The Skin Listens Too
(2025)

Ensemble 113 Performers: Abi Lee, Georgia Spain, Clyde Saniga, Matteo Pasquale, Ella Pasano, Hendrix Hamalainen, Clio Greig, Ella Dawson, Rachael Hobbs, Liam Harper, Junaid Eastman, Amy Archer, Sasha Kaiser, Oscar Lush
Video documentation: Emmett Lagrutta
Fabrication assistance: Marcus Carne 
Engineering and mixing: Oscar Lush

The Skin Listens Too is a cross-disciplinary performance work which utilises graphic, interactive modes of musical scoring to reimagine the role of intimacy and the body in contemporary musical performance.

In creating this score I wanted to use the back-drawing game that so many of us played when we were kids, where one person would draw symbols on another person’s back and that person would have to guess what was being drawn. My partner Georgia and I generated the symbols for the score through many hours of playing this game. Performing the score follows the same process. Instrumentalists are blindfolded and partnered up with translators. The instrumentalists do not read the score. Rather, as it unfolds in real-time, the translators read the score and transcribe the symbols onto the backs of the players using tools such as pencils, chopsticks and brushes, and the players respond in whatever way they see fit.