witched windows [2020-21], variable duration
Site specific conceptual work engaging with cultural, material, and geological histories of the place we now know as Vermont. The piece consists of fourteen short tape collages made from sounds endemic to various local vernaculars. These cassette loops were then buried at their original source locations for 3-8 months, most throughout the winter. Additional material for this "mix" presentation consists of electromagnetic field recordings taken at each site and VLF audio of ambient ionospheric activity.
The series of embedded files at the bottom of this page are cuts of the original material prior to burial, along with lists of source materials used to make each loop. Feel free to download and remix as you wish, if you’d like.
Assortment of brass organ reeds activated by bass transducers; manually blown brass organ reeds; Brattleboro First Baptist bell (struck and sustained); surface recording of wood pellet furnace at Hermit Thrush Brewery; manipulated recordings of local fiddle club; processed cassette loop of local cowbells; electroacoustic improvisations with slate roofing tiles, contact microphones, modular synthesizer.
Rail park field recordings; interventions into abandoned riverfront warehouse and Old Grist Mill; digitally processed recordings of ‘Rockingham’ Sacred Harp tune, recorded via surface microphone on an 1865 Estey Cottage Organ; ring modulated extractions of ‘Rockingham’ pitch material.
Clamshells struck against discarded marble (sourced via Swanton and Alburgh, VT); surface vibration of flagpoles located in Lake Champlain waterfront and Burlington Main Station; field recordings of church bells made on Church St. city center; samples from DROWNINGMAN - High School Slow Dance (1999); Various granulated and recombined samples from recorded output of local bands, i.e. Phish, Matisiyahu, Twiddle, Jazz Mandolin Project, etc.
Field recordings made in the central square of Canaan, VT, raw and processed via cassette tape deck; site recordings made within the Museum of Everyday Life (entry bell-curtain exhibit), Glover, VT; Peter Schumann fiddle sermon, accessed digitally, originally presented by the Queens Museum; Field recordings of shattering ice plates, made in a vacant parking lot in Island Pond, VT - presented both raw and processed via reel to reel deck.
Dried silver birch bark, crushed; air and hydrophone recordings from abandoned Freedleyville Quarry; seismic recordings (via support columns) of marble extraction machinery (planing tools, suspension belts) located within Danby Quarry.
Air recording of Hermit Thrush Brewery exhaust fan; processed field recordings of local Guilford farms; Processed vibration recordings of Brattleboro-Hinsdale iron truss bridge; cowbells from the hardware store; digitally corrupted field recordings of Retreat Trail ice pond; locally sourced slate roofing tiles; historic demo recording of Harald Bode demonstrating his 770 Bode Vocoder.
Air, hydrophone, and electromagnetic field recordings made outside abandoned Vermont Yankee Nuclear Facility and Vernon Hydroelectric Plant.
Digitally processed samples of Arthur Brooks/Ensemble V - Nightcaller (1976 LP); Diegetic sound from “The Haunting”, 1963 film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House; Samples of porcelain cups, made by Bennington Potters; Mark Stewart/Bill Brovold performing on Gunnar Schoenbeck instruments, recorded in Building 5 at Mass MOCA (North Adams, MA).
Rock of Ages quarry basin, ambient marble calving, and heavy machinery, recorded via air mics and digitally compressed and corrupted; Air recording of 1850s era train signal bell; Surface vibration of School St. Bridge (Montpelier, Vermont); local 1950s era travel infomercial (accessed via Vermont History Museum).
Cassette C01A, Track 02a : Green Mountain Ranger - fiddle performance by Lucien Girard at Burlington (Vt.). Dated 1931, made by Helen Hartness Flanders, accessed digitally via Middlebury College’s Flanders Ballad Archive; Tape loop made on handheld cassette recorder of chest freezer at Village Market in Saxton’s River, VT; Springfield waterway recorded via abandoned electric bus located on Pearl St.; All recordings processed via convolution reverb made of slate roof tiles and local churches.
Electromagnetic field recording of Newbury Town Square, downsampled and passed through digital resonators tuned to sonorities pulled from Jeremiah Ingalls “Christian Harmony” (1805).
Air recording of “REGINA” Music Box (“The First and Only Music Box Manufactured in the United States”) - housed and operated by The Fairbanks Museum, St. Johnsbury, Vermont - digitally processed and recombined.
Field recordings of snow-clad Pinnacle Trail loop, Westminster West, VT; Two processed compositions by Charles Dodge (The Earth’s Magnetic Field, Speech Songs), transduced and recorded via an empty wine bottle; sine tones; Various digitally processed samples of historical speech-synthesis algorithms.
Air, hydrophone, electromagnetic and seismic recordings made beneath and within Stowe Hollow Bridge (Emily’s Bridge).