Floß Fleisch Fluss
May 13, 2023, 06:55 AM
The original Cities and Memory sample inspired the creation of this work about ship wreck. Telemetry gathered from ocean buoys at the location of a well documented 19th century ship wreck is used to ‘notate’ the sound work, modulating parameters such as key, timbre, pitch, pan and velocity. Consider the telemetry as a field recording informing the creation of the work.
This 20 minute version of Floß Fleisch Fluss is a shortened form of the sound work, without the spoken narration.*
Floß Fleisch Fluss is a sound and spoken word prose poem, composed and written in seven scenes. The literal translation of the work title is Float Flesh Flux, but Floß more accurately translates as raft.
Scenes include:
Aground and abandoned
Despair and delirium
Paternoster prayer
Mutiny and murder
Cannibalism and contrition
Devotion and death
Rescue and resurrection
Background
It is estimated that since 1700 (when verifiable records were systematically kept by naval and merchant fleets) until the present day, three million people have died in maritime disasters.** A maritime disaster is defined as the loss of 20 or more lives. The very nature of a wrecked ship usually leads to catastrophic loss of life, more significantly so before lifeboats, flotation devices and sea rescue was professionalised in the 19th century.
Telemetry
Telemetry gathered from ocean buoys at the location of a well documented 19th century ship wreck is used to ‘notate’ the sound work, modulating parameters such as key, timbre, pitch, pan and velocity. Telemetry data used for this work includes: wave height and period, barometric pressure, air and sea surface temperature as well as wind speed and direction. A fuller explanation of telemetry is below.***
Instrumentation
Instrumentation used for this work includes field and found sound, voice, polytonal tubes and percussion, amplified cello, prepared piano, prepared guitar, no input mixer and modular synthesis.
The original sample opens and closes the work and is included in various ways. Spectral analysis is used to parse sonic details, isolating timbral and tonal layers such as bird song, wind and waves. The sample is also used throughout the work as carrier signal, frequency modulator and convolution reverb source, working with the telemetry to control pan, pitch, timbre and other parameters such as key and chord progressions.
———————
*
A selection of the prose poems are below. In the complete work their narration is interspersed with the sound pieces.
**
Statistics on loss of life from maritime disasters is taken from the publication 'Shipwreck: A History of Disasters at Sea', author Dr. Sam Willis.
***
Telemetry
Telemetry is the automatic measurement and wireless transmission of data from remote sources, in this case from buoys gathering data in the ocean. Sensors at the source measure physical data such as temperature, pressure, height, amplitude, velocity and direction of ocean waves and weather. More information available at
https://www.sofarocean.com/posts/the-use-of-buoys-in-the-ocean-and-what-weather-conditions-they-measure
Below is a sample of data gathered at the location of a well documented 19th century ship wreck at 20:16 on 29 April 2023. This data gathered over several days and weeks provides several ‘wave form’ modulation sources used in the sound work.
01° 23.7' N — 006° 38.1' E
Wave Height
1.3m, 206.1°
Wind
6kts, 213.5°
Currents
0.8kts, 0.2°
Pressure
1012.3mbar
———————
A selection of the prose poems.
In the complete work their narration is interspersed with the sound pieces.
Despair and delirium
A lived fragment of feeling.
Ten thousand unknown currents.
An unspoken trust. A reflex action of the spirit.
The muscular twitchings of a corpse.
We cuttlefish camouflage the past.
Is anything left then?
Not a trace.
Is the void profound?
It enfolds the whole ocean.
Soft tissues distend with ease. Helpless in extreme lightness.
Like revelations, from the retort feelings begin to leach.
Some cauterise themselves, stem the flow.
The weak go mad, saying we can flex and grow. That weighted them down.
They must not remember the streets in spring and canals in winter.
Hold back the surge as it overwhelms.
They come wearing shoes of salmon skin.
One brings sunburn, another eschar for a surgery, a third makes obsidian blades, fingers white and numb.
Take them, I don’t need them now.
On a warm Sunday in July we reach the Plashledge.
Go then and seek asylum for your selfless love.
————————
Paternoster prayer
The sun is frozen black.
An eclipse like this happens once in 73 years
I hope there will be no clouds.
Held close to the flame, the candle soot blackens the glass.
It is awful that things are like this.
I should stay to tell you how it will be.
The sun will drain away like zinc.
It is overcast.
There’ll be no spectacle today.
Is the sky clear?
Yes. Dark cerulean in the east.
Where are we going? To the edge of the raft?
Lean against the mast. Hide from the wind.
Is the sky really clear?
Yes. Pale carmine now.
It must be beautiful.
I am glad you can see it.
You are not lying?
I can see the stars.
It happens during an eclipse.
Starlight in daytime.
Phosphorine stars I cannot name.
Awful that things are like this.
I’ll stay to tell you how it will be.
Rain begins to fall.
We wait together. Feel together. Lie together.
Paternoster.
————————————
Mutiny
Ganzfeld. The cessation of sound, a moment of stillness.
An experimental action of which the outcome is unforeseen.
Analysis of reality before its entry into existence.
Lucent patterns without pulse or meter.
The wayward son turns the sabre.
The shaft cranks, the blade plays.
Lefebvre swops dirty stories with Moreau.
Le bruit de fond.
Voice your suspicions.
Is the intonation correct?
The first howls multiply and thicken the effect.
Colouring the signal to concentrate strong sensation.
Rhythm quantised in serial tones.
Amplifying waves, vibration and hertz.
It haunts their tradition, without reaching the centre of our concerns.
Violence expressed through instrumentation, dynamics and ornamentation.
Articulation delivered by the performer’s punch.
Fearing a few false notes, they capitulate to barbarism.
Mistaking a triad studded ‘dirty’ for immoral atonality.
Stimulus is maximised but rather unstructured.
No matter how impossible the desire might be
We agree that this pitch-black night cannot evade history.
————————————
Murder
Inchoate.
Milk fed, sour skin.
Legs raise, head turns, trunk twists.
Bare footfall.
Confused crush, oily haste.
Name spelled out in leaves of wild herb.
What sacrifice the flower makes when a vacuum captures its essence at dusk.
Substance from a scented shadow.
Use your knife to harvest the sap.
It is not always painless when the pneuma’s soft.
Not always painless.
They call it easing the spring. Open the breech. As you reel.
The piling swivel. A point of balance.
The woollen must protects the sear.
Fat runs. Bunt slick.
Soaked in through our cheeks and chest.
The thumb of amber resin burns.
These flames resile then collide and unite.
The spine breach splits with a jet of musk.
The plash smelts scoriae to our skin.
This will scar them.
Like all other want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness
We are convinced that this assault is a fraud. A sewer victory.
————————————
Cannibalism and contrition
Under the trough of the naos.
Full paps ooze.
Never in their lives had the taste in their mouths been so bitter.
Ill at ease. Eructate. Bilious. Emetic.
The fleets salute as they embark.
Sulphurous flume. Visceral pleasure.
Lodging here, chambered there, embedded in crenelated pockets.
We sucked and sluiced each other’s limits.
A bone broth rich with pulsing decay.
A necessary easement yielding the leigh.
They were finally laid low by the scourge within them.
The infection protests ‘we are here because you were there.’
Just as you have destroyed what was long before.
So we slaughter the great to survive as the small.
————————
Devotion and death
Bundled hull of raft floats five thwarts:
Umibōzu’s breath, Capricorn’s hoof, Tiamat’s eye, Morgawr’s tongue, Ligeia’s call.
As these creatures emerge two sailors entwine their minds of salt.
Ervan and Deniz seek haven for their love’s retreat.
Instead the sea buoys them to the bight of the dead.
What songs they sing as their world becomes distant?
Harmonies that scald throat, eye, lung and ear.
Above, in night’s forest without trees, many animals roam.
Our sailors trust these beasts with their future.
And like them the ocean takes the name of its parent.
Bodies submerse in a bed of their making.
Startled awake with new words and feelings.
A scrimshaw scene falls from their hands.
Ascribed ‘cette amour’, our lovers drown before dawn.
Birds in Bermuda reimagined by Simon Kennedy.
This 20 minute version of Floß Fleisch Fluss is a shortened form of the sound work, without the spoken narration.*
Floß Fleisch Fluss is a sound and spoken word prose poem, composed and written in seven scenes. The literal translation of the work title is Float Flesh Flux, but Floß more accurately translates as raft.
Scenes include:
Aground and abandoned
Despair and delirium
Paternoster prayer
Mutiny and murder
Cannibalism and contrition
Devotion and death
Rescue and resurrection
Background
It is estimated that since 1700 (when verifiable records were systematically kept by naval and merchant fleets) until the present day, three million people have died in maritime disasters.** A maritime disaster is defined as the loss of 20 or more lives. The very nature of a wrecked ship usually leads to catastrophic loss of life, more significantly so before lifeboats, flotation devices and sea rescue was professionalised in the 19th century.
Telemetry
Telemetry gathered from ocean buoys at the location of a well documented 19th century ship wreck is used to ‘notate’ the sound work, modulating parameters such as key, timbre, pitch, pan and velocity. Telemetry data used for this work includes: wave height and period, barometric pressure, air and sea surface temperature as well as wind speed and direction. A fuller explanation of telemetry is below.***
Instrumentation
Instrumentation used for this work includes field and found sound, voice, polytonal tubes and percussion, amplified cello, prepared piano, prepared guitar, no input mixer and modular synthesis.
The original sample opens and closes the work and is included in various ways. Spectral analysis is used to parse sonic details, isolating timbral and tonal layers such as bird song, wind and waves. The sample is also used throughout the work as carrier signal, frequency modulator and convolution reverb source, working with the telemetry to control pan, pitch, timbre and other parameters such as key and chord progressions.
———————
*
A selection of the prose poems are below. In the complete work their narration is interspersed with the sound pieces.
**
Statistics on loss of life from maritime disasters is taken from the publication 'Shipwreck: A History of Disasters at Sea', author Dr. Sam Willis.
***
Telemetry
Telemetry is the automatic measurement and wireless transmission of data from remote sources, in this case from buoys gathering data in the ocean. Sensors at the source measure physical data such as temperature, pressure, height, amplitude, velocity and direction of ocean waves and weather. More information available at
https://www.sofarocean.com/posts/the-use-of-buoys-in-the-ocean-and-what-weather-conditions-they-measure
Below is a sample of data gathered at the location of a well documented 19th century ship wreck at 20:16 on 29 April 2023. This data gathered over several days and weeks provides several ‘wave form’ modulation sources used in the sound work.
01° 23.7' N — 006° 38.1' E
Wave Height
1.3m, 206.1°
Wind
6kts, 213.5°
Currents
0.8kts, 0.2°
Pressure
1012.3mbar
———————
A selection of the prose poems.
In the complete work their narration is interspersed with the sound pieces.
Despair and delirium
A lived fragment of feeling.
Ten thousand unknown currents.
An unspoken trust. A reflex action of the spirit.
The muscular twitchings of a corpse.
We cuttlefish camouflage the past.
Is anything left then?
Not a trace.
Is the void profound?
It enfolds the whole ocean.
Soft tissues distend with ease. Helpless in extreme lightness.
Like revelations, from the retort feelings begin to leach.
Some cauterise themselves, stem the flow.
The weak go mad, saying we can flex and grow. That weighted them down.
They must not remember the streets in spring and canals in winter.
Hold back the surge as it overwhelms.
They come wearing shoes of salmon skin.
One brings sunburn, another eschar for a surgery, a third makes obsidian blades, fingers white and numb.
Take them, I don’t need them now.
On a warm Sunday in July we reach the Plashledge.
Go then and seek asylum for your selfless love.
————————
Paternoster prayer
The sun is frozen black.
An eclipse like this happens once in 73 years
I hope there will be no clouds.
Held close to the flame, the candle soot blackens the glass.
It is awful that things are like this.
I should stay to tell you how it will be.
The sun will drain away like zinc.
It is overcast.
There’ll be no spectacle today.
Is the sky clear?
Yes. Dark cerulean in the east.
Where are we going? To the edge of the raft?
Lean against the mast. Hide from the wind.
Is the sky really clear?
Yes. Pale carmine now.
It must be beautiful.
I am glad you can see it.
You are not lying?
I can see the stars.
It happens during an eclipse.
Starlight in daytime.
Phosphorine stars I cannot name.
Awful that things are like this.
I’ll stay to tell you how it will be.
Rain begins to fall.
We wait together. Feel together. Lie together.
Paternoster.
————————————
Mutiny
Ganzfeld. The cessation of sound, a moment of stillness.
An experimental action of which the outcome is unforeseen.
Analysis of reality before its entry into existence.
Lucent patterns without pulse or meter.
The wayward son turns the sabre.
The shaft cranks, the blade plays.
Lefebvre swops dirty stories with Moreau.
Le bruit de fond.
Voice your suspicions.
Is the intonation correct?
The first howls multiply and thicken the effect.
Colouring the signal to concentrate strong sensation.
Rhythm quantised in serial tones.
Amplifying waves, vibration and hertz.
It haunts their tradition, without reaching the centre of our concerns.
Violence expressed through instrumentation, dynamics and ornamentation.
Articulation delivered by the performer’s punch.
Fearing a few false notes, they capitulate to barbarism.
Mistaking a triad studded ‘dirty’ for immoral atonality.
Stimulus is maximised but rather unstructured.
No matter how impossible the desire might be
We agree that this pitch-black night cannot evade history.
————————————
Murder
Inchoate.
Milk fed, sour skin.
Legs raise, head turns, trunk twists.
Bare footfall.
Confused crush, oily haste.
Name spelled out in leaves of wild herb.
What sacrifice the flower makes when a vacuum captures its essence at dusk.
Substance from a scented shadow.
Use your knife to harvest the sap.
It is not always painless when the pneuma’s soft.
Not always painless.
They call it easing the spring. Open the breech. As you reel.
The piling swivel. A point of balance.
The woollen must protects the sear.
Fat runs. Bunt slick.
Soaked in through our cheeks and chest.
The thumb of amber resin burns.
These flames resile then collide and unite.
The spine breach splits with a jet of musk.
The plash smelts scoriae to our skin.
This will scar them.
Like all other want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness
We are convinced that this assault is a fraud. A sewer victory.
————————————
Cannibalism and contrition
Under the trough of the naos.
Full paps ooze.
Never in their lives had the taste in their mouths been so bitter.
Ill at ease. Eructate. Bilious. Emetic.
The fleets salute as they embark.
Sulphurous flume. Visceral pleasure.
Lodging here, chambered there, embedded in crenelated pockets.
We sucked and sluiced each other’s limits.
A bone broth rich with pulsing decay.
A necessary easement yielding the leigh.
They were finally laid low by the scourge within them.
The infection protests ‘we are here because you were there.’
Just as you have destroyed what was long before.
So we slaughter the great to survive as the small.
————————
Devotion and death
Bundled hull of raft floats five thwarts:
Umibōzu’s breath, Capricorn’s hoof, Tiamat’s eye, Morgawr’s tongue, Ligeia’s call.
As these creatures emerge two sailors entwine their minds of salt.
Ervan and Deniz seek haven for their love’s retreat.
Instead the sea buoys them to the bight of the dead.
What songs they sing as their world becomes distant?
Harmonies that scald throat, eye, lung and ear.
Above, in night’s forest without trees, many animals roam.
Our sailors trust these beasts with their future.
And like them the ocean takes the name of its parent.
Bodies submerse in a bed of their making.
Startled awake with new words and feelings.
A scrimshaw scene falls from their hands.
Ascribed ‘cette amour’, our lovers drown before dawn.
Birds in Bermuda reimagined by Simon Kennedy.