Rūta Vitkauskaitė

Something Personal is a personalised, one-to-one composition for an audience of one, performed by Rūta Vitkauskaitė. By creating a small, private and personal performance, this project is a response to the growth of large, public, impersonal performances, and development of media like YouTube or SoundCloud, where a musical message can be instantly seen by millions of followers.

The setup for Something Personal varies, but usually it involves pre-built contact microphones attached to a violin, small instruments, and other objects and instruments found in the performance space. There are a number of speakers of various sizes, spread throughout the space, and a mixer to control amplification. The performance is always live, and there is no pre-recorded music track, except for a buzzing sound used to imitate a bee. The setup and composition are site-specific, and each new event has a unique composition created for it, allowing the environment and listener to be an active part of it. The duration of each composition depends on the capacity of the event, ranging from 5 to 30 minutes.

One of the defining elements of Something Personal is the play with the spatial placement of sounds. This involves acoustic “amplification” of very small sounds by bringing them close to the ear, and creation of spatial illusions through amplification and changes of reverb and echoes. As the audience listens with closed eyes, it is being led into the spaces of their imagination through the aural composition around their heads.

At the beginning, the audience has the opportunity to see the space, before they are invited to experience the performance with their eyes closed. Sounds located in the “blind spot” above and behind the listener’s head confuse the listener’s spatial perception, as the memorized space do not match their acoustic experience. Different reverbs and echoes are associated with different spaces, so the space in the listener’s imagination starts to slightly change in shape, texture and other properties.

The space becomes wide and full, as the listener is completely surrounded and immersed in sounds, while the violin, and guitar or cymbal are played simultaneously. Towards the end of the composition, the amplification slowly fades out, the texture of the sounds decreases and the whole experience ends with the sounds of a bell, mirroring its beginning.

The physicality of the sounds is important in Something Personal. The sound is often so close that the listener can physically feel the subtle touch of wind on their face, induced by, for example, a vibrating paper sheet on the cello string. By stimulating other senses, Something Personal is a cross-disciplinary project, something between sound healing therapy, a concert, and perhaps a Buddhist Sound Bath. The vibration of the sound, from the lowest, to the highest bells, affects the whole body, provoking different sensations and associated memories. By releasing these memories, one can release different tensions in the body and soothe the whole nervous system.

Performed by Rūta Vitkauskaitė. First performance at Uncharted Soundscapes concert series, Luminiere Club, London, January 2010. Later performances: SERDE Residency, Aizpute, Latvia, September 2013; BZZZ Festival, Harplinge, Sweden, July 2014; Baltic Art Form, London, June 2016. Miniature presentations at ECSA conference in Brussels, 2015 as part of keynote speech; and at ISCM World New Music Days in Faroe Islands as part of Composers’ Talk, Torshavn 2024.

(Video montage from the BZZZ festival, created by Michael Ericsson, and audio surround recording from the BZZZ festival, created by Bioni Samp).

Duration: 5 to 30 minutes

Setup: installation of instruments and speakers in a room, one listener at the time can enter.

Performers: 1