Recorded and composed from June to September 1998 as an element of the exhibition titled “THREE”.
This audio work is non-specific so please don’t try comparing it with your own personal favourite third of infinity for it is unlikely they will match.
Space and territory and the priorities of living by defending.
1st. Movement – “Out Dreamt” – has as its basis a recording I made this year at three o’clock in the morning in an Arctic Tern colony on the west of Iceland. Expansive space. An incongruous stereo layer of birdsong from a deciduous forest in southern England is occasionally mixed with the basic sound as are the sound events of a calling Great Northern Diver, a ‘drumming’ Snipe and three male voices, American, Irish and English, counting to three.
(11:26, stereo audio, 27.5 mb)
2nd. Movement – “Raucous Chorus” – Kittiwakes on an overcrowded cliff preserving the gene bank by vocally declaring willingness to defend territory with violence if it comes to that. A Black-backed Gull glides passed looking for an unattended chick. The sound like a knife being sharpened on a steel is the chicks.
(11:43, stereo audio, 28.2 mb)
3rd. Movement – “Masters Of The Upright Stance” – the Tern colony where I recorded is being ploughed up, drained, flattened and grassed to extend the camping and holiday bungalow site. The Arctic Terns that use the area as a breeding colony are not at all happy about the situation! The wilderness is tamed, leveled and sanitised to make it safe and comfortable for those who wish to visit it by bus.
(9:55, stereo audio, 23.8 mb)
All three movements were constructed by blending up to three stereo layers of analogue recorded naturally occurring sound events. All post-recording manipulation was accomplished on a computer using different digital filters and special techniques I learned in my thirty years as an analogue sound tape editor. When a satisfactory ambient audio environment had been achieved short individual sound events were added (blended) to create the whole.
My thanks to Tom Winter (Hamburg), Jim Broughan (Dublin) and Michael Bright (Maastricht) for rehearsing and reading the text so well.