Shackleton Project
// March 3rd, 2010 // Uncategorized
The Shackleton Project was an in-residence collaboration with Erik Sanko of the Phantom Limb Company to create an acoustic landscape for a theatrical puppetry performance held at the Grant Street Theatre, Southbank in November 2009. 69°South:The Shackleton Project was a reenactment of the 1914 trans-Antarctic expedition by Ernest Shackleton. He and 27 others set out to be the first team of explorers to cross Antarctica. After their ship, The Endurance, became frozen and eventually crushed by the ice and sunk, they embarked on a gruelling two-year journey of survival. Here, the acoustic landscape created for this purpose was generated with bowed piano in order to portray the extreme cold, strong winds and dryness in a severe natural environment.
I wanted to capture the unpredictability of the wind, it’s all encompassing and wholly enveloping quality, the unpredictability of it’s directional shifts, the nature of it’s gentleness and it’s mighty force.
Layered textures of various musical elements as below:
*whistling wind- upper and lower registers of sound spectrum. Also rubbing the sustained piano strings gently with the palm of my hand to create a longer sustained quality- good for creating intensity as well.
*birds- bowed singing bowls or just sustained ringing sounds
*the wind- bowed piano strings and stylised wind using singing bowls again.
*clouds – gently slapped piano strings which are on sustain pedal- used lower register creating a cluster of sustained sound mass.
*sun- shrill sound reflecting it’s harsh and vivid reflection on the snow and ice, it’s harshness- bowed piano upper register.
*sky-layers of slapped sustained piano strings in low register to create that enveloping quality.
The process in which I attempted to get these samples was very much a trial and error process. Initially, I used violin string to bow individual piano strings. It was difficult because even though I treated the violin string with rosin, the metal piano string just cut it.
The next string I used was fishing line, again treated with rosin. This was better and there were moments where the string glided smoothly over the piano string but most of the time it was a scraping attack sound that was recorded. So I decided to take out most of the recorded scraping attacks and use them elsewhere, however a few were left in for texture. The resonance and overtone series that were created using this process was actually surprisingly good and perfect for the conceptual idea I was trying to convey.
Then it was a process of adding layered textures that morphed in and out of each other always increasing with intensity until sounds eventually subsided and died away.
The arrhythmical placement of sound wave samples reflects the unpredictability of the wind and the textures gather in intensity as the piece progresses. The sun also becomes more intense.
The idea was to create 2 layers of sound – one as background and one as foreground. Why? because that is the nature of the sky. It is always there and other things from time to time come and inhabit it.
The opening is a low sound mass and from nowhere, there is a an enveloping surge of sound which dies away. These sounds ebb and flow in and out of the textural landscape. There is always an ever present sense of motion in the background with the subtle hiss representing the sky itself.
The sky changes are more subtle in the background and almost unnoticeable as they move but you can still recognise it’s presence.
The foreground layer showcases the other elements of birds, sun and wind which moves and changes randomly but always with an gentle or foreceful intensity.
The timemap is fairly straightfoward – it’s starts quietly and gathers intensity and then dies away, much like the nature of how wind behaves. This is how it changes over time.
The sound texture builds and dissipates unevenly over time. Extensive reverb and delay on each of the tracks was used to bind short wav. samples and assigning left/right panning to mimic subtle directional wind shifts.
A problem occured when, after recording short sound samples, realising that I had to go to the painful process of joining sound samples to make them longer therefore the cross fading of these tracks also took ages. Take longer samples next time. Other problems- how do I bow piano and keep the sustain pedal on! In the end I just used the piano stool foot and heavy books on the pedal.
Also trying to weave fishing line through piano strings – I have small fingers but not small enough- in the end I chose notes which were on the end of the group of strings on the grand piano-both high and low sounds- the result was o.k. but limited my sound palette. In the end this was not an issue as it was a sound scape not a melody I was attempting to create.
Attempting to use an electric toothbrush vibrating on strings- not the sound source I really wanted- not subtle enough in quality for this project- the motor was too loud and interfered with the resonating strings but possibly interesting for other applications.
Bowing piano strings at a slower pace reduced the friction attack sound on the string.
*Suggestion to use cat gut next time – if there had been more time to source this, I’m sure the result would have been cleaner sonically. Nevertheless, I have seen the possibility using fishing line and rosin where there have been moments of purity of tone.
The resonance with other sustained strings and drawing out the harmonic series was the best part especially when I had my head stuck inside the piano. LISTEN TO SAMPLE HERE
