field: alarum, implication

November 2018

field: alarum, implication (v.2) is a six-channel sound installation (with optional subwoofers, as possible). The installation consists of an electronic music composition, speakers in an empty and preferably darkened space, and an accompanying booklet which contextualizes the piece for the listener.

In November of 2018, I participated in the Sonic Mmabolela residency in Limpopo Province, Republic of South Africa, directed by Francisco López and Barbara Ellison. field: alarum, implication is made from a short excerpt of a much longer recording gathered at the edge of the Limpopo River, which forms much of the northern border of South Africa. In this location, we are directly across the river from Botswana, beside a pond-like eddy on the southern edge of the Limpopo. Here, I have gathered six channels of sonic input from a fairly circumscribed area of about three to four meters square using different input methods: microphones, a contact mic and a pair hydrophones in the water.

These six channels, the ‘voices’ in this composition, create an aural ‘snapshot’ of this particular place at this particular time. The integrity of their temporal relationship has been maintained throughout the piece. I applied a few resonant filter effects to few passages in response to the sounds themselves, to intensify certain sonic qualities.

Each of the six voices (channels)—corresponding to the individual voices in a traditional musical composition—is sent to its own separate speaker. The speakers are placed in a formation analogous to where the various microphones and hydrophones were situated in relation to the recorder and the recordist. In this way, the configuration of the inputs to the composition is then recapitulated in its presentation. (See diagram, below.) The listener, then, is free to move about and explore the geography of the sound installation, curating their experience as they do so.

It is a commonly-expressed belief that humans are separate from nature. People want their soundscape recordings free of the traces of human presence. But there are planes in the sky and roads filled with cars all around because we put them there. The drive to keep all of these things out of our sonic representations fulfills a need for reassurance that our environment is undisturbed, that everything is fine.

Recently, in a discussion with the artist Nyeema Morgan, in response to a field recording I had played her which at one point contained the sound of my footsteps, she talked about how she preferred to hear signs of humans in the recordings, how she wanted signs of human bodies; she wanted people “implicated” in the recording. That notion stuck with me, validating my own preference for some indication of human presence. After all, these recordings do not make themselves. They are made by someone who was present, in the space, with a recording instrument. In the present recording, two of my colleagues in the South African residency are heard speaking toward the end of the piece.

Requiem

May 2018

Requiem is an installation based exclusively on the sounds of extinct animals. Speakers are placed in an empty and preferably darkened space. Accompanying booklets contextualize the experience for listeners by listing each of the animals by their common and scientific names, providing data on their ranges, and when and why they became extinct. The first paragraph of the booklet follows:

“The sounds in this composition will never again be heard in the wild. All of the species audible in this piece—ten birds and two frogs—are now extinct. You are able to hear these sounds because the creatures that made them went extinct during the era of recorded sound; this is a unique moment in the history of human-driven extinction.”

A ten-minute excerpt of the installation, recorded in Orono, Maine, in May 2018, is linked below. The piece would run forever, theoretically, if it were allowed to do so.

The first two presentations of Requiem, for school-aged students and their instructors, with simple materials and factual information, satisfied my hope to hear it engaging the young with straightforward conclusions — students from the Holbrook Middle School, Holden, Maine, and the Audubon Boston Nature Center, Boston, Massachusetts.

Thanks to others for gracious hosting. Thanks to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Laboratory for Ornithology and The Amphibian Foundation who provided the sound files. The International Union of the Conservation of Nature, through their Red List of Threatened Species, contributed much of the data on the animals.

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If you have interest in presenting either of these installations, or if you have any questions, be in touch.

contact@intelligentarts.net