For the last week, Lauren Sarah Hayes has been put in charge of our Instagram, using the platform to highlight some of the most striking environments she’s had the chance to make music in.
Our Artist of the Month for April, Lauren’s takeover has explored how improvisation is informed by circumstance and setting. She’s been sharing videos and images of her performances, building a musical travelogue that includes visits to the Grand Canyon, the coast of Scotland and Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station.
Check out a compilation of her posts below!
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I approach improvisation from an embodied perspective, where the type of knowing involved doesn’t reside in the mind, but in the experience of the body. It is firmly grounded within the historically rich sensorimotor interactions of a person in the world, and the diachronic reciprocity that occurs between bodies and environments.
This video excerpt and accompanying photography is a document of a recording at the once booming sea-side resort, now almost entirely abandoned Bombay Beach, The Salton Sea, California, 2015. The Salton Sea is a man-made environmental disaster. The decaying sea is host to large-scale bird and fish die-offs. Its shores are covered with salt-encrusted skeletons. Expecting to work with portable live electronics, I was surprised and happy to find the abandoned piano frame on the beach. Only acoustic sounds elicited from the strings are heard in this performance. Along with those of birds, planes, and distant freight trains. The photography was taken by Tobias Feltus.
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Every musical performance involves the negotiation of both the spatial and the social situation. Just as a vocalist adjusts to the acoustic phenomena, reflections, and reverberations of a particular concert space, performing with live electronics also requires an improvisatory approach because, in most cases, we cannot control variations in stages, venues, loudspeakers, microphones, and many other elements. The idea of trying to control such an ecology never made much sense to me anyway. Why not try to respond as an improviser to each unique set of circumstances?
Playing at the abandoned iron mine site of Mimerlaven in Norberg, Sweden feels like every sound is thunder and you are throwing lightning bolts. My sounds and beats are usually pretty frenetic and I had to hold back everything with the 7 second reverb. The sound engineers work for a week before the festival setting up the sound system with multiple subs in the bottom of the 64m high concrete tower. The audience lies on the concrete blocks at different levels reached by rusty iron stairs. Listening to drone stuff here is sublime.
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Improvising the juxtaposition between the vast expanse of the Grand Canyon with the smallest possible modular synth I could carry down with me. Without the architectural structures to shape how sound moves within space, other resonances can be listened for, discovered, imagined, and explored.
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Improvising, for me, is like curious or playful exploration. When I want to explore, cars are a bit too fast and walking is a bit too slow; bicycling is about the right speed for me to really absorb new places. Over two tours in 2013 and 2015, I cycled around most of the coast of Scotland on a Moulton mini, so very likely the smallest wheels to go around the country. I don’t really fetishise ‘natural’ sound (nor synthesized sound tbh), but you certainly spend a lot of time listening to (and being attacked by) birds, animals, and weather on a bike.
Improvising in spaces like the old art deco Tarlair swimming pool in the north east of Scotland is just another way to explore and discover: how do clicky sounds activate the reverberations in the bay? Will the birds care if I try to imitate them? What can I learn about the space by this kind of negotiation? Like improvising, cycle touring can comprise long stretches of mundanity punctuated by unexpected moments of sheer and utter magic.
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Composer, improviser, and scholar George E. Lewis has suggested that much can be learnt about computer systems by improvising with them. In 2017, at the Ars Bioartica Residency at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station, Lapland–the ancestral land of the indigenous Sámi people in Finland–I worked with creating autopoietic systems–systems capable of reproducing and maintaining themselves–using sensors, embeddable microcomputers, and code. I was curious about finding alternative ways of understanding the behaviour of cybernetic systems–which have been used by artists and musicians for decades–expressly through environmentally situated embodied experiences of them. Further, what could be learnt about the land and the environment through working with soil, light, wind, and water sensors, and improvising there using self-observing systems as created in the code which was embedded in the microcomputers.
Yet in all this work, I kept thinking of the words of N. Katherine Hayles who wrote in 2008 about cybernetic systems that: “these reflexive complexities do not negate the importance of the sedimented history incarnated within the body. Interpreted through metaphors resonant with cultural meanings, the body itself is a congealed metaphor, a physical structure whose constraints and possibilities have been formed by an evolutionary history that intelligent machines do not share. The black and white analogue photos were taken by Tobias Feltus.
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In 2013, as part of the New BBC Radiophonic Workshop, sound artist and educator Yann Seznec planned a trip to Hamilton Mausoleum to conduct some sonic research. The mausoleum is famous for its previously-held record of having the longest echo (15 seconds) of any man-made structure. Its specific circular structure also means that it is a whispering gallery, where sounds whispered into the wall can be clearly heard by someone standing directly across the space. We made recordings, captured the impulse response of the space (used to make digital reverbs) and played various sounds through loudspeakers. The mausoleum is located in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland and has many wild and interesting stories attached to it which document the history of the various Dukes of Hamilton, including tales of crypts and sarcophagi.
Perhaps most impressive, though, is the masonry which has allowed the building to withstand decades of structural issues. As part of Sonica festival in 2015, I gave four solo performances inside the space, using live electronic processing with drum machines, analogue synths, and voice to activate the various resonant frequencies within the high vaulted dome and improvise with the unique acoustic properties of the space. The November weather was cold and wet, my breath was a visible mist, and water drips echoed inside the mausoleum as Tobias Feltus’ custom made sonically responsive flash bulbs lit up the mausoleum in flashes of light. These photos were taken by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan & Kevin TJ Curtis.
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Most of the time we improvise music through the medium of air, but in 2015 I was offered the chance to create a series of performances that could be heard both above and below water. As part of ARTELPHX festival, I spent a week working with my improvisation instrument, testing how it would sound underwater through speakers embedded in the pool, and using hydrophones to pick up underwater sounds. The frequency response of sound underwater is completely different and as with any nontraditional site, it took a lot of familiarization with the environment to understand how to improvise with the medium. I performed around nine times from a cabana next to the pool where festival goers could themselves improvise how they heard the music, both from above and under the water. This photo was taken by Melissa Fossum.