TRACES
2018
My project Traces focusses on Uranium City in Northern Saskatchewan. The quiet isolation of this remote area belies the degree to which it is a charged site, inextricably linked to the American nuclear weapons program. This project listens carefully to invisible traces of the site’s history, reduced to radioactive decay measurable in the rapid clicks of a Geiger counter. Site-specific recordings explore the physical materiality and affective qualities of place, heard in the slow creaking and crumbling of empty buildings exposed to the elements for decades. Archival newsreel and vintage documentary audio will further contextualize the field recordings within this location's history. Layering these believable acoustic spaces with obviously mediated sounds destabilizes that context to create a hauntological sound experience that is simultaneously familiar and uncanny, where the listener is paradoxically present and absent. Traces builds on my investigations of reclamation and audio collage processes to craft an imaginary Lost Canadiana, distorted by the vagaries of memory and decayed media.
This project is supported by the Saskatchewan Arts Board Independent Artists Program
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TRACES UPDATE:
For Saskatoon's Nuit Blanche Festival 2018, I performed the first iteration of the project for a large audience, describing the work as follows:
Traces developed out of a self-directed residency gathering field recordings in Uranium City, a largely abandoned mining town located near Saskatchewan’s northern border. What began as an investigation of the hauntological qualities inherent to the dilapidated buildings and empty spaces in this remote location became instead a reflection on temporality and impermanence. The collected field recordings are processed and arranged in a real-time improvisational audio performance at this year’s Nuit Blanche YXE. Deep drones, and dusty textures are punctuated by the booming percussive sounds of boulders thrown from massive mine tailings piles, creating a commanding, heavy presence under the Idylwild bridge. A long-form abstract industrial doom concept album themed on Shelley’s Ozymandias for a post-nuclear paranoia.
The work has changed through the experience and the subsequent process. The psychogeographic resonance of place has taken up a central part of my practice through this and other recent projects. Following are images from my time in Uranium City and from my performance at NBYXE18. You can hear an excerpt of my performance at NBYXE18 here.
2018
My project Traces focusses on Uranium City in Northern Saskatchewan. The quiet isolation of this remote area belies the degree to which it is a charged site, inextricably linked to the American nuclear weapons program. This project listens carefully to invisible traces of the site’s history, reduced to radioactive decay measurable in the rapid clicks of a Geiger counter. Site-specific recordings explore the physical materiality and affective qualities of place, heard in the slow creaking and crumbling of empty buildings exposed to the elements for decades. Archival newsreel and vintage documentary audio will further contextualize the field recordings within this location's history. Layering these believable acoustic spaces with obviously mediated sounds destabilizes that context to create a hauntological sound experience that is simultaneously familiar and uncanny, where the listener is paradoxically present and absent. Traces builds on my investigations of reclamation and audio collage processes to craft an imaginary Lost Canadiana, distorted by the vagaries of memory and decayed media.
This project is supported by the Saskatchewan Arts Board Independent Artists Program
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRACES UPDATE:
For Saskatoon's Nuit Blanche Festival 2018, I performed the first iteration of the project for a large audience, describing the work as follows:
Traces developed out of a self-directed residency gathering field recordings in Uranium City, a largely abandoned mining town located near Saskatchewan’s northern border. What began as an investigation of the hauntological qualities inherent to the dilapidated buildings and empty spaces in this remote location became instead a reflection on temporality and impermanence. The collected field recordings are processed and arranged in a real-time improvisational audio performance at this year’s Nuit Blanche YXE. Deep drones, and dusty textures are punctuated by the booming percussive sounds of boulders thrown from massive mine tailings piles, creating a commanding, heavy presence under the Idylwild bridge. A long-form abstract industrial doom concept album themed on Shelley’s Ozymandias for a post-nuclear paranoia.
The work has changed through the experience and the subsequent process. The psychogeographic resonance of place has taken up a central part of my practice through this and other recent projects. Following are images from my time in Uranium City and from my performance at NBYXE18. You can hear an excerpt of my performance at NBYXE18 here.
