Paper Piece, was conceived before performance art and multi-sensory art were commonplace and for that reason, Ben Patterson spoke meaningfully when quizzed about the musicality in Paper Piece, labelling the audience ‘experiencers’ as opposed to listeners or viewers. I love the chaos of this particular video, the bad quality, the way they are staged, the reveal of the giant roller into the crowd and the sudden explosion of noise and movement across the room.

I find this one disconcerting, the way it’s almost played for laughs feels disrespectful. The use of microphones (which I believe negatively alters the sonics of the piece in a space), being sat at the desk. It’s been formalised and turned into a comic routine as opposed to something that has urgency, energy and frenzy to it. It’s become something quite sad.

It is likely that Paper Music, the first video, was a different score. But also it is interesting how much these performances differ in formality and tone. From my understanding of Kaprow’s Happenings and this idea Patterson put forward of the experiencer, Paper Piece was supposed to be more than just a formal performance with paper. But I might be wrong. I guess what’s disappointing is something that felt like a serious work about the nature of objects and sound, a great levelling of what we perceive to be an instrument be reduced to a sort of Chaplin-esque skit. What I find liberating about this piece, is it has very little expense to perform. Something I wish to be mindful of whilst developing a practise. It’s a privilege that I have a double bass, for example.