A performance art piece, with music, color, howls, and movement
Texture is a quality of a surface. Let us attempt to represent a piece of satin, a duvet cover, say.
Towards this, consider a standard proscenium stage. On the left are two rows of eight performers, roughly equal in height, dressed entirely in gold, with the audience on their right. Each has been informed of a unique number assigned to them, sequentially from 1 to 16. Facing them, on the right side, two similar rows of eight performers in red, with the audience on their left. They too have been assigned a unique number from 1 to 16, except that this has been done at random, and does not (necessarily) correspond to their place in the two rows (unlike the situation with the “gold team”).
First movement: Part of the orchestra plays (a correspondingly impoverished version of) Johann Strauss’s Radetzky March. Simultaneously, the others play a different piece: the first act of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. This naturally is a cacophony, if a controlled, reproducible one. To this music, the performers on stage start moving towards each other.
Each member of the “gold team” has been asked to identify the member of the “red team” with whom they share a number. The following constraints are imposed.
Say, a member of the “red team” is assigned the number “7”. They may only verbally whisper the question “7?” to any member of the “gold team” (but one at a time) and do so while placing their hands on the shoulders of the “gold team” member. The whisper must be low enough so that no one else from the “red team” can hear the question. Should the “gold team” member not happen to be a “7”, they must raise their heads and howl loudly. In this case, the “red team” member should look for another “gold team” member. If, however, the interrogated “gold team” member happens to have the right ordinal number, they must stay silent. This silence is to be taken for assent, and the two may now know each other to be a “7”.
As such red-gold pairs form, they shall attempt to become part of a circle, with a lower-number pair on their left, and a higher one on their right. Pair 1 should have Pair 16 on their left. Towards forming such a circle, both the “red” and “gold” parts of each pair may interrogate others, in the manner described previously. Once the circle is formed, they must move clockwise, slowly, for a minute. This ends the first movement.
Second movement: The orchestra now as a whole plays Beethoven’s String Quartet №14 in C♯ minor. The performers on stage start moving towards each other, and, as in the first movement, first attempt to form pairs, and then to place themselves in an ordered circle. The difference, of course, is that all members have already identified their partners, as well as the two pairs who ought to be on their left and right, and need pose no question of anyone. Once the circle is formed, they must move clockwise, slowly, for five minutes. This ends the second movement.
The presumably hectic encounters, howls, and general confusion in the first movement, and the hopefully easier formation of pairs and the circle in the second movement, not to mention the more agreeable music, ought to highlight the second as being much more ordered, smooth, easy, fluid.
Something like the feel of satin on naked skin.
