To be honest, I’m really not a very technologically savvy parents. Even though as a musician I use digital effects to enhance the soundscapes evoke through my instrument - the /guzheng/. I never found a natural affinity with the technological know-how behind it. I am simply a user, just like how I can use my phone but will never get how to create an app.
Thus, simple video-recording and editing has been quite an inertia for me to overcome in this current state of affairs where it seems like “go digital or go home” for arts practitioners (oh wait we’re already home). I have expressed and written on other platforms my reservations about digital presentations for the very young - my main target audience as a practitioner who is interested in creating sonic works for 0-3 year olds.
How can we allow live experiences to be mediated through a screen, losing the essence of our first connections with our young, precious audience through bodily senses?
Thus, parents, who are already extremely important in the early art experiences of our babies, have become even more crucial agents in such times. In order for the digitalisation of arts experiences for young audiences to work, parents need to engage with us in order to create further meaningful artistic experiences for our lil’ ones at home.
As a parent-artist-researcher myself, I believe in baby-led practices where I let Dodo lead our artistic experiences at home. And I do think he’s actually more artistic and creative than I am! The role I find myself playing is really to equip my environment with materials that can motivate his sonic exploration - whether an actual instrument, or metal tin box as you see in today’s episode of “Musicking with Dodo”.
In today’s episode of “Musicking with Dodo”, you would see Dodo playing on a small wooden xylophone using a stick (and actually a small wooden flute). He explores the instrument, hitting random bars to create random tones, while singing make-up words from the songs that we sing together, such as “I can sing a Rainbow”, “Elmo’s Song” and “The Wheels on the Bus”. After exploring for a little while, he notices a metal tin box in front of him and adds it into his instrumental set-up. Thereafter, he explores the spatial orientation of the metal tin box in relation to himself and the xylophone, switching its position a few times before he’s done with his mini musicking session.
In our musicking together, we have little constraints. Musicking is a daily affair for us from the moment we wake up till the moment we sleep. We do so primarily through singing. My partner and I create new songs we sing to him, but we also let him listen to various genres of music including those similar to our musical practice - experimental styles, to children’s songs and evergreens (except NO BABY SHARK please while it has all the right hooks to engage a child I find that it dumbs down the potential of our kids’ musicking through its simple-minded structure and just basically tasteless aesthetics).
But what I enjoy most is still such free play you see in today’s video, because it demonstrates Dodo’s being at his fundamental, natural state, in line with the “unadulterated” child’s play that I hope to allow him to have for as long as possible.