This piece was made by isolating the vowel sounds from my mother’s 1987/88 audition tape for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir where she sang “Abide With Me.”* She was about my age at the time. She sang in the choir for twelve years and toured the world. She passed away in 2019 after a series of strokes progressively robbed her of her cognition, voice, and life. Near the end, her speech was disjointed and halting, giving only a semblance of what was going on in the synaptic misfires in her brain.
The sections of her singing are randomized through four different speakers, creating an ever-changing and endless new song sung by a quartet.
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I collected sounds from the Ringing Rocks of western Montana—a unique geologic phenomena (there are only three similar locations in the world) where the rocks chime like bells with struck. In nearby Butte, Montana sits the Berkely Pit, a large open-pit mine where copper and other mineral were harvested since the late 19th century. The Pit now is encircled by sonic deterrent devices called "wailers" that play bird distress calls and alarms to scare off waterfowl from the polluted waters below.
The New Songs for Butte Mining Camp, published in 1917, is a booklet of protest songs about union solidarity, better pay, and better living and working conditions for the miners. Using the sounds of the Ringing Rocks, I have recreated some of the miners' songs, allowing the sounds of stones being struck to echo the conflicts between the workers, the industrialists, and the environment—all played from a wailer as a warning
Link to projectWhile living in Germany during the summer of 2023, I collected audio samples from the Berlin Wall by attaching a contact microphone to the exposed rebar of the original sections of wall and then hitting the rebar with my finger. The resulting resonant sounds resembled the bells that regularly chime around Europe. I arranged the sounds in intervals based on standard carillon peals used at times of celebration. A wall of amplifiers plays the various peals at random intervals creating a cacophonous noise.
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