Searching for the Sharawadji Effect…
by Claude Schryer |imed_9736-0001|
In the early 1990’s, Canadian environmentalist David
Suzuki warned that the next ten years were “our last chance to
change…”
The questions of the survival, of our responsibility for, and
interpretation of our environment have haunted me for the last few years and
have incited me to compose pieces where both the subject and material are the
acoustic environment.
I consider myself a child of the acoustic ecology ideology developed by
R Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project,
including the notion that artists can help design a more imaginative and
balanced soundscape.
The evocative nature of recorded soundscapes fascinate me environmentally,
musically and spiritually. My artistic practice involves a process of
listening, analyzing, transforming and then orchestrating recorded
soundscapes into electroacoustic portraits, in search of, among other things,
the "Sharawadji Effect."
Sharawadji, according to the À l’écoute de l’environnement, répertoire des
effets sonores (Listening to the Environment, a Dictionary of Sound Effects)
by Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue, is "an aesthetic effect which characterises the
sensation of plenitude sometimes created by the contemplation of a complex
soundscape whose beauty is unexplainable.
The effect comes about as a surprise and will carry you elsewhere, beyond
strict representation — out of context. In this brutal confusion, the senses
get lost. A beautiful Sharawadji plays with the rules of composition,
manipulates them and awakens a feeling of pleasure through perceptual
confusion.
Whether in a dreamlike or anxious state, we are sometimes completely deaf
to the environment. However, while on a walk or on a journey, our spirit can
combine availability, attention, perspicacity and therefore become receptive
to new things, including sonic fantasy."
I wish to thank all of my friends and colleagues who have helped bring
this disc to life, and in particular: Claude
Langlois, Francis Dhomont, Hélène Prévost, Hildegard Westerkamp,
Jean-François Denis, Jean-Paul
Bataille, Jeannine and Maurice Schryer,
Kamthye Chow, Kathy
Kennedy, Laurie Radford, Luc Beauchemin, Mario Gauthier,
Ned Bouhalassa, R Murray
Schafer, Robert Normandeau, and Sabrina Mathews.
Claude Schryer, Montréal [xi-97]
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