earthloops Sept 2021
earthloops: This work uses the analogue material of Farmlands which was recorded in the early 1980’s and reimagined with recent field recordings from 2021. The work maintains the presence of looped tape material, field recordings of rain, individual tracks were processed via spectral filters varying over time until eventually only the spectral shifts are present. The work explores the relationships between the movements of the environmental sounds and the materiality of the processed audio and tape loop characteristics.
And somehow explores the today's relationships with the Earth and climate 40 years later.
How do you listen? Position yourself in stillness.
earthloops 30min
earthloops_Tom_Scott_20212.mp3Broadcast on Radio Tsonami: Planéte Hypnotique | Solsticio de Verano 2021 | Mat Eric Hart (FR) on 21st December 2021 8pm GMT and 22nd December 2021 3pm GMT and available on Mixcloud Planete Hypnotique Episode 2
Details for a proposal submitted to the open call ‘Iyashikei Slow Waltz’ or ‘Deepfake Gabber’ By Current Resonance for their Current Resonance Festival in Aarhus, Denmark November 3-7 2021.
Proposal:
earthloops is a 30min audio static work. (see details on this page)
The proposal is for the audio to be played in situ with up to four performers playing improvisations and responding to the track and each other, using the Current Resonance Performers Descriptions, its proposed Performer 1 – Electric guitar, Performer 2 – electronics and objects, Performer 3 – Saxophone, whistles and Performer 4 – voice, objects.
Ideally this would be a spontaneous response to the track playing out otherwise some practice could be carried out before hand, also the number of performers can be worked out by Current Resonance.
It should be noted there is a paradox within the work, whilst it origins are ‘environmental’ and belong to ‘Iyashikei Slow Waltz’ it is also manipulated and relentless and thus belongs to ‘Deepfake Gabber’ but in this case ‘Iyashikei Slow Waltz’ environmental has been chosen due to the production process.
The following link gives an example illustrating a similar approach:
Background info: Two audio works were made in the early 1980's, named
Earthworks and Farmlands both dealt with environmental issues, Earthworks more so with the idea of 'figures in a landscape' containing sub themes of isolation whilst in a landscape and possibly a sense of being divorced from the land, (classic subjects in paintings as well) which in many ways reflects our current predicament with the earth and climate crisis. Farmlands also worked with a theme that dealt with millennium, aeons and epics of time and geology, the strata which holds information about past climate changes contrary to what it actually sounds like!
The production technique for Farmlands was to source the sounds from BBC sound effect records, record them to quarter inch tape and make tape loops of different lengths, one which went right round the room. I think a couple of pre mix's were also made, everything was set off which instigated random juxtapositions of the different audio elements for each run. Each element was routed through a mixer and mixed on 16mm mag tape. Eventually a multi track, tape loops and stereo tape was mixed live, producing a final mix.
Earthworks was made in conjunction with black and white Super 8 footage of a figure walking across wasteland in a flurry of falling snow, then hand processed, Usually projected with audio cassette playback manually synched, some times the audio would synch with the flicker of the film image. Production was very much a hands on physical venture in both the super 8 and the audio production. You didn't stay still, you walked to things, held the tapes, loaded them, cut and spliced them, thought countdowns, pushed buttons, hit the record button, released the pause button. - great fun to be involved in that particular way.
Both works contributed to earthloops, thematically and sonically via the only surviving cassette copy of Farmlands, this was digitised and brought to earthloops.
Farmlands 10min
FarmlandsS_Tom_Scott_1980s.mp3earthworks_Tom_Scott.mp3Earthworks 10:24