This exhibition is an immersive journey through the otherworldly gardens of Cry Joy Park. One garden Dark, the other Light, both harness a distinct atmosphere that envelopes the visitor upon entering. The visuals are amazing as the artist uses paper to construct a haven of dark and light flora.
In contribution to this exhibition I have created a soundscape that accentuates various elements of each garden. Jennifer Wen Ma described to me the contrasting atmosphere, coloristic quality, and character of both spaces. The dark garden is warm, bronze, safe, and heavy, while the light garden is cool, blue, open, and airy. These qualities are incorporated into the soundscape as the visitor experiences the exhibit. Bellow is an excerpt from the dark garden characterized by warm harmonies and a heavy low bass.
Listen… on quality audio equipment if you can!
The focus on nature resonates well with my own musical tendencies and has been a focal point of the process in generating this soundscape. This exhibition presents the ideas and qualities of nature through man made mediums. For example the flora is comprised of processed wood (paper) cut with precision tools. This quality is reflected in the music as I use a computer program, Photosounder, to generate music from a photograph of a forest. After greatly increasing the contrast of the image to yield only the forest’s silhouette the program registers information only from the light coming through the canopy. The program reads the image like a spectrogram and generates a sound-bed for this work. From this ‘sound-bed’ all of the harmonies and melodies are created.
Charleston is to expect a truly unique experience as the exhibition and the music are both created specifically to fit the structure of the Halsey. Join us for a walk through Cry Joy Park!
Learn more about Jennifer Wen Ma and Little Meat productions at: http://www.littlemeat.net
Zachery Litchfield 