DOORS
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Artist: FAHRES, MICHAEL Title: DOORS Article No.: 04604 Media type: download only Genre: Soundscapes Label: CCn'C RECORDS Year of release: 2006 |
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„come out to show them......“
status 2
(1994-2003)
My interest in measurable environmental information began as early as the late 1970´s and resulted in two compositions, Mobilodrom and Sonnenanbetung (sun worship). For Mobilodrom, I had an electric car drive through the city and collect information like volume and pitch of environmental sounds, movement, air pressure and others. Those data were in real time translated into sound events by a computer. In Sonnenanbetung, the magnetic field of the sun was made audible by using 40 sinus generators.
Michael Fahres, Utrecht: Mobilodrom
However, it wasn´t until the early 1990´s that I became aware of soundscapes as a genre, and in particular of the concepts of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer and the entire movement he represents. Finally, I had found kindred spirits, and this knowledge together with my working on two projects, Hain and Soundscape Brasilia (1994), inspired me not only to regenerate old composition principles, but also to search for new possibilities of interpreting environmental sounds in a musical way. Working with environmental sounds as such and their musical qualities wasn´t altogether new to me because I had been influenced by the musique concrète since the time I studied at the Institute for Sonology (in Utrecht/The Netherlands), but now I focused on the symbolic content of sound(s). Questions like "What influences do sounds have on their social environment?" (e.g. church bells warning people of storm or war) were important intellectual starting-points for my musical work, and therefore also for Doors.
The soundscape Doors was composed between 1994 and 2003 and was realized with only little use of electronics. It is almost entirely based on environmental sounds which I tirelessly collected during numerous journeys.
The first movement of Doors is entitled Universal. It is a reference to the term doors of perception, an indirect and rather associative interpretation of the idea of doors. In 2003, I was in Los Angeles and I was confronted with the enormous impact the events of September 11, 2001 had (and have) on the American people. The fear of future terrorist attacks and of everything "strange" in general was omnipresent, doors were beeing slammed shut, you could say. And if that weren´t enough, during a flight with Universal Airlines to New York I was "haunted" by a series of endlessly repeated sentences, caused by the malfunctioning CD player of the on-board sound system. Fragments like "fight-flight-right" were swirling through the room, evoking memories of Steve Reich´s composition Come Out.
In the second movement, entitled Rotorua, geysers are bubbling and the doors to the earth are opening up. Rotorua is a district in the north of New Zealand, a vulcanic area well-known for its geothermal activity and mainly inhabited by Maori.
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For the third movement, entitled Para, I used sounds which I recorded in the vicinity of the river island Majaró during a boat trip on the Brazilian Para river, a branch of the Amazon. The boat was a small cutter with a diesel motor, and the vibrations of the engine caused the worn out doors of the ship´s toilet, the human doors, to open and close rhythmically.
Doors is also an hommage to three friends of mine who contributed a great deal to my (musical) life during the last few years. In Doors, they are not only characterized or portrayed by the different contents of the composition (the sound recordings are related directly to what I lived through and experienced with my friends), but also by the different composing styles: minimal music, compositions with soundlayers (Klangflächenkomposition), rhythmic pulse music.
The musical connections are emphasized by what I call the “re-clock”, a concept that allows the past to be re-experienced and at the same time relates to the future, my friends are about to step into a new phase of their lives. Doors is as much the end of a period as it opens new horizons. The journey continues.
© Michael Fahres, August 8, 2006.
ASSOCIATIONS ON DOORS
openings,
outcrop,
initiations, references to
natural eruptions, vulcanic activity,
liquid emissions,
implicit, explicit
openings,
beats, rhythms, doors,
openings,
valves, mechanics, engine, friction
movement,
locomotion, energetic development, continuation
end of a period
openings
Links to learn more about Soundscapes:
http://interact.uoregon.edu/Medialit/wfae/home/index.html
http://www.eumus.edu.uy/ps/proyectos/materiales/huw.html
http://greenmuseum.org/c/vop/werner.php
http://www.earthear.com/catalog/profiles/werner.html
http://www.omroep.nl/nps/radio/supplement/99/1129/
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/HEADER/editorial.shtml
http://www.realambient.de/soundscapeasaest.html
And especially to R.Murray Schafer:
http://www.musiccentre.ca/apps/index.cfm?fuseaction=composer.FA_dsp_biography&authpeopleid=1916&by=S
http://www.swr.de/swr2/audiohyperspace/engl_version/interview/schafer.html
Coverphoto by Cornelia Blomeyer