Abstract
his audio work was made in response to section 8 of Allen Fisher's poem-sequence Black Pond. The poem-sequence, in turn, takes a structural cue from one of Morton Feldman’s early indeterminate compositions, Projection 2.
Fisher's Black Pond began as a response to a particular site: a rare raised peat bog at Waun Ddu in Wales. (Peat has a remarkable capacity for absorbing CO2, and the climate crisis is a thread within the poem.) I visited Waun Ddu in March 2020, just before Covid restrictions were imposed. I made various recordings there, using conventional mics, contact mics and a hydrophone. These sounds became the building blocks for the composition. In structure, the piece is organised around various repeating acoustic motifs in Fisher’s poem. These are placed within nine cells that mirror the shape of both the poem and the Feldman score. The result is not an audio translation or setting of the poem, but a work that is both after Fisher and – at a greater distance – after Feldman.
Fisher's Black Pond began as a response to a particular site: a rare raised peat bog at Waun Ddu in Wales. (Peat has a remarkable capacity for absorbing CO2, and the climate crisis is a thread within the poem.) I visited Waun Ddu in March 2020, just before Covid restrictions were imposed. I made various recordings there, using conventional mics, contact mics and a hydrophone. These sounds became the building blocks for the composition. In structure, the piece is organised around various repeating acoustic motifs in Fisher’s poem. These are placed within nine cells that mirror the shape of both the poem and the Feldman score. The result is not an audio translation or setting of the poem, but a work that is both after Fisher and – at a greater distance – after Feldman.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Media of output | Online |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- field recording
- poetry
- allen fisher
- will montgomery
- practice-based research
- composition
- morton feldman
- peat bog