Reed Wixson Blurs the Line Between the Natural and the Artificial Through Music

Medici Circle Scholar Reed Wixson and their Project Xylocyclos

By Gamy Cortes

Early in their compositional journey, Reed Wixson followed conventions aligned with classical composition. Later, however, as a PhD student in UC Irvine’s Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) program — a program anything but conventional, embracing and integrating diverse forms of music — they realized the magic in foraging sounds — a less centralized and hierarchical approach to composition, Wixson claims. 

“So, the idea of gathering and finding sounds and putting them together, exploring their relationships, is a lot more interesting because it acknowledges that we are enmeshed in these ecological relationships, whether or not we're willing to acknowledge it,” said Wixson. 

Funding Music 

Founded in 2004, the Medici Circle Scholarship supports academic growth and broadens the creative development of its recipients by awarding funding to each Medici Scholar for their specific projects. This unique scholarship program takes education beyond the classroom, allowing scholars to reach their creative and professional goals. Through this scholarship, Wixson and their collaborator, Oliver George-Brown, were able to travel and perform Xylocyclos at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in Canberra, Australia, and source new, unique field recordings for future work. 

Xylocyclos involves attaching transducers and homemade piezo microphones to dead branches. The natural frequencies of the wood, being amplified through a hand-made cajon, produce a strange and otherworldly sound — an eerie contrast to the everyday materiality of wood (Juniperus californica, Yucca schidigera, and Cylindropuntia bigelovii: collected during field research in the Mojave Desert). This surprising emission of sound is concerned with the relationship between humans and nature, deconstructing the notion of either being separate entities. 

“We are and have always been enmeshed with all of our world: animals, plants, climate and more,” said Wixson. “We're just seeing that in a much more visceral way.” 

The Medici Circle Scholarship was more than supplemental funding. When Wixson heard back from NIME, accepting Xylocyclos the morning the Medici application was due, Wixson’s previous Medici mentor and ICIT professor, Kojiro Umezaki, immediately drafted a letter of recommendation and met with Wixson to complete the Medici application. 

“I can't underscore this enough,” said Wixson. “We're very lucky to have such supportive faculty here at UCI.”

Image: (left to right) Reed Wixson and Oliver George-Brown performing Xylocyclos at NIME. Courtesy of the Artist.

Control or Improv? 

The process of sonically reviving the dead branches is unpredictable, necessitating improvisation in the performance of Xylocyclos. The branches are afforded a high degree of agency, emphasizing their role as co-performers.

“As a composer, I want specific sonic outputs, but the object is acting back, trying to do its own performance sonically,” said Wixson. “I'm exerting a certain amount of influence on the object, but then that object is exerting a certain amount of influence on me, putting me in a situation where I have to make a decision on how I'm going to react to that. It's this constantly shifting relationship.” 

The form of Xylocyclos was no different, often revised whenever performed at a new location. The technique of instrumentalizing an object with contact microphones acknowledges the sensitivity between musical and material interactions. 

“Moving the contact microphone mere millimeters has a profound shift in sonic texture,” said George-Brown. “We conceive of this as a poetic re-imagination of micro-fluctuations within the natural environment: where minute variations in desert topology determine the way a rivulet chooses its course; where the play of sun and shadows determines the capacity of a plant to photosynthesize; where a pollinator’s peregrinations determine which plants propagate." 

The Natural and the Artificial as Inseparable 

Wixson’s practice in handling objects is in accordance with their broader philosophy on ecological interdependence. 

“We're in the Anthropocene era. As human beings, we're exerting so much influence over the world. But it's not really control. There are a lot of unintended consequences that come with that kind of power.” 

For Wixson, treating objects as co-performers means being aware that they resist mastery, that they instead invite reciprocal, improvisational engagement. This view, Wixson argues, is one we should adopt when regarding the relationship between the natural and the artificial. 

“We've come to this tipping point of climate disaster because we believe we can conquer nature,” said Wixson. “We see the artificial as separate from the natural. So, for me, I'm working with these objects that evoke nature, but I try not to lean into the idea of making art based around nature. I try instead to draw on this idea of ecology, especially the non-human entities around us. How are we in a relationship with them? How are we relating to them? How are we even just noticing them — noticing that they're there and that they have this life beyond us?” 

Image: Reed Wixson.

What’s Next? 

Looking ahead, Wixson continues to push the boundaries of experimental sound design. On Jan. 31, Wixson will perform part of Listen to the Motion: Works by ICIT Ph.D. Students performed in the Experimental Media Performance Lab (xMPL).

Wixson also scores in films — a testament to their constant search for new mediums — and recently scored the yet unreleased Won’t Be Displaced — a short film drama meant to raise awareness for queer refugees in the United Kingdom.

To learn more about Listen to the Motion: Works by ICIT Ph.D. Students, visit the event page here. To learn more about the Medici Circle and ways to support or apply, visit here.