State Change: Disability as a Creative Source

How do you play an instrument, perform on stage, when 25 years ago, you were in an accident that irreparably damaged your left hand? For Molly Joyce, award-winning composer and performer, her disability is a creative source. 

Unlike other instruments where Molly has to “conform” and contort her body to, MUGIC is an “adaptive” music technology that allows her to perform live electronic music despite her disability. 

Developed by Guggenheim and SEAMUS award-winning violinist Mari Kimura, MUGIC is a motion sensor/ accelerometer that allows you to make and modulate music using natural gestures. 

Molly utilizes MUGIC parameters, such as rotation, to process and alter sounds through Max, without the disadvantages of other instruments or devices. For example, as The Daily Journal explains, MUGIC allows Molly to “combine sounds into cleaner clusters; [where] using a traditional keyboard would introduce the possibility of extra pitches she hadn’t chosen”.

“It’s been really fun to perform”, Molly says, “interesting to experiment with” and when “I’m performing live, I'm almost always [using MUGIC]. 

Her new album, “State Change”, reinterprets the surgical records of her accident to create haunting, yet peaceful, almost meditative melodies. 

Described by the Wall Street Journal as “a song cycle cast in seven movements”, each song in “State Change” is titled the date of each of her surgeries –the lyrics, the medical records of each. While clinical, each [lyric] details and gives the listener insight into the grisly magnitude of the accident, synthesizing the perspectives of her surgeons, what society sees her now as, and her own self-reflection. 

“State Change” explores what it means to change while still being fundamentally the same: from liquid to solid, from abled to disabled, and from rejection to acceptance. 

 

Below is a transcript of an interview with Molly Joyce. 

How did you find out about MUGIC? 

I was introduced to it by my advisor in my PhD program, JoVia Armstrong, who I think was a former student of Mari’s ICIT program. I worked with JoVia for my first year in my PhD program. I was coming into the program and talking to her about what I wanted to work on and what different technologies would suit my left hand and disability better… and to get away from working a lot with this vintage toy organ instrument which wasn’t very practical. 

How do you use MUGIC? 

I’ve been working on this kind of album project with the music, a song cycle project that features the surgical records of my car accident about 25 years ago that injured my left hand as a source material for the lyrics. And then with each song, I try to utilize one or more of the music’s parameters like rotation and pitch and so forth as the main parameters altering the sounds and processing them through Max. 

It’s been really interesting to experiment with combining them or keeping them separate, and been really fun to perform with [MUGIC] overall. 

 

How often do you use MUGIC in your work? 

It depends on my work schedule.. Because sometimes I might use it like every week for either composing or performing, depending on if I’m performing songs with it…

It fluctuates…but when I have a solo performance now… almost always. 

What were your goals when you started using MUGIC? 

I think to create music and sound that’s more intrinsically tied to the physicality of my left hand or disability rather than me trying to conform to something… it felt good having the instrument conform to me. 

I think ultimately I use MUGIC to source the physicality of my left hand for the music or sound I create.A lot of it was new to me… one of the things that has been frustrating sometimes, and is just inevitable with any accelerometer is that the positioning is always different, obviously, or the orientation. 

How would you describe MUGIC to a friend? 

It's an accelerometer device… if they know what an accelerometer is, but it's basically just a device that sends motion data to the computer…and then I process it from there to make music and sound. 

 

Your work often explores disability as a creative source. Could you share more about how your experiences have shaped your compositional style and the specific challenges and opportunities you've encountered?

I have an impaired left hand from a car accident about 25 years ago. Following the accident, I was involved in music a little bit, trying to conform to instruments. 

I was never going to conform to like cello and trumpet. A little bit after that, I was really drawn to music composition. I didn’t have to seriously consider what my hand could or could not do. 

Many years later… I was drawn back to performance through my disability; the creative possibilities of it, either through my narrative of acquiring a disability or collaborations with other disabled artists or communally engaged projects has been really fulfilling to me overall.

I recently experimented with adaptive music technology…seeking again to source the ultimate sound of my disability and physicality. 

Your primary instrument is a vintage toy organ. How did you come to choose this instrument, and what unique qualities does it bring to your compositions that traditional instruments might not?

I found this instrument on eBay many years ago when I was an undergrad – just randomly searching for various kinds of toy instruments because I’d heard of the toy piano. 

I joked like it was kind of like my ticket to Brooklyn, or something cool to have in my dorm room that I would have forever in New York. 

It stayed as a toy and an accessory for a while. Like I would play it occasionally or play it with other people, or bands, or dancers. 

But when I got to graduate school and started performing on it more and specifically combining electronics with it, I realized that it has a potential as a solo instrument. 

It was kind of almost.. Made for my body in a way with these chord buttons on the left-hand side and keyboard on the right-hand side. 

So one, it felt very natural to perform on. And then two, adding electronics and just being interested in its innate sound overall. I realized it has a quite unique sound in tuning. It’s kind of always out of tune with itself in a way. The chord buttons are noisy on the left side. For me, there was a lot to explore there. 

 

Your album Perspective features interviews with forty-seven disabled individuals. How do you see community engagement influencing the future of composition, and what advice would you give to composers looking to integrate similar projects into their work?

I definitely hope community engagement influences the future of composition. For me, it was a long path. I initially thought I would never do a project like that. In undergrad, it was taught to a lot of us as outreach, and it never felt right to me. Like you’re going into a community and teaching them all you know, that you know best… and that didn’t sit right with me. 

I was never particularly drawn to very political music too, because I’m not very argumentative. I never want to tell my audience what to think. I’d rather just raise more questions.

This project came up around thinking about the questions asked by other disability activists. 

Community engagement, at least in my experience, can be best implemented by [tying] your personal experience first, then going outwards rather than trying to come into a community… like going outwards and backwards from there. 

 

You’ve collaborated with a wide range of artists across different mediums. How do these interdisciplinary collaborations influence your creative process and the final output of your compositions?

It’s important for me to not prioritize sound as the only way of taking in work. Having multiple mediums or even options to take in work. I’ve always been attracted to these kind of all-encompassing [sensory stimulations] and from a disability perspective, not prioritizing one sensory medium over another. It’s been exciting to get my music out of the concert hall, or out of the traditional composition format. 

 

What do you see as the most critical skills for emerging composers to develop, particularly in the context of today's music industry?

Try to find your own voice it’s not a skill you can practice. Its more about trying to shed or break away at your creative blockages or the voices in your head that say I should sound like this because this person is doing well. Part of finding your own voice is emulating different composers’ voices to learn your craft. 

At an eventual point, however, I think you need to shed it away and find your own voice. I still struggle with that. I think its the hardest thing is just trying to be as free as you can creatively.

[Also] perseverance. It’s one of the hardest things, especially once you’re out of school and floating, where you don’t have teachers you’re regularly meeting with and it can be quite lonely to enter things or get your name out there. It was one of the most important lessons for myself once I left school. 

 

Looking ahead, are there any specific themes or projects you are excited to explore in your future work? How do you envision pushing the boundaries of new music even further?

I’m excited to explore the theme of health. This idea came up when a friend encouraged me to do disability boarding with planes. 

It’s been fascinating how some people question if I have the right to do that. I usually just pull up my arm and say I have a disability. 

I don’t want to deal with the whole philosophical argument with the gate agent. 

It’s been interesting [exploring] the internal conversation around who has the right to help? Do you have to have a clearly visible disability to be in the assistance line?

Sometimes it can be too much as well. I’ve had a friend tell me they were in the disability boarding or they’re in a wheelchair and someone put on their coat for them, like some random stranger. 

And she didn’t want that help. Sometimes the assumption of help can be too much. 

I don’t always want help. To feel like you’re singled out because someone is helping. It’s a really fascinating topic for me. 

I also want to try sample resonances and reversals of disability-centric places, like connecting hallways. There’s a hallway called the ADA Hallway at the University of Virginia, or camps, at so forth to use that for a new piece. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and concision.