Performing with Nonhumans - Tree Improvisations

Description

Details
Description

Collaborative performances between students and trees using contact microphones and touch gestures. Created for MDIA300/VAST320 - Sound, Media, Ecology under professor Julie Andreyev, this project sought to expand the performer's awareness of a nonhuman actor, their chosen tree. Beginning with a Tree Awareness meditation, the performers then experimented with touch gestures, actively listening to the tree's response and acoustic characteristics. These gestures were then brought together into an improvisational performance, in concert with the tree, the performer, and other nonhuman agents such as birds or wind. Recorded on site at Jericho Beach park unless otherwise noted.

Date

2020

macy
Description: Collaboration between a Vine Maple and Macy Burgess. A stereo recording with two microphones, the listener is placed amidst the branches. Thin wood transmits out-of-tree sound; birds, wind.
Date: 2020
Name: Macy Burgess, Vine Maple
sam
Description: Collaboration between a Cascara tree and Sam Street. Performance gestures are restrained, unobtrusive, allowing for the wind and leaves to be heard.
Date: 2020
Name: Sam Street, Cascara
yumeng
Description: Collaboration between a Bigleaf Maple and Yumeng Cai. Recording from a low hanging branch, the performer's knocks and scratches mix with the jostling twigs at branch's end.
Date: 2020
Name: Yumeng Cai, Bigleaf Maple
alisa
Description: Collaboration between a Plum tree and Alisa Tarabrina. Contact microphone performance mixed with ambience from the Lower Lonsdale Community Garden. Scratching, plucking, resonating through the bark.
Date: 2020
Name: Alisa Tarabrina, Plum
cara
Description: Collaboration between a Black Hawthorne and Cara Jacobson. Two contact microphones were used and the performance was composed in editing, creating an enveloping soundscape. Thorns played as kalimba, staccato percussion knocked on wood.
Date: 2020
Name: Cara Jacobson, Black Hawthorne
emma
Description: Collaboration between a Bigleaf Maple and Emma Shang. Intensity of performed "knocking" interplays with the resultant leaf shaking, as well as with an occasionally rising wind.
Date: 2020
Name: Emma Shang, Bigleaf Maple
harry
Description: Collaboration between a Red Cedar and Harry Leshgold, recorded at Miller's Landing on Bowen Island. Performance gestures can be heard echoing through the hard trunk, building to a final climax.
Date: 2020
Name: Harry Leshgold, Red Cedar
kaia
Description: Collaboration between a young Red Cedar and Kaia Barth-Lessard, recorded at Cypress Creek. An improvised drum performance using two discarded branches, one of the more "traditionally musical" pieces. Changes in rhythm influenced by interventions of the living branches.
Date: 2020
Name: Kaia Barth-Lessard, Red Cedar
linda
Description: Collaboration between a young Bigleaf Maple and Linda Serrano, recorded at Green Timbers Urban Park. A clean recording, as if the listener is inside the trunk; one can only hear the gestures of the performer, like a small animal running over the bark.
Date: 2020
Name: Linda Serrano, Bigleaf Maple