Wind Memory #3 - Mikolaj Szatko

Wind Memory #3 Mikolaj Szatko Time: 2019

Location: Krakó w, Poland

Interviewer: Jiuming Duan Interviewed time: 22th April 2021

It was a very surprising experience, which was several years ago. It was a really beautiful, sunny summer day. The wind was really warm. It was early during the day, around 12 o’clock. I was setting up a public outdoor music event. And it was in a kind of hidden garden area in the middle of the city surrounded by some ancient buildings.

There was all brick wall, so no street there. It is a kind of closed place. But also, there were two massive, old willow trees, probably a hundred years old. One was above the stage; one was about 10 metres away from me.

It was quite windy, but I wasn't expecting anything like that happened. The wind was interacting with those leaves was mostly this rusty sound of the leaves and branches coming in these waves. They were quite regular but very preserving. It came in long gusts that were slowly fading in and out. Everything was beautiful.

And then, as I was checking the equipment, I heard this really ominous crack ing sound. I just managed to look behind me. And in the wind, the tree was collapsing like half of the tree, which like a massive tree, just collapsing onto the floor. I was really surprised that this like slow and steady, kind of strong, but not too strong wind on a beautiful day, with a blue sky and beautiful sun, suddenly this happens. Like all the days, the wind had some purpose there, I guess. It was funny because I was checking my computer at the time. It was a streaming event. My camera was on. In the video, you can see a portion of the tree somehow collapsing, and I turned my head to look at it. I was completely surprised. Luckily, no one died because it could have killed someone. No one was under the tree at the time. But people were coming and going.

I like that memory because it was very surprising. The wind was kind of everywhere.

It was like roaming through the courtyard with the place was. And it was very pleasant. It was like extremely pleasant, cooling but also warm. It can be very friendly.

And then the whole event had to be moved somewhere else.

That's very interesting. Is the entire tree broke through the half? And was the willow very thick?

Yes. I had some pictures. It was a very, very thick, massive old tree. But the sound was very nice because the wind was really travelling through all these branches. If you imagine all these leaves of the small branches, playing together and coming down.

But it was very gradual and not that drastic. I wouldn't say that was a very, very windy day.

The screenshot of the video Miko sent me.

You mentioned the sound. Is there any object that you can use to represent the sound or the feeling of the wind?

Interesting question. I guess because I associated so much with the tree. For me, the stuff related to the wind is connected to objects that it interacts with. Certainly not just this tree itself. And like the momentum that was building up as well, even though I wasn't really aware of this. But there was this momentum of something happening there, as the undertone. I imagine this is my memory, like a low-frequency kind of stuff being in the background. When I guess it was rolling through those, there was this residence happening there. It's hard to say like an object. I could compare it to sea waves, which was very much like it as well in terms of timbre. It is slightly different from the rhythm because it was way more drawn. The gust was very long, and then they were coming down. So that's why I wasn't expecting it to be any danger because they were kind of in a way slow. I guess there was loads of power in that wind, but it was very slow. So, you can feel it like constant and then going back and forth. Really interesting.

Yeah, I think the sea waves are a good example.

Yeah, if you want to think of something that you want to compare to. If you also imagine maybe a waterfall that you just let you do that with your ears. Close them slowly and open them slowly. And you listen to a big waterfall. That will be a similar experience. This is an exercise that you can modulator the reality in that way, and even recreate. If you're in a windy environment and you can really build some rhythm, or even if you're in a quiet space, the sheer sound of pressing a little thing onto the ear canal, creative exam.

When did this experience happen? Like which year?

That was around 2.5 years ago. That was quite recent. It feels like this memory is the

most physical one when I think about this wind. I have other memories, but somehow, I don't feel that physical impact. I just know they happened. My memory of them, it's just like knowledge. And this one is very bodily. And I don't know. Maybe some sentiment, nostalgia or my hometown is. It could be that, but also it was a profound experience to see the tree falling.

Is there any deeper emotion associated with this experience?

I remember specifically, I guess I was slightly worried about the wind because I thought maybe it was like a musical music event. So, there are records on record players. Maybe that would be a hazard or something. For me, the wind can always generate some foreboding. Something ominous may happen because the force of it apparently can break trees? And I never even witnessed that before. And that certainly hasn’t crossed my mind that the tree will fall. But I really remember this feeling when the tree fell, it was a gust of wind that was continuing after fall. I felt at the same time, extreme amusement. I was like, haha so weird, how could that have happened. Then I felt extreme fear that someone was there and maybe they have a broken head and whatever. So, it's like a lot of that together with that amusement.

And like seconds later, a feeling of relief, because I felt I didn’t see people around, so I feel on one was under the tree. No one was screaming, nothing like that happened.

Appreciate it. This relief was being graceful that nothing happened as it made me celebrating that day and it was really going on. But the events in place in the different spot and went on until late evening. And I got really drunk. Like I need to deal with that all of these emotions.

For me, it was more like very surreal. Not very realistic. Kind of dream it is.

Yeah, I do appreciate that sounds crazy and surreal. Like you would not expect that to happen. Especially, if it's a tree that has been standing there for hundreds of years or maybe hundred fifty years. And then suddenly I came to this space was largely unused. No one was using the space really. And it was also the time I moved back to Krakow. So, it was nice for me to be back in my hometown. And this blissful musical wind. It was like really pleasant day.

I love the wind rolling and particularly, that was a really nice, warm day. And it doesn't feel hot because there's this wind that just brings you. But for sure, it's a very destructive force.

How do you think the difference between this wind and the wind in other places? Is there a kind of sense of that place shaped by the wind?

Certainly, I think of when I stay in Scotland, I always associate with reverb or the sound of the wind bouncing off on the building. I can hear a gust of wind bouncing of the building 100 meters away from me and I hear it. And they can locate where the gust of this happen. Because in Scotland the city like Glasgow and Edinburgh are built in a similar way. This can happen all the time. Krakow is different geographically and the structure of the city is different. So, I never really associated with that and stuff, and it is not a very windy city anyway. Even more, this was surprise to see a gorgeous day, in the middle of the summer, with this kind of weather.

I don't know where the wind was coming from. It really felt it was more like coming from one direction. Like in Scotland the winds are mostly like coming from all different directions. This wind, it feels like it has some purpose

That's not a very regular thing, right?

No. I don't think there's any like and season that it is windy? It is actually pretty bad in terms of lack of wind. And this is like building up pollution in the winter because there's no wind. So all the toxins, all the air pollution stay here, and a lot of smog.

This is the problem that it's not windy enough.

What did that wind sound like?

It will be kind of difficult to do. Because there are the leaves. I'm trying to think how to make this because foley it with my mouth, there are many sounds I don't have.

The funny thing is, at the moment of the accident, I couldn't even hear much. I had my headphones on. I was checking of the sound. The only thing I heard was this cracking sound, very heavy in somewhere else.

It was it was interesting because there was a lot of undertones. The rhythm of the gusts are more like coming around in the other trees but in this particular place. But then you have this this under real undertone that was kind of almost musical sound.

And I don't know how to reproduce that. It was very low. It's kind of musical. If you imagine like a wave of sound of 20 hertz. Sounds very low. It's like under there. You don't know if it's the wind itself, or it's maybe the buildings and how, but also maybe the tree. That's actually the resonance of the trees. And then we had all this like the crazily detailed sounds of the leaves, which was way higher in pitch than the previous and stuff that was.

Miko describing the sound

I would imagine if I saw the video clip. I can listen to the recording of some sense, some sound of wind. It will be easy to recreate it on the spot. But when you go back to your memory, you can see it as well. Visually like. I can see the wind. I can see like dust coming up from the floor because it was very dry as well. But then I cannot reproduce. We create something with my mouth. The directionality of that experience because it was coming. Imagine the willow tree that is massive obviously.

You will see the winds in different parts of the tree. Yeah, different amplitude is right.

They would be like a 1 million channels that sound installation, where we have some from all different elements of the tree, different heights, different levels.

Sound Design progress

I used the vitamin C tablet to recreate the sound that when the wind goes through the leaves, and it creates a vibe of summer.

I used the celery to foley the sound of the vibration of the willows and the cracking sound.

Using breath to produce the fade in and fade out sound of the wind.