Resonant landscape

Resonant landscape is an interactive computer music installation that uses a NeXT workstation, a MIDI-controlled mixing console, two DAT tape players, and a sound system. It has been installed at Princeton University and at the Kelvingrove Art Galleries in Glasgow, Scotland. Listeners come to the computer and use the mouse to move around on a displayed map of an imaginary place. The sounds played by the computer, their volumes, and their placement in the stereo space are determined by the current location on the map. Motion is slow and sounds change relatively gradually.

It is relatively difficult to get the equipment, space, and time together to set up the installation. However, I recorded several sessions of it in operation, and have released these as tape pieces called Walks through "Resonant Landscape".

The physical landscape is baffling in its ability to transcend whatever we would make of it. It is as subtle in its expression as turns of the mind, and larger than our grasp; and yet it is still knowable. The mind, full of curiosity and analysis, disassembles a landscape and then reassembles the pieces--the nod of a flower, the color of the night sky, the murmur of an animal--trying to fathom its geography. At the same time the mind is trying to find its place within the land, to discover a way to dispel its own sense of estrangement. (Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams)

Resonant Landscape began with my desire to make a piece using animal voices and other sounds of nature. While feeling a strong connection to these sounds, I felt it important that whatever I did would still allow them to retain their "ability to transcend whatever I would make of them." I have tried to do this by making a piece that is not a traditional work for magnetic tape, but which is an interactive, living experience.

The piece exists as a landscape in which the various sounds can be encountered. The different sounds--recorded natural sounds (streams, wind, birds), computer-processed natural sounds, and purely synthetic sounds--inhabit particular places within this space. The landscape is represented by a map displayed on the computer, and the listener explores the space of the piece by tracing paths on the map. As one moves around, the computer responds by playing the sounds characteristic of one's current location. Although I was inspired by my walks in the woods around Princeton, the intent of the piece is not to imitate any real experience or particular place, but rather to communicate to the listener my sense of the natural landscape: my memory and imagination of it.

All computer processing and synthesis of sounds was done on a NeXT workstation using Cmix and Csound software. The map-making and performance software was made especially for this piece by James Pritchett.

[See Walks through Resonant Landscape]