Recording on New York Harbor School's Floating Dock

 Kyla Raskin

Liz Phillips

Robert Scheuering

A baby Sea Robin

The Original Proposal

Liz Phillips: Wave Crossings create Chladni Figures in this wave, sound and site-specific installation.The audience/participants explore, creating patterns that amplify and reinforce the sonic architecture of the chapel. Multi-channel simultaneous recordings from the waters around the Island create the sound and signal material for the installation. Movement is sensed using ultrasonics and telemetry systems to create an ever-changing dynamic water and soundscape.  

THE STAINED GLASS / WAVE TABLES-  The changing light from the three sides of stain glass windows and the waves in the table. They mix as projected and reflected light and changes in the sound in the church through processing.

Chladni figures appear like live script being written in illuminations on the Wavetable, a surface of water modulated with sub audio and audio..

THE MIX—LISTENING – Light shifts as well as movement within and is harnessed to change the sound. 

Listening, like in a rowboat, we are immersed in deep sonic patterns.Many sounds begin and end like waves rolling in with great force and shape. 

The sound palette (with filters, transposition, synthesis and live processing) will vary, with deeply resonant voices, configuring and reconfiguring.

Wave Tables and Object Loudspeakers

A Wavetable, Summer 2014 at NYSSA

Spectral Reservoir

Listening and Looking- Pelham Art Center

Helen Aylon

heleneaylon.com

Esteban Silva

Annea Lockwood with underwater microphone

From Annea Lockwood — observations from our day of recording on the Harbor School dock… 

"The bamboo tube hydrophone, four hydrophones really, was a lovely surprise to me, largely because I hadn't realized that the tube's resonance would add so much to the intermittent sounds we were finding, and so beautifully - what ingenuity! So it was most interesting to go back and forth listening to two different hydrophone set-ups of the same site and, as I always find with field recording, a serene experience with that twist of never being able to anticipate what sounds may pop up next. There was also a fair amount of shipping moving through Buttermilk Channel, which always makes me happy to see and hear. Vania Hinkova, a Serbian poet I met once on the Danube said that when that river was blocked to shipping, (after NATO bombed the three bridges at Novi Sad) it was as if the river had died, so deeply linked, at least to us humans, are the people and the river. "

Recording Artists involved in Wave Crossings:

Liz Phillips

Earl Howard 

Annea Lockwood

Kyla Raskin

Eric Shekerjian

Andrew Russell

Katherine Scheuering

Robert Scheuering

Thank you

the David Bermant Foundation and Parabola Arts Foundation, Inc. for their support!

Harvestworks, Ohm Acoustics, New York State Council of the Arts, Trinity Church, The Governor's Island Trust, the New York Harbor School, and The Billion Oyster Project

Inspirations for Wave Crossings

 

A chart of Chladni Patterns discovered by Ernst Chladni and first published in 1787.

Ernst Chladni

Polynesian Stick Chart navigation training device. Also known as a mattang. From the Marshall Islands, Micronesia. Probably 19th or early 20th century. Charts were used to demonstrate and map the relationship between Pacific islands and ocean swells. System of mapping ocean swells had not been accomplished before. Made from bamboo.

Panorama of the bay and Castle Williams

Lights on the pier

WAVE CROSSINGS 2015 by Liz Phillips

"Wave Crossings” creates Chladni Figures in this wave, sound and site-specific installation. Harvestworks is sponsoring this Governors Island installation and its online presence. Liz Phillips has received a NYSCA Individual Artists commission through Harvestworks for this work for 2015. "Wave Crossings" uses our full senses and telemetry systems (of sensors) to explore, amplify and reinforce the sonic architecture of a chapel (Cornelius) with the waterscape of the Island. 

This is one of two Wavetables. The surface vibrates into Chladni patterns. We are recording the harbor sound and tides from three places on the island to playback through Ohm Acoustics  omnidirectional speakers and homemade speaker objects (shells and bamboo and paper) located within the church.                                                      

Binaural Recording (with Kyla Raskin)

 

Recording near the bay

Liz Phillips

 

lizphillips.net

FDNY Boat near recording location next to Castle Williams (with Earl Howard)

Recording Location on Yankee Pier

Shipping Dock

The Queen Mary 2

Tugboat tied to pier

Lunch in Nolan Park

View of the bay from a picnic table in Nolan Park

Some writing on the table

Governor's Island Entrance