Whalesong I is part of an ongoing exploration of the destruction of our oceans and combines a constructed whale song melody with sounds of the sea, which are made of field recordings taken from the coast lines and harbours around Athens and on Kythnos and Nisyros.

The notes of the whale song are built from individual recordings of the French horn, mimicking the whales' melodic repetitive phrases which carry for miles, either communicating to potential mates or expressing loss and mourning. The horn itself was used in the past to communicate long distances between hilltops and villages. The whale song is made up of six notes; a four note cell, a lower tone and a high tone. It continues throughout, yet becomes disjointed and lost as other sounds and other notes take precedence. In our oceans and seas, which are becoming so full of noise, pollution and sounds of construction, the whales are losing the natural space through which to hear each other, just one of many elements in the gradual collapse and destruction of their species.
The whale song is also juxtaposed not with the sounds of the deep ocean, but the splash of the points where water meets the land, a final elegy for a beached animal. At the end the song is still present but broken down, yet perhaps the last high tone calls out with a hint of hope.
Designed as a video / sound project, the full piece can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/7RXFeASJ_jE

silvernomad

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