Soundscape compositions, Chicago style (11/16/24)

Chicago and its environs has a robust culture of funded public art, and among the many delights that the city affords are the presence of commissioned Artscape/soundscape compositions in the Augmented Chicago: Inaugural Realities series and the Florasonic sound installation series sponsored by the Experimental Sound Studio in collaboration with the Chicago Park District. (On soundscape composition, see also my earlier post on Drever.)

I visited two of them (being busy with conference things otherwise). One was the blobby bits (“apparitions”) put together by Claire Ashley, with audioscape by Joshua Patterson; called “Nomadic Fluoratic Phylosian Spawn,” it superimposed shapes over the city skyline as viewed through the A-R app. The music there was sort of rumbling and moody, but didn’t have a distinctive shape that was discernable in the (admittedly short) time I was viewing it. The sound would intensify as blobs moved towards each other, but there wasn’t enough contrast to keep my son and walking partner interested.

The art clearly “won,” as sight was more important to our experience of the soundscape than was the sound itself. The interpretive sign told us that the installation changes seasonally; we experienced the fall version, in which the apparitions merged; other seasons used different patterns, and if I were here I might come back, particularly for what was described as a more-active summer with vibrating and rolling: “mother and spawn sway, float, shudder, vibrate, spin, roll, and feast, bubbling and boiling in a whirling dervish-like motion.” But the timing of trips is set outside one’s artistic desires, so this is probably my only experience of the Ashley Artscape.

“Nomadic Fluoratic Phylosian Spawn,” by Claire Ashley

The second was the sound-focused composition “The World Doubles in Size” by Macie Stewart, hosted at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in the Fern Room. This was a much more involved score, and the backdrop for the experience was the lush under- and over-growth of ferns: ferns on the floor; ferns at mid-height; ferns as trees. The room is humid; in its silent phase one can hear the dripping water and shhhh of air circulating with the big fans. People walk through and often turn and come back. Part of the draw of the space is the orchid room next door, but there’s a bench and divided staircases at each end of the room, so the avid listener can usually find a place to sit – or can stand watching Gladys the fish, to whom the composition is dedicated.

Stewart was inspired in part, she says, by the poem “Hurricane” by Mary Oliver (https://healingbrave.com/blogs/all/hurricane-a-poem-by-mary-oliver hosted here on the Healing Brave blog), with its focus on change and resilience and, as the program note puts it, “the ever evolving nature of the self.” 

The piece runs for 20 minutes, and the conservatory staff alternate its performance with about 20 minutes of silence. There are speakers up towards the ceiling at both ends of the room, so that walking changes one’s relationship to the source of sound. It’s played at a relatively low level – conversation can drown out the score – but it is built with louder and softer sections, and it was one of the louder sections that first made me realize that we were in the middle of a soundscape experience. (We had entered the Fern Room from the side opposite the placard introducing the experience.) An emergent score which is already mid-stream – it caught my attention and made me think about John Cage and the ways in which sound is processed. Music may be sound organized through time, but chance, Cage taught us, makes listening intentionally a foundational part of the musical experience. As listeners it is WE who organize the sounds not just of the composer’s ideas but of the circumstances of the listening as we process what the music is.

The soundscape capitalizes on that duality, as both the recording and the fern-room experience play into what is heard in any given listening. (Christopher Small might say that our role as listeners is amplified in this environmentally-situated music, since the listener’s processing of the experience contributes actively to the “music-as-action.”)

What, then, did we hear? Stewart’s interpretive panel tells us that she sourced her sound elements from Chicago, and that they include rivers, cicadas, and storms alongside snatches of conversation, violin, and voice. These are processed – sometimes recognizable and sometimes not – and patterned into a sweeping score that merits close attention, but can also enhance a more casual walk-through of the room. One of the botanists told me that this was among his favorite scores from the commissioning series, and that it still entertained him, even after repeated listenings.

I only got to hear the soundscape twice, but it was interesting. There were two notably louder peaks and sections that were minimalist in style, with slow-moving harmonies and layered-up ostinato patterns, and together those gave shape to the listening experience. I’ve graphed my experience, and narrate it below:

Analysis of "The World Doubles in Size" by Macie Stewart

 

The piece starts softly with a low rumble (“the harmony” or perhaps “a pedal” provided in a modernist synth sound, with overtones or chord pitches). It seems static, but bits of musical action in the upper registers provide moments of interest. My notes call them “over-twangles” – shimmers and resonances that  provide moments of interest but are not systematic. The plunks provide a match to the steady pour of water that feeds the fern pool Shifts of harmony happen in slow motion – the reference point moves, often pivoting by a third instead of deriving from functional harmonies. Single-point pitches and rumbles of texture that might be thought of as instrumental equivalents of Sprechstimme – unpitched but clearly “in a register” – give the listener something to detect. The variety invites concentration on the music over and above the conversations happening at the other end of the room.

Voice manipulation emerges in a foreign-sounding segment with an organ-like quality. That gives over to a sitar-like sound using distortion, but also providing the forward momentum of pop. The harmonies are still in slow motion, and we hear concrete pitches (E – C – D) superimposed over a sustained D pedal.  Out of the various layers, there is a z-z-z-z of electricity that emerges as the winner and becomes a maraca-like shake. That moves into a hummity-hummity section, still over the slow movement of minimalist harmonies. The composer, in other words, has been using sound colors and digital manipulation techniques to shape out the unfolding of this first 15 minutes of the score.

The next section is noticeably discrete because it involves the new sound of plucked strings. A roll in the upper mid-register accompanies the shift to plinking and eventually a mix of voice and pizzicato strings with arpeggio gestures. The strings are layers with their improvisatory pizzicatos, and those are superimposed over a drone. From there, we moved to a section that (to me) evolved out of a thrumming hum. This energy-building happens at low and middle registers; the water noises of the fern-room space seemed to be part of the voices of the composition. Since the composer visited the room for her inspiration, I have to believe that the textural (and tessitura-based) framing was intentional.

This moved to a slightly louder segment which played with subfinal and final as well as upper partials. This grew into what I will call the woo-woo effect, swells and fades that become (or emerge as) pitch distortions. In other words, the manipulated sound got louder and softer and louder again, and then moved into higher and lower and higher again. It was a bit vertiginous, but interesting, and worked a bit like slow motion baroque ornaments, hovering around a pitch to enhance it by pointing to it through change. I was reminded that “pitch – not pitch – pitch again” will draw the attention more than a simple sustained pitch.

This contrasted with the bowed strings in seconds and thirds; the sounds weren’t “clean” – the composer had distorted them into slightly raspy and clearly and consciously digital sounds, but pleasant ones. That had me thinking about artificial and real, music and manipulated music. I’m classical in my focus, but this shifted listening toward a pop idiom, and in so doing seemed to be building out a shared commonality of musical language, something that could appeal broadly. Underneath the strings she then provided a percussive under-layer with that minimalist penchant for blocks of sound. Individual gestures which on their own might be dissonant become heard as “consonances” because we hear them so often; the score teaches us its language as we go.

Another synth section about 15 minutes in returned to that early texture/gesture of manipulated words. That was at first harmonically stable, and uses fade and regrowing techniques to shape the subsection, so it seemed to be conceptually a combination of the vocal and the woo-woo’s.

Toward the end there was a lovely arpeggiated section combined with low harmonies moving downward; the two layers again drew attention through difference and complemented the room noises that were more mid-register. I told you it was a very John-Cage-Listening experience!

The final section uses the rumble-rumble of textural layers and a bit of pitch distortion. The experiential layer of room noise is heard once again as one of multiple layers within the composition. At the end of the soundscape, the drip of the conservatory watering system and the conversations of incoming patrons emerged as the focus of listener attention as the score itself faded to barely audible and then out of attention range. (I’m told that on Sunday -- the busiest day in the Conservatory -- the soundscape recording is almost entirely inaudible as the focus of sound is on the crowds and not the music. This is not such a bad thing; if a few moments of music emerge in the consciousness, that can change our relationship to the other sounds as background murmurs become foregrounded, and the Cagean ideology – in which attentive listening is a fundamental part of the musicking act – of random-but-intentional shares the limelight with the composed efforts of the artist herself.)

The piece starts softly with a low rumble (“the harmony” or perhaps “a pedal” provided in a modernist synth sound, with overtones or chord pitches). It seems static, but bits of musical action in the upper registers provide moments of interest. My notes call them “over-twangles” – shimmers and resonances that  provide moments of interest but are not systematic. The plunks provide a match to the steady pour of water that feeds the fern pool Shifts of harmony happen in slow motion – the reference point moves, often pivoting by a third instead of deriving from functional harmonies. Single-point pitches and rumbles of texture that might be thought of as instrumental equivalents of Sprechstimme – unpitched but clearly “in a register” – give the listener something to detect. The variety invites concentration on the music over and above the conversations happening at the other end of the room.

Voice manipulation emerges in a foreign-sounding segment with an organ-like quality. That gives over to a sitar-like sound using distortion, but also providing the forward momentum of pop. The harmonies are still in slow motion, and we hear concrete pitches (E – C – D) superimposed over a sustained D pedal.  Out of the various layers, there is a z-z-z-z of electricity that emerges as the winner and becomes a maraca-like shake. That moves into a hummity-hummity section, still over the slow movement of minimalist harmonies. The composer, in other words, has been using sound colors and digital manipulation techniques to shape out the unfolding of this first 15 minutes of the score.

The next section is noticeably discrete because it involves the new sound of plucked strings. A roll in the upper mid-register accompanies the shift to plinking and eventually a mix of voice and pizzicato strings with arpeggio gestures. The strings are layers with their improvisatory pizzicatos, and those are superimposed over a drone. From there, we moved to a section that (to me) evolved out of a thrumming hum. This energy-building happens at low and middle registers; the water noises of the fern-room space seemed to be part of the voices of the composition. Since the composer visited the room for her inspiration, I have to believe that the textural (and tessitura-based) framing was intentional.

This moved to a slightly louder segment which played with subfinal and final as well as upper partials. This grew into what I will call the woo-woo effect, swells and fades that become (or emerge as) pitch distortions. In other words, the manipulated sound got louder and softer and louder again, and then moved into higher and lower and higher again. It was a bit vertiginous, but interesting, and worked a bit like slow motion baroque ornaments, hovering around a pitch to enhance it by pointing to it through change. I was reminded that “pitch – not pitch – pitch again” will draw the attention more than a simple sustained pitch.

This contrasted with the bowed strings in seconds and thirds; the sounds weren’t “clean” – the composer had distorted them into slightly raspy and clearly and consciously digital sounds, but pleasant ones. That had me thinking about artificial and real, music and manipulated music. I’m classical in my focus, but this shifted listening toward a pop idiom, and in so doing seemed to be building out a shared commonality of musical language, something that could appeal broadly. Underneath the strings she then provided a percussive under-layer with that minimalist penchant for blocks of sound. Individual gestures which on their own might be dissonant become heard as “consonances” because we hear them so often; the score teaches us its language as we go.

Another synth section about 15 minutes in returned to that early texture/gesture of manipulated words. That was at first harmonically stable, and uses fade and regrowing techniques to shape the subsection, so it seemed to be conceptually a combination of the vocal and the woo-woo’s.

Toward the end there was a lovely arpeggiated section combined with low harmonies moving downward; the two layers again drew attention through difference and complemented the room noises that were more mid-register. I told you it was a very John-Cage-Listening experience!

The final section uses the rumble-rumble of textural layers and a bit of pitch distortion. The experiential layer of room noise is heard once again as one of multiple layers within the composition. At the end of the soundscape, the drip of the conservatory watering system and the conversations of incoming patrons emerged as the focus of listener attention as the score itself faded to barely audible and then out of attention range. (I’m told that on Sunday -- the busiest day in the Conservatory -- the soundscape recording is almost entirely inaudible as the focus of sound is on the crowds and not the music. This is not such a bad thing; if a few moments of music emerge in the consciousness, that can change our relationship to the other sounds as background murmurs become foregrounded, and the Cagean ideology – in which attentive listening is a fundamental part of the musicking act – of random-but-intentional shares the limelight with the composed efforts of the artist herself.)

Pathway in the Lincoln Park Conservatory Fern Room

Stewart relies on the articulating device of “classical” references (to use that term VERY loosely), with its invocations of string timbres or arpeggios; these are shown in blue on the image above, and struck me in the moment as moments of self-conscious acoustical framing. They’re memory nodes, easy to notice and easy to hold on to. They reach to those of us with classical listening habits as the most “regular sounding” segments of the piece.  They are also among its loudest.

They are always preceded by coloristic segments (in shades of gold) – explorations of voice and manipulated sounds, those woo-woo bits, and their combination as we approach the close of the piece. These too have a distinctiveness, but are harder to describe. Their digital modifications are more extreme, the palette more exotic and less prone to ready-made vocabulary. I made up more words to capture those sections in my notes, which I think says something about the shadings and nuances that Stewart uses.

Finally, the rumbles and thrums amount to layered segments, often in minimalistic slow-motion, adopting what I heard as a film-music style, using blocks of sound that are situated in the context of the localized environment of the fern room. These sections in particular seem to incorporate the fern room’s noises as one of many layers of the composition. At the beginning, sound emerges from the room’s ambient sound, and at the end we follow the fading soundtrack back into that world of ambient sound. The “music of the room,” such a structure suggests, has no beginning, no end. It is always ongoing, if only we listen.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

Why spend so much time on a word-salad analysis of a walk-through experience?

First, I hope that the descriptions give some sense of the experience (and encourage those of you who can to go and listen. Chicago friends, I’m looking at you!).

Second, I found the piece provocative; it reminded me of those happy years of reading John Cage, and thinking about indeterminacy and environment as integral features of any listening experience. For my Thalbach sister, the contemplation of that sung antiphon might be different each time given the relative height of the stream that runs adjacent to the convent, the variable sound of the workers in the vegetable or herb beds, the accepted or declined invitation to sit in the sun (or at least rest on the bench) before climbing all those stairs up to the parish church up the hill. Music changes because WE change, and it’s important to remember that “the piece” doesn’t really exist outside of its sounding performative experience.

Third, the dynamic nature of soundscape compositions, and the encouragement to move through space as the music is ongoing, better matches with my 14^th and 15^th century listeners’ practices than our reverent and seated contemplations of sound in the current concert-going day. Just like museums aren’t “living with art,” so too concerts aren’t actually “living with the music,” and the swells and fades created by my own move through space (here toward and away from the suspended speakers) are probably good matches to the experience of moving to-and-fro within the church as services went on.

That is, if a fifteenth-century church-goer experienced sales going on in the side chapels during services, her movement as a parishioner might well be an expected part of the acoustical experience. This is an element of listening practice that I should really tend to more fully, not just for processional music, but for the service as a whole. Pew or prowl? It changes how the liturgy might be heard and processed.

Fourth, place and visuals DO have an important function in acoustical memory. The greenness of the fern room is part of the mental cueing system that I used to recall the unfolding structures of “The World Doubles in Size”; I walked to the fish-pond for the middle vocal section; I was under the far side of the room speakers for that arpeggiated bit. Place and memory are intertwined, and the work of listening to a piece like this reminds us of that phenomenon in an embodied way.

And fifth and finally, I’m a distractable human with a bit too much on my plate. It was only through the discipline of preparing to write about the piece that my full attention stayed on the music, as opposed to drifting to the identity of this fern or that one. I took notes (one patron was amused enough at this weirdness of patron behavior to snap my picture; later, a staff member asked if I had questions he could answer!). I also kept checking timings. Together, those tasks of observation gave me the focus I needed to process the music into discrete chunks that I could hold in my head. Naming them and later tiling them into a flow chart of sections both showed the symmetries of the piece and simultaneously gave me a hand with gathering up the fabric of the music into my all-too-fallible memory.

After all, listening is an act we do for ourselves. And, as Mary Oliver put it, “For some things / there are no wrong seasons.”

 

REFERENCES

Ashley, Claire, with audioscape by Joshua Patterson. “Nomadic Fluoratic Phylosian Spawn.” Lurie Garden installation for Augmented Chicago: Inaugural Realities. Observed November 15^th, 2024.

Stewart, Macie. “The World Doubles in Size.”  Florasonic sound installation series at the Lincoln Park Conservatory (in the Fern Room), sponsored by the Experimental Sound Studio in collaboration with the Chicago Park District. Observed November 13^th and 14^th, 2024.

Oliver, Mary. “Hurricane,” a poem from her collection A Thousand Mornings, as quoted in the Healing Brave blog: https://healingbrave.com/blogs/all/hurricane-a-poem-by-mary-oliver.