Wild Roses

I've been recording literature extracts from the WSP review of soundscape in literature, to add to my SFU soundlines... I'm really taken with Emily Carr's writing, and from a quick google looks like her travels, paintings and life will be really rich and interesting to discover too. 

Meanwhile, distracting myself from the task of trimming and reforming soundclips, I had my first little play with convolution and other things with equally wonderful names (and of course totally inspired by sitting in on another of Barry's talks and 8 track demos to some visitors who work with imax and educational (film) sound design this-morning). 

I'm sure it sounds awful to anyone else, but I had fun with the sounds, just working and reworking the phrase form Carr: The wild roses are particularly intoxicating this year

and extra surprising was to see the way the sound waves spiral around and start to show intoxicating patterns all of their own....

the visualiser, not unlike the architecture...

SFU

WSP: Inspired!

And what needs to have happen to fit one month's work into (less than?>) one week?

It all start here...
... meeting Barry who has kindly shown me the ways into the WSP and the studio labyrinths of sound, magical sound.

 

 

So it's not inappropriate to then have a couple of skype sessions back in the solitude of my study bedroom, practicing with friends across the world, their evening, my mid afternoon, modelling sound in relation to colour, structure, form. The clarity that comes as a pin holds still a moment in time. How this all fits together - the rocksounds, the water, the sequence, location, colour, place. Five loops. A new one just begun.

And my first afternoon in the studio I spend listening, searching for rocks, water, sounds overlaid across time, and delighting at the literature analysis, texts from 3000 years of singing words of sound, painting pictures with text. And I listen to compositions 38 years ago in Wensleydale, near the Wharfedale that I've been working in this year. And I listen to Vancouver's sounds from the late 70s, 90s, 2010.
The stories of the changing pace of place.
I love the comments from the passers by, walkers - are you admiring the view? Actually, we study sound!

And then it's evening. A warm glow emerges from rooms with people working late. I have worked late enough, and go to eat, use wifi to update this blog (overdue) from my phone, and take some time to let things settle into place, bubbles raise to the top, sediment softly settling further down.

Walking back across campus I am constantly stunned and amazed at this place - this concrete Aztec temple system that has crash landed on a mountain top in the decadence and optimism of the 1960's. The rich trees, foliage, plants, water gardens, tree gardens, sound gardens, concrete gardens. I remember the seed Andrew sewed when he told me of its magic after visiting here last year. Something in me rose up and heard, 'yes, I want to go there, too!'

And a plan emerges as the lights in the centre quad stun me with their beauty reflecting in the water. This place has many dimensions to explore.

So now I know how I will fit a months work into 4 days (then I can go and visit the Vancouver island beaches where some of the recordings I hear were made, make my own, and taste the salt air of the pacific Ocean in my hair) ... or more.

A plan unfolds...

Down from the mountain.. first adventures off site

http://blip.im/g/5r for map and text

I made this colour grid at http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=49.279888,-122.949852 using http://twitter.com/gathererapp

Lake Louise

is said to be the most beautiful place in the world...

I'm not sure about that, I think myne might be somewhere with more open skies, but it's hard to think of only one place. Certainly Lake Louise and the mountains around are gorgeous, perfectly framed for looking out of the chateau windows at the views enjoyed a century and two before. Certainly it was the most beautiful day to visit, with warm spring sunshine, wind sweeping the clouds, the melting snow still covering the frozen lake and clinging to the mountains, creases showing where avalanches may fall - one did in the distance whilst we were there.

And inspiring: the place and the journey there.
A piece of work I've drawn out to make, sound recorded, photographs, plan for an installation, I think I have most of what I need and can rustle together the rest... I can see it fitting into the studio here.

The trails and even lakeside path are still pretty snowy to walk, so I found a little stopping place to find some space not to think. Just to hear, here, to empty and to read the landscape. [Half way there already with flow yoga this morning followed by a divine raw food breakfast at Wild Flowers in town - cinnamon date roll with a sweet nut butter]

So the space of stillness within recording became a space where thought only comes with an intention to act, interaction with others in a world passing by.

I've had a dilemma the last few days. I've found myself wanting to set the context in these posts, annotate the grids, catch a little more of the passing time "this is what happened, this is what I did". I think it's just a reaction to a week gone by, a tension of work imminent - wanting to be done, which feels very present in this program.
I would prefer to stop and just to paint pictures with my posts. Whisper what is rippling in the wind.

Pedro Reyes' Fragments were an inspiration: reading for the first seminar last week. Fragments of conversations over the years. Pointers of inquiry, strands that make one want to find the source from which they came.
I haven't written anything about the seminars yet. Preferring to mull, take time to reflect, see where this all leads.
What will I want to remember that I am not tracing here?
That was the question I asked myself sitting by the side of Lake Louise, motionless, for half an hour just still like the mountains, ears as the microphone recording the sounds of time.