Dance of the Deserted Spaces is composed using field recordings taken from four different locations across the globe after the Covid-19 outbreak resulted in mass public lockdowns. The sonic character of these places shifted dramatically once stripped of the dominance of human activity and previously hidden aural worlds built from nature, automated machinery, the reverberation of open space and the earth itself revealed themselves.
The piece takes these ‘background’ sounds and give them a stage of their own to dance, converse, expand and exist independent from their relationship to human presence. These normally unregistered noises evolve rhythmically and harmonically in an autonomous celebration
of sound itself.
The idea developed from my last night on duty at the museum I work for in Tasmania, Australia. With the museum suddenly closed indefinitely to the public I walked from gallery to gallery shutting down all but the most basic power and lighting systems and listened as the empty
building revealed a new sonic atmosphere of gentle creaks, air-conditioning and essential plant mechanics. There was a sense of spirit emitting from the vacant architecture and the ever working
but unchampioned infrastructure the allowed these places to be habitable.
The sounds of the museum were recorded that night and form the raw material for Dance of the Deserted Spaces along with field recordings sent to me from a deserted intersection in Brooklyn, the empty auditorium of an international school in Yokohama and the entrance to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris.
Ideas of dystopia, harmony, freedom, tension and evolution are explored as the global sounds come together in defiance of cultural classification, revelling in the peopleless space and time.
Life and energy beyond the reductive parameters of humanity and society are given a platform to create a celebratory noisescape of the omnipresent sounds the secretly surround us.

Dance Of The Deserted Spaces

Music and things that might sound like music by Mat Ward. Noise Art/A  Piano and Bass Duet with Dani Kirby/A 50 plus member Art Ensemble called Then She Reaches The Gun/Deep Research Into Luigi Russolo and his Intonarumori .. thats just the stuff I post regularly : ) Thanks to everyone thats ever stopped by. Music is The Best!

Dance Of The Deserted Spaces

No Mates Ensemble