UBC Graduate Research

Music for vanishing land Nilsen, Ida

Abstract

The daily cycle of the tides is connected to the longer cycle of the seasons as well as to greater, epochal shifts of freezing/warming that redefine land and water systems. Within these rotations, all living things participate in the cycle between life, death, and life. This project is about the registration of these cycles; it celebrates the condition of going between one state and another and proposes this in-flux, in-between as concept; the ultimate liminal environment that is the intertidal zone, as stage. As a response, this project proposes the creation of large-scale clay instruments produced, activated, and destroyed by these processes, and a yearly ritual of making them. The sound of the instruments is created by the wind interacting with the tidal pattern and the physicality of our bodies. The project imagines these will be tender collaborations that connect us existentially, emotionally, but also spatially. Experiencing the instruments invites us to be curious, to slow down, sit, listen… to understand the site more meaningfully and ourselves within it. Over years, the intertidal zone shifts landwards, and the instruments break apart. Pieces left hint at a greater passage of time, while the sonic experience of the newer instruments tells the story of each particular day.

Item Citations and Data

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International