Single performance of 23 miniature loops created from sounds of urban downtown Winnipeg during Women's March on Washington (in response to Trump inauguration)and two weeks later in same places. Listen for singing snow shovels, transit voices, skates, alarms, drums, escalator synchopation and desolation.

Improvisation No.1- During and after the march

Site, not sight specific. This project, undertaken with collaborator Thomas Krause, was an experiment in long distance cycling with soundscape recording. The performance lasted three weeks over which we recorded sounds from the highway shoulder between Bimidji, MN, and Waterloo, ON then mixed the samples for presentation at Sound in the Land conference at University of Waterloo. In attendance, R. Murray Schafer said, "I don't get why people don't ride bicycles absolutely everywhere."

http://youngvoices.canadianmennonite.org/articles/hearingmusicopenroad

Listening Exercise no.1

Field recordings and composite sounds, journalistically gathered from time living abroad in Switzerland, culminating with the voice of a friend, spoken on the occasion of my departure.

Fortune from Molly

Audio component of video project exploring place-based conducting through seasonal change. Including granular synthesis of migrating geese, choral tracks, and digital modular synthesis.

Conduction studies

Amen was a live performance for two sopranos, two looping pedals, and an audio sample of a pipe organ from Thomaskirche, Leipzig. Here, a short Bach chorale excerpt is on the single word "Amen" is used to explore dimensionality, unity, and disintegration as the voices move in and out of phase

Amen

The Spectral Trio is a place-based listening project which explores locational meaning, women labour activists, and 'ghost-scapes' of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Songs are written at the convergence of present day sites with historical significance and the listener's political interpretation via field recording and text.

On Bloody Saturday, June 25, 1919, twenty seven were injured in Hell's Alley, as a special police unit of civilian officers surrounded strikers and proceeded to beat them with clubs. In the present location, just behind the Centennial concert hall in the hip industrial theatre district it is difficult to imagine such fear and unrest here. But go back at night and listen harder, I dare you.

Hell's Alley–– Spectral trio project

The Spectral Trio is a place-based listening project which explores locational meaning, women labour activists, and 'ghost-scapes' of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Songs are written at the convergence of present day sites with historical significance and the listener's political interpretation via field recording and text.

Helen Armstrong, Edith Hancox, and Katherine Queen were three women of many who took on activist activities during the strike. Hancox rallied a crowd here in this place, formerly the largest city park (now a strip of grass along the river remains.)

The spoken text heard intermingled with the CPR rail in the beginning of this piece comes from a sermon preached in Victoria park by Reverend William Ivens of the Labour Temple. People gathered in this park to hear strike news, mourn loss and defeat after Bloody Saturdy, sing labour hymns, and hear Iven’s prophetic words, heard here in the (wharped) voice of my sister on the former grounds of Victoria park: 

“When wilt thou save the people, Lord; O god of mercy, when?; The people, Lord, the people; Not crowns and thrones, but [people].”

Victoria park –– Spectral trio project

The Spectral Trio is a place-based listening project which explores locational meaning, women labour activists, and 'ghost-scapes' of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Songs are written at the convergence of present day sites with historical significance and the listener's political interpretation via field recording and text.

Preparing for the mounted police to storm through the city, Helen Armstrong instructed her members of the Women’s Labour League to “use their hatpins to poke the horses in the rump.” Despite present qualms with violence against animals, this 'use what you have' attitude is part of what makes Armstrong’s charm and grit such a feature of this city’s resistance. Alongside her pulls-no-punches direct action, Armstrong also employed radical hospitality as a form of activism. She set up the Labour Café as a kind of pop up, pay-what-you-can soup kitchen in various hotels, the first of which was at the corner of Rupert and Main. Knowing how much more was at stake for woman strikers, they could eat free. This was meant to provide a community space for replenishment and sustenance during the long and difficult days of the six week strike. I like this image of feminized spaces in the midst of (occasionally) violent and male-centric uprising. Armstrong balanced these cafes alongside her work as a strike organizer and her work as a mother to her own four children.

The site of the labour cafe is now held by the McLaren hotel. A beer vendor and a cheep eats sit at an intersection of sustained inaction by the city to provide affordable housing and a continued 'use what you have' technique of survival and hospitality.

Labour Cafe—Spectral trio project

I am a musician, educator, and sound experimenter living in Winnipeg, Canada. I am interested in soundscape composition both as a personal practice and as an educative one. Check out my website below for postings on my soundscape work in the classroom.

hagfish2000