An audio composition that references human behavioural patterns, motivations and expressions within short form social media for its score. The Donald Trump 2016 US Presidential election campaign on Twitter is the case study for this piece. Individual tweets are coded by emotional tone: anger, fear, sadness, joy. Categories are matched with a specific cello movement that attempts to find resonance with the particular qualities of that emotion. This is the foundation for two graphic scores performed in studio and layered. 

To encourage focused listening, or a haptic aural experience, physical material textures were available in the original presentation for listeners to interact with.

Battle of the Fallen

Tribe is an audio-visual experimental series based on the exploration of similar emotions in different mediums of storytelling. 

This is the sound design for the film (find it at alanamcfarlane.com). Part II continues the sound journey of Part I. This time images portray experiences of searching, loss, and longing for a mother who gave her daughter away for adoption after an unsuccessful attempt to end the pregnancy.

Tribe Part II

Trump Tower at 1161 W Georgia stands along one of the loudest traffic corridors in Vancouver. It might also be owned by one of the loudest politicians. Is there any wind that blows through those massive chrome letters?

Ignore the security guards who watch you intently. They’re used to the average public standing outside in disbelief. Perhaps a spontaneous protest of voices will arrive to rage against racist immigration policies or the scaling back of womens’ reproductive rights. It’s interesting that even something as small as the constant rhythmic clicking of a ratchet - like a little conscience - might symbolically offer sonic hope for sanity in the city.

LISTENING POST E

The Holy Rosary Cathedral, 646 Richards St, Saturday 10:30am. Practice time for the ringing of Sunday morning service is Saturdays between 9:30am and 11am. Is this when they get to mess up? Will we hear it in the rhythm (was someone listening to drum and bass on their way over), tempo, tone and timbre of the metal ball striking the cast iron bell? Will the ringing reveal anything about the ringer: a confident Catholic percussionist-in-training or shy parishioner whose meek strike hints at a wavering faith.

Sit in the alley between Richards St and Homer on the cement ledge. Listen to the ringing against the periodic density of cars. Though the bell isn’t visible, by its resonance - the amplitude and brightness of the sound, the variation pitches - can’t you feel the weight of the metal, its coldness and reach through the heavy traffic. Does it seem like it’s trying to compete?

LISTENING POST A

Elizabeth was not sitting in the room. She read a science equation aloud elsewhere. Twenty-first century technology places her in the room, her voice becoming unintelligible, giving over to the room’s natural resonances in time. 

This music composition is a modern recreation of the acoustic explorations of Alvin Lucier with location sound recordings at the Muon Beam Line inside the TRIUMF Meson Experimental Hall.

Elizabeth MacKenzie, the first artist in my Dialogical Stream for the Leaning Out of Windows project, worked with the Dirac equation in her Equation Drawings. The visual clarity of the equation changes over the series. She sent me an audio voice memo of her reading it.

Sound waves within her speech that are reinforced by the natural reflections of the hall become unintelligible. As Lucier noted, speech becomes music.

Elizabeth Was Not Sitting In The Room

Wait Here Blue Sky
by Alana Dyan McFarlane & Christi Jools 

Wait here Blue Sky
The earth carries me
Away from myself
Into strange waters.

In time I return
To this body, to these eyes.
Once I forget the memory
Of being separated.

Wait here Blue Sky
The earth carries me
Away from myself
Into strange waters.

Wait Here Blue Sky

Kyle's user settings on my three-slider, multi-frequency sonic colourific mini-verse built in Max MSP.

Find video at alanamcfarlane.com.

Kyle's Sound World 87.53.54

Listen for the exhalation of the building
As it settles on new foundations
Inside these four walls.
There may be some murmur
Of the shifting, the hum.

Let us construct ourselves
From these sound materials.

Play a percussive instrument
As softly as air currents flowing 
In ventilation ducts, as plastic sheeting Conforms underneath the weight 
Of poured cement.

That soft sound will be the body.
What is its rhythm?

Build four limbs with your sound
As a bricklayer builds a wall
Methodically, brick by brick.
With your instrument, softly
Build your body, sound by sound.

Listen for a worker’s rhythm.
Shoulder, arm, elbow, forearm
Wrist, palm, fingers five - two arms.
Thigh, knee, shin, ankle, 
Heel, arch, toes five - two legs.

Stand as your sound body 
In the four walls of the space
And go for a walk.

Sound Body

Welcome to Julius' Magical Kingdom. Here you'll hear the sounds of a Commercial Drive residential neighbourhood on a Sunday in September. 

First clip: church bells and crows call in response.
Second: father and sons riding bikes.
Third: hydrophone recording inside the sewer.

Julius' Magical Kingdom

A second visit the following Sunday to the house on Napier Street, Grandview-Woodlands area of Vancouver. 

Julius' Magical Kingdom appears different in the rain.

This time Kathleen and I do a soundwalk of the neighbourhood.

soundwalk The X

Alana McFarlane, born in Vancouver, Canada, is a visual and sound artist, performer and writer.

Alana McFarlane

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