Straight From The Source - "Germania Meets Europa"

I thought today I would look at a recent piece I created for October 2009: "Germania Meets Europa".This public artwork was a video, light and sound installation for "Rheinpartie" in Germany last year.
Ross Ashton and myself were both commissioned to create the work. For this piece, I focussed on the sound element and Ross created the projection.
The work itself became deeply layered. We had a variety of themes to work with, some of which were identical but there were others that were not. As a result, we came up with different storyboards for each element and gave the storyboards enough breathing space to allow for a sympathetic entwining of ideas and leading themes. For us, this gave the piece a greater depth for the viewer/listener to experience.

What kind of themes did we look at? The basic idea was that Germania, as a myth figure, would transform into another mythical figure, that of Europa and so the piece would be a symbolic representation of European union. It would be a site specific work capturing something of the dream of peace and change.

For us both, this was a site specific work and so we drew on the Rhine and water as another key theme. Ross implemented these themes into the animation on the statue.

I reflected the themes from a different angle. I decided to work with the full water cycle. For me, the simplicity of all sources of water gradually joining together to finally form a single oceanic body was what I wanted to aurally explore. I liked the idea of active union automatically inherent within this idea. I also wanted to follow nature's example because I was very aware that borders are manmade constructions. Rivers don't acknowledge borders, or different countries, they go where gravity pulls them and then they meet. Into this mix, came Beethoven!

The European Union anthem is taken from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and specifically from the very famous Ode To Joy. It is a very strident piece indeed, and I spent some time listening to the 4th movement and studying the score thinking about how water and Beethoven would mix. I have a great respect for the musical greats and geniuses that have gone before. I decided to "go English" in my reserach and see what the response was amongst my fellow countrymen.

I read through a commentary by Ralph Vaughan Williams in which he looked at the "Ode To Joy". He had nothing but praise for the melody itself but questioned at times its arrangement and handling, the very things I wished to reconcile for this artwork. I decided to follow my initial ideas of re-arrangement and allowed the water cycle itself to dictate pace, overall tone and density of arrangement. Water drips, fast flowing streams and enormous majestic oceans, all intertwined with the re-arranged theme and the additional scoring at times I put in as "watercolour", if you will pardon the pun. It would be Beethoven still, but framed anew.

The video below (by Oliver Blum) was taken onsite when the piece was playing. The sound quality is live, so it is a little indistinct at times.
The section of audio you hear is from the part I called "Stream Tumble". In this clip, that section is repeated a few times, though in reality it is followed by the section "The Rhine" as the whole piece is about 7 and a half minutes. "Stream Tumble" went elsewhere into the score, playing with the harmonies and arrangements underpinning the Ode itself.

I hope to put the whole thing online in the future.

Cambridge 800 - Thoughts on Programming

For those who have been checking my status on LinkedIn, I have spent most of this month working on two of the three projection art installations by Ross Ashton that made up "Transforming Tomorrow" - the closing event of the University of Cambridge's 800 year anniversary celebration.

You are all aware I was in New York in December overseeing the staging of a specially created version of the opening work for the Gotham Ballroom, and also in Beijing in June for a cultural festival that featured the same thing.

"Transforming Tomorrow" featured 3 new works: "Blurring the Boundaries" a video installation on Senate House and the Old Library was the smallest and was the original site for the first piece done in January 2009. This time there was a new site, which I had the enormous privilege of creating the programming for. The other two pieces, "Nano" and "Planets to Proteins" were projected onto Kings College Chapel and the Gibbs Building across the large open green that forms the magnificent open panorama of buildings next to the River Cam, between Kings Bridge and Clare Bridge.

Programming for these particular large format projections can have a series of varied requirements - some pieces are with sound and some without. It can be something of my creation or something of somebody else's creation. In this case, there were some fascinating juxtapositions for me that I thought I would like to talk about.

Firstly, there was a close physical proximity between these two pieces. The face of the Chapel that contained the work "Nano" was next door to the Gibbs Building and "Proteins to Planets".

Secondly, the music was intended to work as an atmosphere, a mood that grasped the central concept of both works. It was not to be synchronised to!

As a person with a creative burn towards sound and vision, I took some time to think about these two things before beginning programming. I decided my aim was to bring all three elements together but without actual formal synchronisation. I approached each piece as a separate entity in its own right, and brought together moments, looks, colours and movements to allow the two pieces to occasionally join into a single panorama before breaking free once more. Their movements were complementary, they wove in and out of each other without compromising their integrity as individual pieces.

I listened many many times to the music, a piece called "The Angels" composed by Jonathan Harvey. This choral work captured the ebb and flow of angelic voice, layered in a way that suggested the sound of something universal rather than purely religious. What would an angel sound like if you could hear it?

I let the tempo of the music dictate the image movement, the ebb and flow of the voice was mirrored in the way the images faded in and out. Nothing was synchronised and yet I hoped that such an approach would create continual fusion between image and sound. I believe I succeeded in what I set out to do. Over those three days, nobody would have experienced the pieces the same way twice.

Why mention this here? Because programming is not a simple task - it requires thought, sensitivity, an instinct for timing and the ability to respond with physical tools to something as seemingly transient as a flow of sound through to the demands of hard rhythm.

One of the things that attracted me to sound is that to me, I hear rhythm everywhere, and have for as long as I can remember. I discovered that when I first saw a projected image, and began to work with that, I could see the rhythm in that. When I began in stage management in theatre, I could feel the rhythms of lighting changes, scene changes, the pace of drama, and I got the opportunities to follow that. Everything has its own life and flow and the thrill for programming for me is being the person to flex the creative muscle in bringing all these disparate forces together under one's steady control to achieve a whole new desired effect.

I believe art lies in there somewhere too, in that drive, concept, control and final realised vision.

The Adventure of Christmas

This year I received a commission to produce sounds for the "Christmas Adventure" light sculpture trail at Stockeld Park in Yorkshire. This work included a site specific soundscape "Lake Of Angels" made to be played around the lake, which is part of the sculpture trail. (see picture left)

I visited soon after opening in October to check up on the work in situ.

It is a beautiful thing to see, especially with children, whom it is designed for. It is a mix of magical figures from fairy tale and well known fantasy stories as well as more Christmas oriented themes such as the angels.

If you live near Stockeld Park, do try to get there before Christmas for both the trail, the skating rink and the hot chocolate! The sculptures are skilfully made and the sound both brings the forest to life and creates a lakeside environment which I feel connects with the sense of place there without distracting from its natural beauty.