ABOUT
Chuntay Hatten is a Diné-Lakota composer and digital artist whose work traces the vanishing surface that is music. Here, the object is historical content is moving image is drums is voice is synthesizer is loop— is the gaze embedded in what is observed.
“
From the “thing that sees,’ [ Music ] was transformed into a looking subject, and to accomplish this, it had to expel something that, through this act of expulsion, thus became an object.
[ Music expels its eternity ]
— the subject [ Music (the ear) ] finds itself on the opposite side of objects or things (seeing them, exploring them, learning from them) only insofar as there is a “thing from the subject” that dwells among these other objects or things, a fragmentary remainder of subjectivity dissolved into the “stuff of the world” through the occurrence of a primordial severance.
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What structurally escapes every (single) perspective [ ] [ is ] the way in which we, as subjects, are inscribed in the thing we are observing.
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— the gaze [ is ] is the (irreducible) object-within-the-object
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I can stand where I stand only because an intimate part of me stands on the other side, outside “me,” with the objects.
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The subject is nothing other than the object’s gaze . . .
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[ to become a subject ] is not the consequence of recognizing oneself in this object-subject, but, rather the consequences of not being able to recognize oneself in it.
[ Music unknowingly sees its own eternity in the part of itself that dwells with other objects ]
”
— From Alenka Zupančič’s The Shortest Shadow: Nietzche’s philosophy of the two, with commentary.
SELECT WORKS
Etudes (2025— ), for the letter [ca. 4’]
1. "Insistence of the Letter" in Voice, Vocoder, Text-To-Speech, and Rhythm
Pre-existing material:
(1) Select text from Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, re-written as non-retrogradable stanzas, recited by composer and text-to-speech.
(2) Looping piano phrase from Olivier Messiaen’s Pourqoui? from Trois Mélodies sent as MIDI data to a virtual synthesizer.
2. “Insistence of the Letter” in Hand, Laser, and Tone
Innardspell (2024), for trumpet, electronics and piano [ca. 7’]
Pre-existing material:
(1) Repeating fragments from Olivier Messiaen’s Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps from Quatuor pour la fin du temps.
(2) A selected recording of an audible recitation of an advertisement by a Navajo man from KTNN Radio Station, the Navajo Nation’s broadcaster based in Window Rock, Arizona.
Outerhold (2024), for solo piano with electronics [ca. 5’]
Pre-existing material:
(1) Small snippets of Charli xcx’s voice in “Apple,” a song from her 2024 BRAT album.
Lacuna (2024), fixed media [ca. 60’]
Pre-existing material:
(1) Small snippets of Imogen Heap’s voice in “Hide and Seek,” a song from her 2005 Speak for Yourself album.
Excerpt is above, “lacuna.mp3”
Foursite (2022), for clarinet, violin, cello and piano [ca. 8’]
1. Opening Circle
2. The Four Directions
3. Closing Circle
Tázhii Sin (2020), for violin and viola [ca. 12’]
Pre-existing material:
(1) Screenshots of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat major, K. 364/320d— treated as superimposions to stretch, condense, and cut.