04/05/23, London College of Communication.

I found Ecka’s lecture to be intensely interesting and though provoking. The lecture was a good balance between personal anecdotes, explanations and studies of her work as well as some of her inventions; particularly the egg flute.

Ecka has been creating egg flutes for years, and she is believed to be the inventor of such instrument, as well as being the person to first create a piece using them. The piece consisted of an almost ritual like situation where six people, including Ecka, sit around a table and play an egg flute. Whilst I can’t remember the exact details regarding how the performance should be conducted, I do remember certain text scores that were shown. For example, one text score read something like ‘play the eggflute until you’re breathing matches that of your friend, once the breathing matches, stop’. I can’t remember the exact wording, but I found this process to seem really intimate. The performance was less based on a musical nature, but more on understanding moments between friends, using sound through a natural means to come to this.

I’m not sure if Ecka is planning to develop the egg flute anymore, I know she has worked out the optimal position to put a hole in order to play, and the optimal time to boil water for etc, etc. I also found it very interesting how she could get overtones harmonically playing the eggflute, which draws comparisons to earlier brass instruments.