Brainchild (2024)

Written for Christie Finn and Ensemble Recherche.

This piece explores the creation and learning of language through the perspective of a child-like figure with no contact with conventional speech, only with sound. Driven by an instinct to communicate, the child quickly gathers a great deal of information from its surroundings and starts creating its own language at an accelerated pace. 

At first, it imitates the most recognisable instrumental sounds, transforming and reinterpreting them as phonemes. These phonemes become the increasingly complex building blocks of what is supposed to become the basis for communication. 

However, in doing so, the child naïvely transforms abstract instrumental sounds, initially devoid of inherent semiotic meaning, into sounds intended for communication. This leads to an inevitable failure to communicate, fuelling a growing sense of despair and panic that intensifies throughout the piece.