YouTube User: judah8750
Video: "Out of Orphirica"
Scene: Shot from around the San Juan Mountains near the town of Ophir in Southwest Colorado. Avalanche filmed on March 1, 2004.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Waterless Shores: Movement One, Part One
Part One in a series of shores without water.
Movement One surveys waterless shorelines in Nature, Movement Two will explore urban shores.
Waterways are not the only shores in our worlds and lives. Our Waterless Shores series explores how other natural and constructed shores compose liminal spaces in our consciousness and experience, connecting and demarcating these regions of our selves.
Artist: "The Flasbulb"
Song: "Kirlian Shores" (official video)
Scene: The mouth of San Francisco Bay at high fog tide, viewed from the Marin Headlands north of the City.....
Movement One surveys waterless shorelines in Nature, Movement Two will explore urban shores.
Waterways are not the only shores in our worlds and lives. Our Waterless Shores series explores how other natural and constructed shores compose liminal spaces in our consciousness and experience, connecting and demarcating these regions of our selves.
Artist: "The Flasbulb"
Song: "Kirlian Shores" (official video)
Scene: The mouth of San Francisco Bay at high fog tide, viewed from the Marin Headlands north of the City.....
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Shores Artistic Resume
Shores are a new band which formed in May of this year. We've played one show so far, a full audio-visual production whose light show and documentation on film were part of the overall artistic concept. The show took place on June 20th at a performance space in the Richmond District called “The Mirror Room”, a stage inside a cage enclosed by mirrors and Mylar sheets. Experimental filmmaker and artist Chris Gray provided films that projected color and light onto the band as it performed, forming in their confluence with the performance space an interplay of light, shadow, and aurual and visual reflections and refractions. Band members Alex Darr and Jude Morris also built a slide show of artistic images and photographs of shorelines throughout the world, which was projected onto the floor in front of the band, to create the impression that the performance was effecting a journeying through the world’s liminal regions. Videos of this show were shot by documentarian Jaakko Vilpponnen, a film student at the SF Academy of Art, and Kirsten Hove, a local artist.
The inclusive purpose was to provide visual complements to the music as conceived in the Shores Philosophy statement: to create an environment that is interchangeably electric and acoustic, one which opens avenues for performer and audience alike to explore where their consciousness of self and experience of nature meet in a chiasmus of these electroacoustic phenomena.
Since that first show, Shores have been practicing rigorously, developing their songs more, conferring on their philosophy and aesthetics, and conceiving their vision for future performances. Shores view themselves as less of a “bar or club” band, and more of a performance environment one. To explore other possible performance contexts, they are currently applying to play at the annual Experimental music festival held at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, organizing a collaboration with other experimental filmmakers, musicians and artists to take place at the LiPo Lounge in SF late October, and planning a series of shows to take place in our most natural environments, shorelines around the Bay Area. We want to bring music and performance out into nature, and nature into the performance environment, as a way of creating interactive experiences for our members and audience that raise environmental consciousness and open doors, liminal relationships, between electronics and acoustics, nature and our selves.
Though two complete electronic tracks are available on our Myspace page, Shores have not yet produced any recordings of the full band. We plan on producing home recordings through November and December, and recording professional tracks at the Soundport Recordings Studio early next year.
The inclusive purpose was to provide visual complements to the music as conceived in the Shores Philosophy statement: to create an environment that is interchangeably electric and acoustic, one which opens avenues for performer and audience alike to explore where their consciousness of self and experience of nature meet in a chiasmus of these electroacoustic phenomena.
Since that first show, Shores have been practicing rigorously, developing their songs more, conferring on their philosophy and aesthetics, and conceiving their vision for future performances. Shores view themselves as less of a “bar or club” band, and more of a performance environment one. To explore other possible performance contexts, they are currently applying to play at the annual Experimental music festival held at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, organizing a collaboration with other experimental filmmakers, musicians and artists to take place at the LiPo Lounge in SF late October, and planning a series of shows to take place in our most natural environments, shorelines around the Bay Area. We want to bring music and performance out into nature, and nature into the performance environment, as a way of creating interactive experiences for our members and audience that raise environmental consciousness and open doors, liminal relationships, between electronics and acoustics, nature and our selves.
Though two complete electronic tracks are available on our Myspace page, Shores have not yet produced any recordings of the full band. We plan on producing home recordings through November and December, and recording professional tracks at the Soundport Recordings Studio early next year.
Project>Soundwave Proposal
For the 2010 Project>Soundwave Green Sound Festival, Shores would like to plan a performance that raises environmental consciousness both through the form of their music and the concept of aural and experiential interaction with nature. Our intention is to make the subconscious conscious, to foster awareness of the unique nexus natural settings create between consciousness and experience, especially when these are heightened and attuned through art, performance, and music.
In the first part of this project, the members of Shores and their artist collaborators make an excursion to two Bay Area shorelines, one which has been protected from environmental impact, versus another that has affected by pollution (e.g. the Suisun Bay Naval Boneyard, where decomposing naval vessels are threatening the local ecosystem). Shores and their artistic collaborators will film a short documentary about their experience of these environments, and the effects of pollution vs preservation upon the experience of the two. The purpose is not just to document the environments, but also to discuss how raising awareness can contribute to future prevention and preservation. For Shores, learning how to listen to nature is key to this awareness, and our intention is to use this experience to help hear each other and environmental music better, so that we can foster the same ability “To Listen” (the film’s title) in our music and for our audience.
In the second part of our project, we want to organize a performance on a shoreline in San Francisco that will begin with a screening of “To Listen”. After the audience has viewed the documentary short, Shores will perform a score which it is writing to film footage of shores at Sequoia Kings Canyon National park. This footage will be projected upon the band during the performance. The entire score will run around 25 minutes. Its three movements are titled “Reflection” (shot looking down on the water, reflecting the light above; note: these link to the videos, not the musical compositions, which are still being developed), “Refraction” (the same view, but shot inside the water refracted in the light), and “Coda” (shot looking over the water towards the shore). Shores conceives these three movements—experience, consciousness, and extension---as fundamental to the process of learning how to listen to Nature, how to open our electric selves and consciousness to the organic experience of an environment.
Shores believe that audience participation is essential to raising environmental consciousness. As an integrative, third element of our performance, one of our members will serve as a “conductor” for the audience during performance. The set will begin with the band performing alone, and then as it proceeds, the conductor will slowly distribute percussion and instruments to members of the audience, some of whom will have rehearsed the score with the band beforehand. The conductor will hand these out in waves, and guide each new member into the score, so that they become part of the sound, a “Shores Orchestra” as we call it. By the center of the set, our intention is to reach out to the entire audience and draw them into the performance, to make them participate in the act of listening to ourselves, nature, and the music. The band, in turn, will experience its sound and performance influenced by and in communication with the audience. As the set enters its coda, the conductor will re-gather the instruments he has passed out, so that the band can experience how its own sound has come to reflect the consciousness of the audience.
To power the show in an environmentally conscious way, and in keeping with the environmental responsibility inherent to a band directly inspired by, and attempting to reflect, the natural environment, our performance will be powered by batteries from cars and other vehicles left standing still on the day of the performance in order to share their electrical power. The batteries will then be recharged by our 1400w solar array before being returned. The automobile owners will be given the chance to experience a car-free day or two, and a direct positive return on the 'sacrifice' of not driving - in the form of our performance.
In the first part of this project, the members of Shores and their artist collaborators make an excursion to two Bay Area shorelines, one which has been protected from environmental impact, versus another that has affected by pollution (e.g. the Suisun Bay Naval Boneyard, where decomposing naval vessels are threatening the local ecosystem). Shores and their artistic collaborators will film a short documentary about their experience of these environments, and the effects of pollution vs preservation upon the experience of the two. The purpose is not just to document the environments, but also to discuss how raising awareness can contribute to future prevention and preservation. For Shores, learning how to listen to nature is key to this awareness, and our intention is to use this experience to help hear each other and environmental music better, so that we can foster the same ability “To Listen” (the film’s title) in our music and for our audience.
In the second part of our project, we want to organize a performance on a shoreline in San Francisco that will begin with a screening of “To Listen”. After the audience has viewed the documentary short, Shores will perform a score which it is writing to film footage of shores at Sequoia Kings Canyon National park. This footage will be projected upon the band during the performance. The entire score will run around 25 minutes. Its three movements are titled “Reflection” (shot looking down on the water, reflecting the light above; note: these link to the videos, not the musical compositions, which are still being developed), “Refraction” (the same view, but shot inside the water refracted in the light), and “Coda” (shot looking over the water towards the shore). Shores conceives these three movements—experience, consciousness, and extension---as fundamental to the process of learning how to listen to Nature, how to open our electric selves and consciousness to the organic experience of an environment.
Shores believe that audience participation is essential to raising environmental consciousness. As an integrative, third element of our performance, one of our members will serve as a “conductor” for the audience during performance. The set will begin with the band performing alone, and then as it proceeds, the conductor will slowly distribute percussion and instruments to members of the audience, some of whom will have rehearsed the score with the band beforehand. The conductor will hand these out in waves, and guide each new member into the score, so that they become part of the sound, a “Shores Orchestra” as we call it. By the center of the set, our intention is to reach out to the entire audience and draw them into the performance, to make them participate in the act of listening to ourselves, nature, and the music. The band, in turn, will experience its sound and performance influenced by and in communication with the audience. As the set enters its coda, the conductor will re-gather the instruments he has passed out, so that the band can experience how its own sound has come to reflect the consciousness of the audience.
To power the show in an environmentally conscious way, and in keeping with the environmental responsibility inherent to a band directly inspired by, and attempting to reflect, the natural environment, our performance will be powered by batteries from cars and other vehicles left standing still on the day of the performance in order to share their electrical power. The batteries will then be recharged by our 1400w solar array before being returned. The automobile owners will be given the chance to experience a car-free day or two, and a direct positive return on the 'sacrifice' of not driving - in the form of our performance.
Shores Philosophy
Shores build rhythms and harmonies based upon forms and patterns in nature--- electrical and acoustic nature is our musical staff. Our music infuses environmental, electronic, and instrumental aesthetics and principles into the sound and feeling of liminal experience. Sound is more than sound, more than auditory sensation---it is the felt resonance of immanence. Feeling is a place where our body and mind meet, where consciousness and experience wash over each other, and Shores choreograph this interchange. One song adopts the rhythm of waves crashing on a shore, another explores heartbeats and blood streams, another the aesthetic of tree branches breaking in the forest, or another how light interacts with ripples on a shore. Using instruments and rhythms that reflect these sounds, building melodies that refract our essence in them.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Becoming green
Nothing Gold Stay Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leafs a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. (Robert Frost)
Sean Alex and I are meeting to write our proposal for the Project Soundwave 2010 Green Sound Festival. Ultimately we're trying to identify how environmental consciousness and experience cause and effect our sound, and to conceive a performance that explores and highlights our relationship with nature, both as an element of our style, and as a principle of our philosophy. The proposal we're working on means to articulate this, and we hope to be sharing that with you soon. Thanks for following Shores Blog,
JM
Saturday, September 5, 2009
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