Avian 08 Binesi (Thunderbird)

Avian 07 Phoenix

Avian 06 Horus

Avian 05 Huginn

Avian 01 Avian

Avian 02 Gryphon

Avian 03 Pegasus

Avian 04 Muninn

Stigmergic Elevation was originally intended as a quadraphonic surround piece which was performed at the Wormhole Saloon 2 event at the Whitechapel Gallery on March 17th 2006. This is the stereo version. It was composed using recordings from the elevator machine rooms of three of London's tower blocks: the Lloyds Building, Tower 42 (formerly the NatWest Tower) and the tower block at the London College of Communication, where I was studying at the time. 

Surprisingly, all three premises were very accommodating and I was allowed full access to the main engine rooms that powered the elevator systems when I proposed my project to their security departments. 

There, I recorded both air/normal microphone recordings of the machinery, but simultaneously recorded the electromagnetic radiation that was emitted from them using a telephone pick-up coil, normally used to attach to the back of telephone handsets to record conversations.

I grounded the piece in real world theory that was fairly obscure in some respects, but made sense in practice. 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The term "stigmergy" was introduced by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to refer to termite behavior. He defined it as: "Stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved." It is derived from the Greek words στίγμα stigma "mark, sign" and ἔργον ergon "work, action", and captures the notion that an agent’s actions leave signs in the environment, signs that it and other agents sense and that determine and incite their subsequent actions.[2]

Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions.[1] The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity.

Therefore, the concept I derived from this was that the elevators were used by the office workers at random intervals, unintentionally composing a hidden, aleatory soundscape that they could enjoy if provided with the final performance, which they inadvertently created.


Stigmergic Elevation

Thunderstorm in North Kent captured on July 20th 2014. 

Thunder 20 07 14

Vanishing Moon