Sound and installation artist Karen Power writes for Culture about her work location location location, which will feature at this year's New Music Dublin Festival in the National Concert Hall.
I wear many hats - a composer, an electroacoustic composer, an improviser, a field recordist and a sound artist. I do not know, nor am too concerned with where my work fits or doesn’t, but a constant thread is the simple desire to capture and translate the essence of an idea through any artistic means necessary.
I specialise in using environmental and everyday sounds as source material for my musical compositions. I travel extensively to all kinds of locations in search of sound.
Pairing our natural world with our humanly-shaped one has lead to my development of new methods of communication between trained musicians and nature.
When I am listening/recording in any location it is not alone the sound that is of influence in the resulting piece of music, but also its context, its natural flow, its less obvious relationship with other connecting sounds and its realtime relevance within that specific place. I believe that very place has its own character (sonic signature) and sense of time - this for me is palpable - most especially in more isolated, less human spaces. Just listen to any space where nature and animal are left to simply coexist. They are in sync and everything within that space has a purpose, a kind of natural chaos? You hear patterns evolve and dissolve as things move around the space and a new kind of ‘harmony’ floats within. Why is this not considered musical?
This practice has taken me to some of the worlds most remote places, from The High Arctic - to record above, inside and deep below the ice within the illusion of a surface silence - to the Amazon rainforest - to record the flow of animal and plant life beyond human interaction/interference - and to many more extraordinary locations, many of which you will hear in location location location (2018). Such places offer us a sense of the natural flow of our world, which I then pair with musicians, who come with their own individual and often learned sense of time, harmony and rhythm, which exists within any musical structure. Pairing our natural world with our humanly-shaped one has lead to my development of new methods of communication between trained musicians and nature, which you’ll hear through a roaming sound choir (Tonnta) that pop into the installation from time to time throughout the weekend.
Join the extraordinary @TonntaMusic for two fascinating impromptu vocal interventions to be experienced alongside the wonderful Sounds Like Art installations.#NewMusicDublin 2019 | National Concert Hall | 4.15pm & 7pm | Sat 2nd March.
— New Music Dublin (@NewMusicDublin) February 27, 2019
No booking required!! pic.twitter.com/HkYaj2y9WC
The entire piece is based on field recordings made by me from the remote to the very ordinary. John Godfrey is the photographer, and often we are on site together. The way John sees and photographs connects with the way I hear these places, therefore they make a perfect pairing.
What to expect: Momentary flashes of a sound, a location, a sense of place will fill the room... but it will not necessarily be real or even the same place, but more something imaginary that has emerged from the unique combination of the real… and you are at the centre of it.
Sounds Like Art - new works by sound and installation artists Karen Power, Jürgen Simpson and Danny McCarthy will be located throughout the National Concert Hall for the duration of the New Music Dublin festival - find out more here.
