Water music by Alan Connolly

Water Music

• • • A Connolly Spring 2014

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Contents

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Preface Drip Music Magnet Fishing Collaborative Process

A. Connolly Spring, 2014

Preface

I am a sound artist who focuses on the flexibility of abstract communication.Â I create experimental audible experiences that encourages listening as a way of learning. I explore biomimetics through contemporary installations and consider if acoustic engagement fills the gaps that currently exist within the realm of communication. Wooden floors, and swelling pipes. My earliest memory of sound are the long creaks and quick ticks of my childhood home. I can recall lying in bed listening to the sounds of the swelling pipes tapping on the underside of the floorboards, beginning loudly like a violent snare roll and gradually slowing until I would try and guess the next click. I hold this rhythmic resonating childhood memory responsible for why sound and music hold such an important roll within my practice. We experience musical sounds within our everyday world, but often ignore or disregard these symphonies. My investigations and research into creating a way to rediscover this audible world has led me to consider the work of several influential established and contemporary artists who work within this field. Amid the early 1960's the international musical collaboration Fluxus was established. Born a product of the Neo-Dadaism movement, Fluxus was responsible for creating avant-garde performances by experimental artists, composers and designers. They eroded the preconceptions of traditional art, exposing a new interpretation of what defines art and what art can become. At the forefront of this movement was the experimental composer and music theorist John Cage (1912 - 1992). Cage believed that, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everything we do is music." This concept is illustrated in a piece composed in 1952 entitled 4'33". In this performance, a musician walks onto the stage, sits down, opens the lid of the piano and closes it again. Then a timer, set for 4'33" begins to count down. Nothing else happens until the timer is completed. Then the musician opens the lid, bows and walks off stage to signify the end of the performance. Concert halls, being one of the quietest places in a city, give Cage's controversial work the perfect setting to create something that is extremely unique because the focus is removed from the performer onto each audience member.

Preface

The audience becomes personally responsible for any sound made within the allotted 4'33". Coughing, the creaking of a chair, and even breathing become the music that resonates within the concert hall. Trevor Cox is a contemporary British acoustic engineer who believes that, "Silence adds dramatic tension by subverting expectation in a way the brain finds pleasurable." Like Cage, Cox also understands that silence is a powerful tool that can be employed to enhance awareness of sound.Â

Between 1958 and 1959, Cage studied with George Brecht, another important figure within Fluxus. During this time Brecht created, the event score. This consisted of a simple set of instructions explaining how to perform an everyday task either, publicly, privately or negatively (not at all). The instructions would usually be printed on a small white card divided into three sections, firstly giving the title of the piece, then instructional bullet points describing the performance, and finally there would be a short handwritten section at the bottom of the card which gave further information. The cards were distributed among members of Fluxus as a form of simple musical notation. During the following three years the Event Score Cards became more abstract when the handwritten section was omitted, however, the signature typeset structure remained a constant. In 1963, the cards were gathered into a collection entitled, Water Yam, and published. Water Yam is considered one of the most influential pieces of work formulated by Fluxus. Brecht once described his art as a way of, "...ensuring that the details of everyday life, the random constellations of objects that surround us, stop going unnoticed." This vision can be illustrated in one of his most recreated and memorable Event Scores entitled Drip Music. Brecht used the Drip Music card to draw attention to each elementary sensory moment that occurs when water drips into an empty vessel. The idea of taking this everyday unnoticed background event to create a multi-sensory phenomenon was part of Brecht's artistic philosophy.Â Chris Watson, possibly the best known British sound recordist, describes the sounds created by water in his 2014 exhibition Hy Brasil. He says that, "The ocean is the most sound-rich environment on earth, itself 70% water.

Preface

These sounds are to us human beings, enduringly mysterious. This strange underwater world of sound ranges from the micro to the massive." He draws attention to the enormous range of sounds created by the ocean but which humans are often unfamiliar with because although the ocean covers a large expanse of the earth it is not an everyday part of our existence.Â Trevor Cox is also aware of the musical quality of water. He declares that, "Water might be a simple substance, but it can make a vast range of sounds, from babbling brooks to crashing waves, from torrential rain to the plink of a single drip." In his book, Sonic Wonderland a scientific odyssey of sound, he investigates astonishing global sonic experiences and even the everyday unique cacophony we perhaps overlook. Like Brecht, Cox realises the potential and importance of everyday objects and occurrences. However, in the book, he also states that, "The remarkable thing is that in both a roaring tidal bore and a lazy winding creek, the tiny air bubbles make sound at the frequencies where our hearing works best. The Physics seem just right... But maybe this is more than coincidence. Perhaps our hearing has evolved specifically to discern the frequencies produced by running water. After all, if our hearing worked in a different frequency range, we would be deaf to water, a substance vital for survival." He declares that our evolved ability to recognise and decipher individual everyday audio experiences is not just acknowledging that the sounds create music for pleasure but also recognising that they are musical sounds fundamental to our survival.Â

Drip Music

A series of experimental musical installations and performances based around water. Engaging with water as a form of music helps explore itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s importance in our everyday life. We begin to realise that the old, rain tapping on a window, becomes a new, rhythmical symphony, that was perhaps once overlooked. We become attuned to the orchestral explosive sonorous tones of air bubbles in our rivers and streams. We are immersed in the onomatopoeic language of water dripping onto a hot surface, absorbed in the musical dance performance.

Act 1 I suspended a melting block of ice six floor above an hot iron. This performance destroyed the shape of the drip and elongated and held the note as it sizzled and crackled Act 2 I suspended a melting block of ice six floor above an empty metal bucket. This performance magnified the tone of a singular drip. Act 3 I suspended a melting block of ice six floor above a snare drum. This performance intensified volume and highlighted the violent dispersal of a singular drip.

Drip Music

Magnet Fishing

Magnet fishing begins to explore the mysteries that lurk submerged beneath the gloom of our canals and lakes. It is an investigation aiming to discover real junk in a society where it is almost impossible to find anything that could not be resold as vintage or antique. Is one manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trash now everymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s treasure?

Magnet Fishing

Collaborative Process

A collaborative process brief, exploring image making, inspired by Drip Music. Sound and human interpretation are used to investigate the boundaries of graphic scores and the visuals of sound. I collaborated with freelance illustrator, Michelle Crocker and printmaker, Meara Withe to create a series of drawings which were scribed with the scrap objects retrieved from the canal during the Magnet Fishing project. These objects become valuable tools, treasured implements that enable the writer to create their own unique visual art to represent and reflect the music created during the performances of the Drip Music installations.

Collaborative Process