This blue distance

Jan 15, 2023, 12:03 PM

"This Blue Distance is composed using hydrophone recordings from the Antarctic seas and vocal improvisation. Taken at the PALAOA observatory, the recording features the vocalisations of Weddell seals, the ‘thumping’ of Antarctic minke whales, and distant calls of leopard seals.
 
"I approached the recording in the style of a call and response from afar. Improvisations echo and interject with the chirping of the seals; the use of breath evokes polar winds, blurring into the hiss of the hydrophones; humming attunes to the low frequency thumps; pitch bends and fragments of melody emerge out of the descending trilling figures from the seals above. 

"By recording the vocal improvisations in a chapel with marked reverberation, this grants the voice a feeling of breadth and reach. The space and materiality of the architecture amplifies, reflects, echoes and cradles the single voice, just as the medium of the ocean allows sound to transmit across great distances. The bloom of the sacred acoustic space suggests transcendence and otherworldliness, from one hallowed ground to an environment equally precious and revered.

"Spectral manipulation highlights different bands of frequencies in the recording: shifting from mid-range to high and then to low boosted ranges in three overarching sweeping gestures of the piece. As the piece unfolds, low frequency oscillators with varying determinacy modulate the peak of boosted frequencies to produce a surging, swelling, wave-like effect. The addition of accentuated delay on the recording later in the piece enhances the sense of distance and the ripple effect of small changes. By intervening in the recording in this way, this highlights the exciting vitality of the antarctic sounds across different registers, whilst also recognising the imprint of human-driven changes on the sound world as the recording becomes progressively distorted.

"At the climax, the wave of sound breaks and dissolves into spray, softening into a gentler surge. Beneath it, the voice emerges once more, echoing the ebb and flow of the recording with layered textures of the motif from the beginning, blooming and dispersing. The sounds of the antarctic gradually fade into the distance over the waves, leaving only the voice behind.

"The title references Rebecca Solnit’s essay ‘The Blue of Distance’, from A Field Guide for Getting Lost, which speaks of desire, remoteness, and the quiet cherishing of longing without possessing:

“Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.”
As I listen to the worlds of polar seascapes, I think of the power of communication from afar, the sensitivity of hearing impact across incredible distance, and the striving towards global coexistence that sits at the core of the climate change crises: a coexistence that may be found in a continual, attentive response to the calls that we hear."

Weddell seal reimagined by Lara Weaver.

Part of the Polar Sounds project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Explore the project in full at http://citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds