The WITNESS series of recordings capture key waypoints in the 2020 lockdown, with an emphasis on capturing environmental and climate conditions.
Here, air quality data becomes a performer in an ensemble with violin (Aisling O'Dea, Julia Lungu) and cello (Clea Friend)

WITNESS - new music for the anthropocene uncovered from the liminal border territories between classical and experimental music. The music is a recognition of solastalgia, the acute anxiety experienced through living through environmental change.

Witness 5

Edinburgh

Lead track from Michael Begg's 2022 album, Moonlight and Sentiment

New Witness

“The whole ensemble work is the product of the data. The melodic lines, the harmonic content, the timbre, amplitude and mode arise from daily average data points for ice concentration and thickness, air temperature, pressure, precipitation and evaporation. The greatest insight here, for me, is that the data did not speak of wild fluctuations, and atonal ruptures to harmony or structure. The data spoke only of these fractional changes, a degree here, a metre there, that brings our survival into question. These compositions, therefore, seek to articulate a richly textured and complex balancing act. If we experience anxiety in listening to these pieces, it is the fear that something might actually occur to break the spell. Should these ambient works rupture, we end.” Michael Begg, 2021 

This recording arises from a commission from the OCEAN ARTic Partnership (People Ocean Planet, Blue Action, MASTs, Creative Informatics) established to bring creatives and marine climate scientists together to increase public engagement with marine data science. 

This work is the result of a collaboration with ocean modellers at the Alfred Wegener Institut. The work would have been impossible to realise without the research and data models created by Lukrecia Štulić, along with her colleagues Tido Semmler and Thomas Rackow. Thomas also provided field recordings.

Invocation

Sample of commissioned work, Sounding The Ice Factory, from the European Marine Board. 

Warm water intrusions may now likely be accelerating Antarctic ice loss with a consequential increase in global sea levels. Should the increasingly fragile ice shelf break away, it will be like a cork being taken from a bottle. The Antarctic ice sheet will quickly slide into open water. The collapse of Pine Island glacier alone is predicted to contribute to a 1.5 metre rise in global sea level. 

All of these elements are implied in the behaviour of the overall system; the temperature of water, the concentration of salt, the rate of current flow, the wind and its ability to transport ice formed in polynyas (openings in the sea ice cover), the rise and fall of the thermocline; the depth at which cold, salt rich surface water meets warmer, deeper water. The thermocline plays a pivotal role in determining the future state of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Thermocline

Sample of commissioned work, Sounding The Ice Factory, from the European Marine Board.

“The second largest Antarctic ice shelf by volume, Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, is at the centre of an interplay crucial for the world’s climate. Here in the southern Weddell Sea, the wild cold winds from the continent persistently push sea ice away from the ice-shelf edge. The newly opened water surfaces, polynyas, cool rapidly and freeze, maintaining the ice factory. 
The sea salt is left out of the icy crystals in the ocean, making it denser. The water formed here is among the densest on Earth. It fuels global ocean circulation. It also carries heat below the ice shelf and melts it.
 We can represent and dive into the peculiarities of this system using a sea ice-ice shelf-ocean model. By giving a unique voice to each model element, Micheal has created music that helps grasp these marvellous dynamics more intuitively. 
 The southern Weddell Sea system is not immune to human-caused climate change. If we keep warming the climate, the ice factories will dampen, and the ice shelf melt will eventually increase drastically with catastrophic consequences for the sea-level rise. I believe this music has the power to engage reason and emotion on the way to a better future. At the time of this writing, we can still make a difference. ”
Lukrecia Štulić, Alfred Wegener Institut, Germany

Polynya

Excerpts from A Moon That Lights Itself by Michael Begg

A specially commissioned music work for electronics, strings and moonlight, by Michael Begg with string accompaniment. The work evokes the nocturnal life of the French painter Charles François Daubigny in his later years, floating on his boat studio, addressing, directly, the moon. 

A Moon That Lights Itself (excerpt 2)

A Moon That Lights Itself (excerpt 1)

With Titan, Michael Begg won the New Music Scotland Award 2018 for electroacoustic sound art work.

These recordings derived from the audio installation that was housed in the wheelhouse on top of the Clydebank Titan for the 2017 Sonic-a Festival. Titan is available on CD directly from Omnempathy (https://omnmepathy.com) or can be found on iTunes, Spotify, etc.

The work was a commission from Cryptic.

Michael Begg’s “monumental” work includes extensive field recordings from the site and its surroundings and the sounds of aeolian harps that were created by Begg to harness the winds that frequent the wheelhouse and viewing deck, 150 ft above the River Clyde.

From Cryptic’s Sonica literature…

High over Clydebank, in the wheelhouse at the top of the Titan Crane, Michael Begg presents a site-specific installation that transforms the iconic structure into both musical inspiration and musical instrument. The crane symbolises past and future, both a monument to an industrial age of unprecedented feats of engineering and exploration and, today, signals a prospective epoch of ambition, imagination and outgoingness. In Begg’s piece, the crane and its environment become the basis for a work for electronics, cables, strings and breaths, playing on the material of the structure and the voice of the wind that sings around the elevated wheelhouse.

Titan Crane

Titan

Bury The Choir In Fifteen Feet Of Snow

Nightwalking

Glass on Glass is a track from Michael Begg's album, VANITAS (OMCD11) 
Released on Omnempathy, May 6th 2019

Glass On Glass also features members of the Black Glass Ensemble, captured in rehearsal in the closing bars.

https://omnempathy.com

Glass On Glass

Michael Begg is a sound artist, composer and musician based in East Lothian, Scotland.

https://linktr.ee/michaelbegg

Popular tracks by Michael Begg