This Place / This Sound

"This Place This Sound" (2014-2015, 4:52, field recording, sampler-based composition, dance, single-channel video) began with a 4-hour early morning field recording session in Gustavus, Alaska. Guided by naturalist Hank Lentfer—a longtime resident who has documented this ecosystem for decades—I recorded glaucous gulls, humpback whales, sea otters, robins, squirrels, wind, and water with a parabolic dish and field recorder.

These wildlife sounds became source material for a composition built on sampler-based temporal manipulation. Using Roland VP-9000 and Logic Pro, I isolated moments where animal calls produced melodic phrases—birds generating multiple pitches, whales trumpeting tonal shifts—and natural sounds created rhythmic patterns. The compositional structure follows a slow build toward a brief climax and gradual dissolution. Minimal processing (reverb for spatial depth, subtle pitch correction for harmonic coherence) keeps the sources recognizable while my wordless vocal harmonies layer contrapuntally with the animals' voices. The formal tension comes from organic animal time—uneven, unscheduled—constrained within the sampler's mechanical precision and a fixed 4:52 duration.

Choreographer Sarah Campen developed movement vocabulary rooted in "working bodies"—physical labor like carrying, gathering courage, aging—creating documentary-style choreography where bodily truth emerges from everyday action. Video artist Sarah Conarro filmed this choreography in three locations and employed an intercutting strategy that presents simultaneous but impossible geographies: Alaskan wilderness (sound's origin), New York City streets (displacement), and a performance space where the first two locations merge through projection overlay.

The result is a "sonic keepsake"—a test of whether place-memory can be portable. Original recordings were contributed to Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Park Service archives for scientific preservation, while the artistic transformation makes them musically accessible, exploring how sound holds time and our relationship to environments we risk losing.