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CD/BOOK
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RM 4154CD
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Polar Force is a new collaborative work from Australian field recordist Philip Samartzis and percussionist Eugene Ughetti. The work, which draws on Samartzis's time at Casey Station (one of Australia's primary research outposts on the Antarctic continent), is a powerful merging of environmental acoustics and extended approaches to percussion. Much of the sound heard on this edition is created through custom made percussion devices utilizing ice, water, and wind. When matched against the field recordings they create a blurry line between the natural and the synthetic, Samartzis and Ughetti prompting you to listen deeply into their emergent sound world.
From Eugene Ughetti: "As Philip was preparing to leave for his second Australian Antarctic Division residency, he invited me to lunch to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a new work. He recounted his first experience on the ice, where the surrounding landscapes seemed to articulate avant-garde percussion works of an epic scale. On this visit, he wanted his field work to explicitly shape the formation of a new performance work with a particular focus on katabatic winds in and around Casey Base station. Intrigued, I accepted the challenge provided I could create a live performance utilizing the same recorded materials of ice, air, and water. We undertook an ambitious collaboration with sound, instrument, lighting and industrial designers, a dramaturg and percussionist. For Polar Force we built an environment, a white inflatable structure reminiscent of a remote re-search station on the ice. Emanating from outside the space come the complex and foreboding sounds of the natural environment, inside, a live event akin to scientific research in sound occurs. This hour-long performance installation work gives rise to a hyper-realistic sensing of Antarctica, bursting with natural beauty, power and the audible evidence of human impact."
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LP
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RM 4152LP
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Array expresses the experience of a remote Antarctic research station through the convergence of sound, site and performance. The result is an immersive and affective experience of the spaces, protocols and conditions comprising the bracing polar environment. Array is a companion piece to Polar Force, a performance-installation work by Philip Samartzis and Eugene Ughetti, presented by Speak Percussion. Array features recordings of radar and scientific instrumentation used for upper atmospheric research and terrestrial communication. These sounds reveal the sophisticated technology and architecture used and heard within the Australian Antarctic Territory. Many of the recordings focus on the way the built environment is transformed through stress and fatigue caused by extreme climate and weather events including freezing temperatures and high velocity winds. Together with the field recordings are layers of live performance using custom built instrumentation to produce a unique series of textures, rhythmic cycles, resonances, and timbral phenomena. The application of tension and pressure upon the assorted instruments recalls the distressed state of highly specialized infrastructure found within the perimeters of a research station. A polar research station comprises many types and volumes of prefabricated space. In dialogue with this are the unique spaces used to record the instrumental performance. By merging different spaces, Array brings into focus various industrial resonances, spatial characteristics, timbres of metal and concrete, and sonic artifacts produced by hard and permeable materials and surfaces. In three parts, Array presents Antarctica as a liminal space oscillating between representation and abstraction to challenge often repeated tropes. The intent is to blur the relationship between the recorded and performed to produce a hyper-realistic encounter of the powerful forces that operate at the margins of our planet. One hears the precariousness of a remote research station contorted by unrelenting stress, compressed air forced through waterborne fipples and the volatility of weather events. Life on remote research stations is progressively resembling the broader contemporary experience, in which strict protocols are used to govern and preserve life. The resilient communities who live and work in these places have learnt how to coexist with an increasingly hostile environment, along with its unknowns and necessity for hyper-vigilance. Rather than consider it as a place on the edge of elsewhere, Antarctica and its assemblage of durable, super modern colonies provides an archetype for an uncertain future in anticipation of the volatility that awaits.
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