With a group of children, we worked together on interpretations of Joanna Rajkowska’s sculpture (itself a huge egg-shaped sound installation) titled Hatchling. Song Thrush. On approaching the sculpture, one can hear the hatchling that is “alive” inside. 

Our joint analysis brought us to the conclusion that this sculpture represents life. We tried to capture the essence of that life, what it sounds like. Some associations were banal (a heartbeat, breathing, noises, birdsong). Others, more imaginative (snoring in one’s sleep, wind, a piano) resulted from the children’s own non-obvious choices and explorations. All these suggested sounds were then recorded by the kids themselves, as also was the sound of a breaking eggshell – as an element on which our idea of the egg sculpture could converge. We also decided during our conversations that the recorded sounds may not be overly transformed by electronic means since life is associated with nature, and not with technology. 

While arranging the music based on the concept which the children had worked out, I focused on the surface that separates life from non-life, symbolised by the eggshell. Inside the egg there is life, a specific and real existence, as opposed to non-being – unreal, abstract, and conceptual. The composer works on the threshold separating being (concretum) from non-being (the virtual concept). The composer is symbolised in the piece by the sound of the piano, which exists on both sides of the shell, in both the real and the unreal spheres. 

Anna Jędrzejewska