Today I sat down at the Sage in Newcastle with Shelly Knotts, a coding and data networking specialist who’s assisting me with sound synthesis and data interpretation, the last-but-one piece in the jigsaw before testing and evaluation. Our aim was to take two collections of climate change data, edit and scale the data points, plug them into a provisional synthesised sound model, then refine this sound and finally make a second contrasting, slightly different sound.
The first sound, a rising glissando (which slides upwards through the data mapped as frequencies) represents CO2 levels from 1880 – 2050, reaching inaudibility as the tipping point is reached, i.e. if we do nothing by 2050 we’re in dire trouble. The second, a falling glissando, is mapped to the falling glacier volume of Switzerland’s Aletsch Glacier, again reaching inaudibility as the putative tipping point is reached at 2050.
This is a complex business so I left Shelly to do her work, auditioning and commenting where necessary. I understand enough of the programme Supercollider to work with a range of options and we agreed that the best approach would be to have a modular piece of code where I could select or modify elements according to the needs of the final work, for example the duration of the installation might be stretched or compressed.
Although it might sound a bit dull to the reader this is actually a very exciting part of the project, not to denigrate the preparatory work in any way, but to hear the result of years of research and months of collaborative preparation is most fulfilling. Very soon, when the final bits of code are assembled by Shelly, I will have two robust contrasting ‘musical’ electronic timbres, engaging in themselves and able to offer presence at reasonably high volumes. Additional richness comes in the form of ‘natural’ variations programmed into the sonification model, i.e. Co2 levels (annual) and glacier diminution, which I’ve taken to be a 50 year cycle, though please correct me if I’m wrong – the scientific papers are somewhere above my pay grade so I had to extrapolate what I could within my means. These periodic movements will be perceived as ‘wobbles’ or a slow pulsation in the rising and falling sounds.
One of the interesting aspects of this project has been the discussions I’ve had with various people about the optimum duration for such a sound installation which will involve the two sounds clearly separated and played over full range loudspeakers. I’ve decided to test and evaluate a piece of 30 minutes in total, to be scheduled as such at various upcoming events (as opposed to running on a loop all day). The work will have a 2 minute introduction in which the two tones hold a unison at 774Hz, the (geometric) mean of 40Hz and 15kHz (which we’ve taken as upper limits of the average human hearing), before separating and following their respective paths. There will be a spoken introduction, to be decided upon, but this will most likely position the work within the wider context of old and new environmental values. At the end of the piece the ‘tipping point’ tones will be sustained for a final two minutes before fading to silence. More than one person has expressed the view that 30 minutes is ‘very long’ or even ‘too long’. For what or why wasn’t made clear. Some people, in their early twenties or younger (i.e. younger than me…) have suggested a duration of about five to ten minutes because ‘who would want to listen to something thirty minutes long?’ This is interesting to me because it tells us something about the current trend towards grazing and snacking with respect to musical bytes and because it lays out a challenge – is there indeed a place in the world for sound works which set out to engage the listener for more than a few fleeting minutes? Is it old-fashioned to want to behold or contemplate a work of sound art which requires concentration and commitment? Let’s find out – as someone who doesn’t accept transient cultural orthodoxies or assumptions I do love a challenge.
