Click through HERE for the programme.
assembling.air // Lucy Duncombe and Feronia Wennborg
Developed as part of a Cryptic Cove Park residency, assembling.air is a new work from artist-composers Duncombe and Wennborg. Their work treats voice as instrument: snipped phonemes, caught breaths, coos, sighs and sung tones are manipulated and resculpted, forming alien patterns that never quite lose their connection to the human. Addressing the potential for voice based technologies in musical composition, assembling.air pairs a vocal ‘self’ with its ‘clone’ in a dialogue that evolves organically as the performance unfolds. Composition meets text based improvisation in a piece that literally speaks to the future of musical innovation.
A Cryptic Commission developed at Cove Park and supported by the Embassy of Sweden, London and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
Digital Skies // Sonia Killmann
It can be hard to glimpse the stars in the night skies over our light-polluted cities, and in their stead many institutions and developments have introduced vivid colour-changing displays, attracting attention to themselves but generating more interference in their turn. Our environment, and the habitats of other species, are changed radically by these manmade illuminations as they turn night into day and obscure the natural dark. In Digital Skies, composer and multimedia artist Sonia Killmann contrasts lights both natural and manmade – star maps and the colourful constellations of cityscapes at night, enhanced by AI-created elements – in a peaceful, meditative exploration of these two separate but linked patterns. The accompanying soundtrack combines field recordings with live and recorded music, including Killmann performing live on saxophone and synthesisers.
A Cryptic Commission developed at IMAL Brussels and Art House Jersey.
Sites of historical spiritual significance in Scotland such as the Covesea Caves and the Munlochy Clootie Well inspired sound artist – and half of muto major – Samm Anga to create Waxen Figures, in which Scotland’s folkloric past interacts with the now. Against backdrops of deep green landscape, digital ghosts flare and vanish, performing dances that suggest obscure rituals of old – summonings, offerings, celebrations. Around these glimmering, slippery figures, Pictish symbols stream and the Gaelic language speaks out, sometimes boldly, sometimes in shredded tatters of a vanishing tongue, reminding us that what is past is never entirely gone.
Visuals – upscaled from a miniature monitor to large projections and manipulated live – are from Veronica Petukhov. Born in Italy to Ukrainian parents, Veronica moved to Scotland as a student, and now works closely with musicians to produce live and audio-reactive visuals to accompany performances.
A Cryptic Commission developed at Cove Park and Art House Jersey.
