Natasha Barrett: Isostasie: track detail

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Isostasie
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Three Fictions (Northern Mix) (2000) 10m34s imed_0262-1.1 | 13872 | ISRC CAD500214740

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Commission: IMEB

Premiere: June 2000, Festival Synthèse (Bourges, France)

The three fictions are loosely narrative, and loosely algorithmic in structure. Each movement presents a brief glimpse of a sight, a sound, a sensation, where the composer is sometimes placed explicitly within the sounding narrative, other times lurking somewhere behind the music. Much of the sound material originated from analogue tone generators, underwent rigorous transformation processes, and is clearly juxtaposed with environmental sources.

 

The first version of this work, Three Fictions, was realized in February 2000 in the Charybde studio of the Institut international de musique électroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB, France) and premiered on June 2000 during Synthèse, the Festival international de musique expérimentale de Bourges (France). The work was commissioned by IMEB. The current version, Three Fictions (Northern Mix), was revised and realized in the fall of 2000 in the composer’s personal studio.

1. In the Rain (2000) 3m51s imed_0262-1.1.1 | 13873 |

MP3 Real

Composer: Natasha Barrett

The burning in my head subsides as I lie in the grass in the rain.
Fat droplets falling from the black sky,
on my cheek.
Vegetation flickers, freshness returns.

The algorithmic structure of this setting is based around the statistical simulation of rain falling onto a 2-dimensional surface. The x coordinate is translated into left-right space, the y coordinate as front-back space and pitch shift. Score files were created for use in Csound, and used to control many different sound sources.

 

2. Midnight Sun: Midday Moon (2000) 3m35s imed_0262-1.1.2 | 13874 | ISRC CAD500214750

MP3 Real

Composer: Natasha Barrett

The bright sun lowers in the sky.
Cool midnight sun.
Dream awake.
Midday moon.

Winter, north of the Arctic Circle, the sun does not rise. Summer, the sun does not set. Experience of the midnight sun injects new energy, while continual darkness can evoke mad delusions. During the summer months, the approximately sinusoidal path of the northerly sun is unbroken by the horizon. When this path is divided into units of equal altitude, varying time segments result. These time segments were used as an event framework for the sound material.

 

3. Outside Snow Falls (2000) 3m02s imed_0262-1.1.3 | 13875 | ISRC CAD500214760

Composer: Natasha Barrett

White crystals.
A gate slowly sways.
Inside it is warm.

Similarly to the first movement, the locations of events are calculated using a numerical system. However in this instance the sound material is placed by hand, and has a lighter, icier character.

 

Displaced:Replaced (2001) 6m38s imed_0262-1.4 | 13877 | ISRC CAD500214770

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Commission: Ilios Festival

Premiere: 2001, Galleri Nord-Norge (Harstad, Norway)

Displaced:Replaced is a sound and visual installation realized with photographer Trym Ivar Bergsmo and designed to capture realtime meteorological forces and the effect of these forces on the natural environment, through music and image projection.

90 minutes of pre-prepared sound material, in stereo and 8-channel soundfiles (4 gigabytes in total) ranging from one second to two minutes in duration, are stored on the computer disk. Depending on the dynamics of the weather, from 1 to 10 separate soundfiles are played simultaneously. A series of sensors (temperature, humidity, light, precipitation, wind direction, wind speed and wind gust) monitor the weather outside the installation venue. Data from these sensors are organized by a custom made computer program. Via a mapping process controlled in MAX, the data are used to control the playback of sound over an ambisonics cubic array, and to control projection of visual images via computer controlled slide projectors.

Although the sound-weather correlation is predetermined through the way in which codes are allocated, it is the changing realtime weather that decides the temporal structure from a one-second scale (which is the shortest sound) to the duration that the installation is set up. Over the long term, the structure fluctuates between slow cycling material, linear developments, and cutting dynamic changes. Here are presented three extracts taken from the opening exhibition period in Harstad (Norway).

 

Displaced:Replaced was realized in 2001 in the composer’s personal studio, with octophonic spatialization completed at NoTAM (Norwegian network for Technology, Acoustics and Music) in Oslo (Norway). The installation premiered on February 1-4, 2001 at the Galleri Nord-Norge in Harstad (Norway). Displaced:Replaced was commissioned by the festival Ilios in Harstad (Norway).

4. Fog, light wind (2001) 2m46s imed_0262-1.4.4 | 13878 |

Composer: Natasha Barrett

6. Wet and gusty (2001) 1m42s imed_0262-1.4.6 | 13879 | ISRC CAD500214790

Composer: Natasha Barrett

8. Gathering wind (2001) 2m50s imed_0262-1.4.8 | 13880 | ISRC CAD500214810

Composer: Natasha Barrett

5. Red Snow (1998, 2001) 15m39s imed_0262-1.5 | 13881 | ISRC CAD500214780

MP3 Real

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Premiere: May 26, 1999, (Bergen, Norway)

“Red snow” is snow coloured rose to blood red by a growth of algae or diatoms.

I moved to Norway in the winter, and the climate dramatically contrasted that of my home country England. Leaving behind everything I knew, I felt increasingly aware of the environment: the variety of snow spiralling in the wind; intricate details of vegetation enhanced by crystal formations; the soft sun and bright landscape; footprints suggesting their own scenario… and the potential color lying dormant.

Red Snow is the second work in a series entitled Microclimate where each work is structurally balanced, not in a symmetrical sense, but through the ‘life’ of one articulation resulting in a subsequent and counterbalancing reaction. I have attempted to concentrate the beauty and violence of a natural landscape into the ‘microclimate’ of the work—forming a new ‘organisational space’ yet reflecting, in acoustic form, the natural world and source inspiration.

 

Red Snow was realized in 1998 at NoTAM (Norwegian network for Technology, Acoustics and Music) in Oslo (Norway) and premiered on May 26, 1999 during the Music Factory Contemporary Music Festival in Bergen (Norway). It is the 2nd of the Microclimate series.

Viva la Selva! (1999) 17m28s imed_0262-1.7 | 13882 | ISRC CAD500214800

Morning introduction (claiming territory); Midday heat (mad insects, mellow birds and lazy day dreams); Dancing at night (a frenzied bizarre); Dawn and rain (long live the forest!)

MP3 Real

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Commission: NICEM with support from the Norsk Komponistforening

Premiere: October 2, 1999, (Oslo, Norway)

In the New Year of 1999 a number of items of recording apparatus, a colleague, and myself travelled to a Central American rain forest. The aim of this adventure was to record animal vocalisations over a continuous 24-hour period with a microphone array. The data we recorded was used for bioacoustic research and music composition.

In Viva la Selva! (Long live the forest!), source sounds, the locations of animal vocalisations, the vocal and spatial relationships between different animal species, the change in dynamics over the 24-hour period, and my experience venturing through a dense jungle, daytime and night-time, all contribute to the musical and narrative structure.

Most of the source sounds are insect, bird, frog and monkey calls. Some of these animals can be seen, while other bizarre sounds do not reveal their causes. After some days in the forest, the spectral distribution of the sound environment revealed interesting inter-species sound relationships, and this idea is manifest in the composition where many animal calls have been temporally and spatially substituted by human vocal articulations.

Part of the 24-hour recording period took place at night, during which time it was necessary to venture into the forest to change DATs and batteries. Armed with only a torch, vision is confined to a single shaft of light, yet in the expanse of darkness, a busy system is at play…

Viva la Selva! stars mantled howler monkeys, white capped manakin birds, poison arrow frogs, cikadas, tink frogs, oropendola birds, tinamou birds, a humming bird, mosquitoes, a single engine aeroplane, and numerous other forest and forest-edge animals.

 

Viva la Selva! was realized in 1999 in the electroacoustic studio of the Music conservatory in Tromsø (Norway) and premiered on October 2, 1999 at the NICEM (Norwegian Section of the International Confederation for Electroacoustic Music) concert during the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway). Viva la Selva! was commissioned by NICEM with support from the Norsk Komponistforening (Norwegian Society of Composers). Viva la Selva! was awarded a prize at the Prix SCRIME 2000 (Bordeaux, France), and at the 1999 Ciber@RT International Festival of New Technologies, Art and Communicaton (Valencia, Spain).

7a. Morning introduction (claiming territory) (1999) imed_0262-1.7.7a | 23787 |

Composer: Natasha Barrett

7b. Midday heat (mad insects, mellow birds and lazy day dreams) (1999) imed_0262-1.7.7b | 23788 |

Composer: Natasha Barrett

7c. Dancing at night (a frenzied bizarre) (1999) imed_0262-1.7.7c | 23789 |

Composer: Natasha Barrett

7d. Dawn and rain (long live the forest!) (1999) imed_0262-1.7.7d | 23790 |

Composer: Natasha Barrett

9. The Utility of Space (2000) 13m25s imed_0262-1.9 | 13883 | ISRC CAD500214820

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Commission: NICEM with support from the Norsk Komponistforening

Premiere: October 7, 2000, (Oslo, Norway)

Between the earth and sky
The space is like a bellows,
Empty but unspent,
When moved its gift is copious.
Tao Te Ching (translated by Raymond B Blakney, 1955)

The Utility of Space is an exploration of spatial musical structure. This exploration is manifest in two ways: through poetic spatial implication, and through carefully controlled real spatial locations, trajectories, and sound magnitudes.

 

The Utility of Space was realized in 2000 in the composer’s personal studio with spatialization research carried out at NoTAM (Norwegian network for Technology, Acoustics and Music) in Oslo (Norway). The ambisonics version premiered on October 7, 2000 at the Space Escape NICEM (Norwegian Section of the International Confederation for Electroacoustic Music) concert during the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway). The Utility of Space was commissioned by NICEM with support from the Norsk Komponistforening (Norwegian Society of Composers). The Utility of Space was awarded a First Prize at the 28th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art Competition (France, 2001). The original concert work was realized in the ambisonics format (hexagonal loudspeaker arrangement) combined with traditional stereo diffusion; this CD version has been remixed for stereo listening (either version is suitable for concert performance).

10. Industrial Revelations (2001) 11m32s imed_0262-1.10 | 13876 | ISRC CAD500214830

MP3 Real

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Premiere: November 18, 2001, (Oslo, Norway)

One mile away, a small but sharp valley has been cut into the landscape. Occasionally, the distant sound of industry wafts from this valley around the garden. This is not the annoyance normally associated with the voice of industry.

When out for a stroll one evening, I happen to walk in the direction of the valley. The landscape is temporarily idling from the process of being sculpted by powerful machines. In the half-light heaps of earth appear as sand dunes, rocks dripping with water are caves at the sea. Tomorrow the landscape will sing with machines.

 

Industrial Revelations was realized in 2001 in the composer’s personal studio and premiered on the November 18, 2001 during the concert celebrating the relocation of NoTAM (Norwegian network for Technology, Acoustics and Music) in Oslo (Norway). Industrial Revelations was awarded First Prize in the Musica Nova 2001 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Prague, Czech Republic), and an honorable mention at the 4th Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo (CIMESP ’01, Brazil).

Natasha Barrett: Isostasie: track detail

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Prices are in Canadian dollars — 1.00 CA$ ~ 0.98 US$ ~ 0.62 € ~ 0.49 £ ~ 1.01 AU$ ~ 104.74 ¥ — and include handling, shipping and applicable taxes.


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