascinated by how human cultural activity is transformed by these natural processes across deep timescales. Tactus is a provocation of sorts—asking how we might reframe our understanding of creativity to include more-than-human actors, such as water.
Q: How would you describe the sound world of the electronics part and how that came about?
Kate: The musique concrète is made up of field recordings (sounds from both the surface and the depths of the Markermeer, where the shipwreck rests) as well as improvised renaissance vocal polyphony. Following formal cues from Olivia’s film, I have transformed these audio samples according to the same processes of fragmentation, layering, canon, and repetition. The resulting sound-world reminds me of the flow of a river—the digitally-augmented polyphony is largely smooth, sometimes tumultuous, and occasionally gets caught in loops like little eddies of water
Q: Are there any challenges you’ve faced with making the work and in particular the blending of postmodern and renaissance artistic practices?
Kate: Tactus is a temporal paradox—it is music that is simultaneously old and new. In fact, the historical repertoire in this concert is some of the oldest western instrumental music that Perth has seen performed for some time, dating from the early 1400s. The historical repertoire precedes the new work in the program, which then transforms the renaissance sound-world into something very much of the 21st century.
The process of integrating music cultures across 500 years is, of course, wildly challenging. Composing Tactus has been a process of ‘filtering’ what we know of the renaissance for the sake of a modern message, for a modern audience, and with access to modern technology. This project has really made me rethink the concept of novelty, new aesthetics, and linear time—embracing rather time circling back on itself, and how recontextualization can be a kind of novelty.
Q: What has the creative process looked like?
Kate: Jonty, Olivia, and I undertook a creative research and development period in the Netherlands, generously supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts and investment body. It was an opportunity to work in a ‘post-discipline’ environment, sharing knowledge and ideas with plenty of creative freedom. We did fieldwork at the shipwreck site, recording sessions in historical churches, and spent valuable time in the studio workshopping the audio and visuals. This meant that when it came time to work more independently over distance (NL-AU-UK!) we had both conceptual and methodological consistency.
Q: Could you let readers know about the set piece in the work and how it influences the audience interaction with the work?
Kate: We wanted to explore ways of presenting Olivia’s film that would draw attention to the materiality of the project—degradation, fragmentation, disintegration. We were drawn to layered materials and semi-transparent fabrics which would transform the projection of the film—a metaphor for how information is transformed by time and water. The set therefore adds depth to the performance narrative, the musicians encapsulated within. Huge thanks must go to designer Tyler Hill, fabricator Eli Smith, and projection designer Steve Berrick.
Q: How did your connection with Tura come about? How has the relationship with producer Tristen Parr and the company influenced the work?
Kate: Tura has been integral to my development as an early-career composer—most notably through the Summers Night Project, wherein I was a mentee-participant in 2020. Working with the company—and with the WA Museum Boola Bardip—to realise Tactus has been a dream. I am grateful particularly for Tristen’s leadership in all things production, and for his belief in the project since the first meeting over coffee back in 2022!
Q: What are you hoping audiences take away from Tactus?
Kate: Tactus is such a rich project—musically, historically, philosophically, visually, materially… I hope that each audience member might find their own way through the work given the myriad of possible pathways. I hope that there is something for everyone—and that the grand narrative of the shipwreck flute grows exponentially through these diverse perspectives!
Tura acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and create. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. With solidarity and friendship we say thank you.
