Surfacing
2022
Video
25 minutes
Surfacing is a solo soundwalk performance examining settler listening positionality on topographies within the unceded lands of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc through unexpected sculptural interventions using deconstructed piano parts and obsolete media artifacts as symbolic repatriation of these materials to their terrestrial resonance. (Image: piano string belt featured in the video)
Commissioned by Vancouver New Music
for Walking Festival of Sound
Seoul-Vancouver, 2022
Surfacing was screened at my BC Culture Days event "Culture Ecologies of Sound and Pace: Highlights from Walking Festival of Sound 2022" on the Thompson Rivers University campus before its October 20 premiere online. The Walking Festival of Sound program can be found here:
Murmurings and Modulations: Scoring the Kamloops Soundscape
2021
30 minute audio soundwalk
This through-composed tone poem was commissioned by the Kamloops Art Gallery as a public engagement project during Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts which asks, “How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization?” The soundwalk is activated by my event score: “As the rivers converge through this land, step into its sonic flow. Move among the shifted and hidden sounds feeling resonant frequencies from all dimensions to perform your creative act of listening.”
Bark Score
2021
1 minute video on loop
When snowshoeing in the forest on the edge of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, I found a piece of bark that had left its tree. I used a metal necklace and a tennis ball inside of my piano to interpret this nature score.
Chance Encounters for Prepared Turntable
2018
3D Interactive Intermedia Installation
Wood logs, wood branches, turntable, fibreboard, stones, hemp cord, glue, music stand, paper score, extension cord, 6 foot square floor space with electric power from standard floor or wall outlet. The bow may be attached to a wall or rest on a log.
Participants are invited to perform the soundscape prompted by the score:
“See and hear the suspended stone’s random dance across the surface while taking turns holding the bow with or without a partner.”
Exhibited in Sound Machines at Salmon Arm Gallery, 2021.
Environmental Listening Headsets
2018
3D Sculptures
birch veneer, leather, glue, orange oil, beeswax, twine
8 (H10” W17” D9”)
While the amplification capabilities of the headsets are somewhat minimal and their appearance conceptual, their purpose parallels how binoculars are used on a hike or tour. A suspension system using copper piano strings is under development.
The prototype (2017) along with photo documentation of my performative soundwalk “Tuning in, Tuning out for Solo Listener” are in the permanent collection at Thompson Rivers University.
It was also exhibited in Formation Inspiration at Salmon Arm Gallery, 2018
Tuning Fork
2017
3D Sculpture
wood, wax
H58” W8” D2.3”
Replicating a 659 Hz (E) metal model, my design represents a proportional enlargement by nine and resonates at approximately the same pitch when struck.
Exhibited in Midwinter Objects at Thompson Rivers University Gallery, 2018
Code…Encode…Decode: A Subjective Soundwalk
2020
4 (H12” W7” D5”)
Scanning the QR codes on mobile devices, participants access mp3 soundscape recordings composed from site-specific field recordings, archival cassette recordings, extended piano techniques, obsolete media experiments and found sound. These illuminated “sound capsules” were installed at four locations on a walkable/accessible route in Kamloops, BC as a Culture Days event. As a recipient of the Culture Days Ambassador award in 2015, I am inspired to continue creating events for each year’s program of this national culture movement.
Shelter
2019
3D sculpture
plywood, glue, wax and dislocated piano hammers
2 (H43” W84” D22”)
I have over 500 piano hammers that can be piled on the floor surrounded or covered by these panels. The maquettes are useful in considering different orientations while the panels are in storage. Repurposing deconstructed parts of my piano is a way for me to dismantle settler modes of music making toward the repatriation of mined ores, animal fiber and wood as land-based vibratory materials.
Serendipitus Morphis
2017
3D Sculpture
piano hammers and piano string
H”15 W47” D3”
In contrast to their taught confinement in a musical instrument, the piano hammers evoke a return to their forest and animal origins for a more organic flow. As an aging pianist, this precariously balanced creature in a state of flux is symbolic of my fresh transition into the visual arts.
Exhibited in Formation Inspiration at Salmon Arm Gallery, 2018
Suspension
2019
3D tape loop installation with live reel to reel audio
Vintage reel to reel tape machines, dual channel analog piano recording on tape loops, magnetic tape, electric fan, instrument cases, music stands and graphic score.
Rewind
2017
3D Installation
cast of cassette tape, magnetic tape, wood, paint, headset
mp3 player with 4:47 minute audio loop
H12” W9.5” D7”
The digital recording is the sound of two cassette machines rewinding, forwarding, loading and unloading of the cassette cartridge.
Exhibited at Thompson Rivers University gallery, 2017
The Listener
2018
3D Installation
Environmental Listening Headset (wood veneer, leather, orange oil beeswax)
Sound Score Journal (ink drawings)
Found Objects (vintage suitcase, wool blanket, leather boots, wood chair)
H37” W17” D25”
Inviting a view into a private collection of personal articles, The Listener combines familiar objects of passage with more obscure items that form the identity of an imagined persona who wears the environmental listening headset on soundwalks to amplify ambient sound and maps sonic experiences through soundscape drawings in the journal.
Exhibited in Privacy Settings at the REpublic Gallery of Kamloops, 2018
A Concise Guide to Euphonium Fundamentals
2018
3D Installation
euphonium, fabric objects, rubber, foam, paracord, cinder blocks
(an alternative to cinder blocks would be a heavy log)
If too heavy for a suspension system, this work may be displayed on the floor up against a wall.
H31” W26” D15”
Weight: 14lb
Fanfare for Alarum
2022
Two minute duration audio on loop
This soundscape composition amplifies multiple freight train horns resonating from different directions in the natural valley amphitheatre of Kamloops on traditional and unceded territory of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc.
The work was part of a 4-channel outdoor installation on the campus of Newcastle University
in the immersive A Space for Sound/The Arches Sound Project in July 2022. It was also transported into the rain forest of the Sunshine Coast, BC in August 2022 for an adjunct Walking Festival of Sound event and video.