“The characteristic polarity of life is at the level of the membrane…the entire mass of living matter contained in the internal space is actively present to the external world at the limit of the living…To belong to interiority does not mean only to be ‘inside’, but to be on the ‘in-side’ of the limit...At the level of the polarized membrane, internal past and external future face one another”

 - Gilbert Simondon

 

I first came across the above quote whilst reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Logic of Sense. In my pre-planning for the piece, I had been pondering how to approach such a disparate instrumental combination in order to create a sound-world that would be a synthesis of the two instruments. The flugelhorn and percussion parts act as simultaneous pitched/un-pitched ‘tracings’ of each-other, often making use of sounds that attempt to ‘bridge the gap’ between the instruments. Many of these sounds have fragmented qualities (e.g. split tones, trills, tremolos, flutterings, scrapings, muted murmurings, etc.) which, as they are sustained for long periods of time, allow glimpses into the unstable, inconsistent behaviours of the sounds themselves as they are produced; the audience is granted intimate insight into the technique of the performers. in-side is a sonic exploration of the literal insides of the flugelhorn and percussion instruments, with the resultant sounds being the result of those explorations. In Logic of Sense, Deleuze discusses the concept of the “Möbius strip” (a surface with one continuous side), using Fortunatus’ purse in Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno as an example; it is made of handkerchiefs ‘sewn in the wrong way,’ and thus envelops the entire world - rendering the outside of the purse inside and vice-versa. in-side is in itself a Möbius strip of sorts; the ‘outside’ environment of the audience and performance space faces the ‘inside’ environment of the performers and instruments, with the level of the polarized membrane being the very surfaces of the instruments themselves.