Sheng, Guiro Bow, and (De)Familiarisation: On Timbral Techniques in Liza Lim’s How Forests Think

This article is an original account of the use and meanings of sheng, a modernised Chinese hand organ, and guiro bow, a modified European bow, in Liza Lim’s 2016 work How Forests Think (hereafter Forests). For the given purpose, I coin and employ two broadly applicable terms, familiarisation and de-familiarisation. Inspired by Nina Sun Eidsheim’s comparison of music and body to wine and terroir, familiarisation and de-familiarisation account for the two general modes by which Lim plays with the unusual sounding bodies of sheng and guiro bow. Familiarisation refers to a group of compositional techniques used to minimise the gap between conventional timbral techniques and less conventional sounding bodies. De-familiarisation means another group of compositional techniques used to turn conventional timbres into less conventional counterparts by modifying the associated sounding bodies. I argue that, by practicing familiarisation, Lim challenges the notion of cultural borders as commonly found in colonial and post-colonial contexts. In contrast, by practicing de-familiarisation, Lim integrates her interdisciplinary interests into Forests. For the first part of the main discussion, I illustrate Lim’s thoughts on cultural borders and her interdisciplinary interests in mycelia and pattern language. I then elaborate familiarisation and de-familiarisation using diverse examples from twentieth-century and contemporary music. Finally, I consider selected examples from Forests to show which compositional techniques can be viewed as familiarisation and which as de-familiarisation, and how such techniques empower Lim to address cultural borders, mycelia, and pattern language.