What interests you about creating new instruments or set-ups?

In making a new instrument/set-up I’m interested in creating a unique space for the performer and audience to inhabit, one that eschews the conventional relationships we have to musical instruments. Rather than creating an instrument that is merely a tool for the performer to wield, I try to create an environment where the instrument has a life of it’s own – it’s own way of moving and sounding that the performer and audience succumbs to.

How did the idea for Anicca evolve?

I had the idea while meditating in Hindu temples in India, reflecting on the relationship between the cyclic and the transcendental. The architecture of many Hindu temples is based on giant mandalas, so the way the devotees engage with those spaces is often along cyclic paths, that are dotted with bells. While spending time in these spaces I had a vision of a spinning percussive surface.

Matthias Schack-Arnott and Richard Allen have built a variable-speed rotating instrument for Anicca

What were some of the challenges of putting this project together?

The first challenge was constructing a motor powerful enough to spin a massive table-top covered in percussion at fast speeds, whilst being virtually...