Four Landscapes (2015 - Present)

Four Landscapes is a compositional project initially  inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Andrei Rublev.

Taking issue with a set of listening and compositional attitudes assumed by electroacoustic composers, which I term the Studio aesthetics, the project aims to identify different compositional attitudes informed by a renewed understanding of my engagements with place as a listener/composer, which were originally developed through, and further explored in tandem with, a series of paper presentations, including one delivered at EMS 2014, a public audiovisual installation Down and Up (2013) as well as a performance art piece titled Being Persistently in Place I: Union St., Aberdeen (2014). These early research activities highlight two aspects of compositional approaches (with ‘Return to Place’ as the initial aim of these activities) that pervade the whole project: ‘taking time’, and ‘taking place’.

‘Taking time’ considers the notions of the ‘Instant’, posited by Bachelard and further expounded by Casey, set against the ‘duration’ by Bergson, whereas ‘taking place’ moves against the imagined or ‘virtual’, constructed places in electroacoustic music toward places where the body actually occupies. ‘Taking time’ and ‘taking place’ were then acted out as strategic listening methods in Being Persistently…(2014), the results from which were then directly (Leylines, into which the paths taken and the sounds recorded during Being Persistently… have been incorporated) or indirectly (The Passion and Waiting for Oona, where the aspects of temporality and the issue of control with regard to the sound materials used and the overall sense of composing are given to the practice of live coding)

While the theme appears to suggest that there will be four pieces, the project in fact does not have any preconception related to the number of the pieces. Nor does it have any specific connection to either actual or imaginary place(s).

 

 

 

 

Portfolio of Works