Gerry Hemingway - Multimedia WorkGerry Hemingway - Multimedia Work
WATERWAYS (83)
"Waterways" was premiered in June of 1983 at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York. The work is a kind of elegy for a brook that flowed near the house where I grew up. I spent several days documenting the brook with my camera and my cassette deck. There were two things that stood out on the tapes. The first was the sound of a single drop of spring water falling from the hanging moss onto a stone. The second was the recording of water rushing over the rocks, so full of detailed running melodies. I later filtered and isolated pitches from these two sources and slowed them down so that their tuning was in the same range as my drum set. I mostly used the single drop of water layered many times; in essence, I reconstituted a flowing stream of water. In the first version of the work I played the tape through small speakers placed inside the drums. This worked better as an idea than as a reality. The original performance also included a multiple slide projection of the photographs I had taken. I later edited the tape down to its current length and scored the acoustic music for concert percussion. This version released on the CD “Electro-Acoustic Solo Works” uses marimba, vibraphone, steel drums, timpani, cymbals and some small bells along with tape. There is also a video version of the work.
AIVILIK RAYS (90)
"Aivilik Rays" was first premiered as a concert length work in March of 1988 for tape and both acoustic and processed percussion. The work employed a theatrical approach unfolding in performance in a cinematic matter. The work was inspired by the Arctic landscape; it's people and the peculiar history of the outside world's confrontation and manipulation of its unique character. The concrète material on the tape is derived from both related environmental sounds such as wind, ice and birds, and also some particularly quiet percussion sounds. This material was processed and mixed with sound generated on a Serge Modular Music System analog synthesizer. The acoustic percussion was processed on a LXP-5 via transducers placed directly on the drums and percussion. I controlled levels with a mixer and foot pedal volume control. Barry Lopez' book "Arctic Dreams" sparked my interest in this area of the world. Further research led me to the writings about the Aivilik Eskimo by Edmund Snow Carpenter, an anthropologist who spent time with the Aivilik in the 1950's. From his book "Eskimo" (Univ. of Toronto Press, 1959) comes this observation. "The Aivilik Eskimo defines space more by sound than sight. Where we might say 'Let's see what we can hear.' they would say, 'Let's hear what we can see.'"
The piece is divided into four sections, which flow one into the other.
I Invisible Markers
II The Art of Survival
III Migrations
IV Lost Frontier
The first section refers to the way in which the Aivilik negotiate their surroundings. Imagine standing on the frozen terrain, surrounded completely by flat ice. When the sun is out, it sets and rises in a different place each day. At one point in the year the sun does not set at all but instead travels in a circle just above the horizon. Every direction you look at the landscape looks the same. All of our navigational skills are useless in this part of the world. The Aivilik can see subtle markers not visible to us. They smell the wind and listen carefully to how it sounds to judge the direction of their travel.
The second section references the way in which the Aivilik have shaped their existence with an intuitive understanding and respect for the animals on which they depend for survival. Imagine the stillness of a hunter perched with a spear over a hole in the ice, waiting for hours for a seal to choose his hole to take a breath. In the third section the subject is arctic migration patterns. What fascinates me is how some animals do not appear to follow a pattern we can recognize. The musk ox for instance, migrates in a non-cyclical way, never returning to the same area, or latitude in relation to the year cycle. So much in our temperate zone lifestyle is about patterns that repeat. Even in music, forms that cycle or recapitulate always seem to feel more familiar.
The fourth section laments the slow and steady plundering of our last frontier. It is painful to realize that an essential ecosystem and culture is decaying from a senseless lack of foresight.
POLAR
“Polar” was originally performed as a quadraphonic mobile sound architecture, constructed from sampled sound and controlled in real time. It was premiered at Roulette in May of 1990. I grouped my sound materials into pairs of poetic opposites such as, Gunfire/Lullabies, Fire/Water, and Consonant/Vowel. Instead of tape this time I used the Akai Sampler and a computer to develop the material. I then sequenced the pairs of material, each half of the pair on a separate track and later overlapped the sections to create one continuous piece. This left me with the midi equivalent of two mono, synchronized tapes, each of which had one side of the pairs. In the quadraphonic version I controlled the processing and panning of each tape separately. This meant one track was panned by adjusting controls on a Serge Quad Panner, which attenuated the speed and shape of the pan. For the other track I used a graphic tablet, a kind of joystick, which meant that I could manually move the sound in space wherever I wanted. The work was reworked into a stereo setting for release on the “Electro-Acoustic Solo Works” on Random Acoustics Recordings.collabrations with :
Beth Warshafsky, Multimedia/Animation/Video Artist
Behaviors - a concert length solo percussion work video projection (see video excerpt here)
a new program of solo acoustic and electronic works which include interactive and formal non-interactive formats with long-time video artist collaborator, Beth Warshafsky. The program presents a mutually conceived visual music that explores the multiple logics of actions and reactions. As part of the process of creating a syntax for this exchange, human and biological behaviors serve as models for perceivable relationships between these two art forms.
additional work with Beth Warshafsky.....
The Visiting Tank based on the string quartet/sampler work composed in 1999, and now presented as a standalone video (see video - for latest revision see Beth's site)
Springs Haiku Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (01/05) (see video)
Bird Dance Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (12/04) (see video)
Anthrobits Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (06/04) (see video)
Ladders Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (12/03)
Salute Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (8/98) (see video)
Timing Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (11/97)
War Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (2/97)
SHHH Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (10/96)
Regeneration Soundtrack/Collaboration for Video (8/96) (see video)
Claudia Herbst, Filmmaker
NTCG Soundtrack/Collaboration for Film (5/00)