A collaboration between Dr Diana Chester and Alex Braidwood.
Sub_Merge is a space and time for active listening consistent with a meditative practice. A meditation on the collective experiences possible within and surrounding water and ice, on the liminality of water/ice as life-force in our world, and the temporal experience of water/ice as a constant through the passage of multiple time periods in a human life, and through the life of our planet. In this work, water/ice is used as both a literal medium and source for collecting the data referenced. It is expressed in the work as an aesthetic metaphor that allows for a fluid interpretation and expression of water as life, balance in water as critical to life, and the passage of life as reliant on water.
Sub_Merge is a speculative soundscape for listeners to emerge with stories and connections to water. It creates a collective listening experience built from water itself, from scientific measurements of water, from ice, vapor, and liquid. It attempts to place the audience in relation to beautiful and intentional recordings of waters from around the world through deep listening practices.
Sub_Merge explores the theme of Everywhen through engagement with water and the dislocation of data and sound recordings from both time and place, resulting in an immersive, non-linear, experientially composed speculative soundscape. We hypothesize that we can learn how to listen for stories and memories by placing temporal investigations of water via data in conversation with recordings of water in its myriad forms. Sub_Merge will help the stories from within the water emerge and help us engage in the process of relating and connecting Earth’s expansive water systems from across the globe and on different time scales.
By exploring sonification at the Everywhen, Sub_Merge folds ecological monitoring from the southern and northern hemispheres into a single location to envelop listeners in a dynamic composition exploring Ecologies of Place, Shifting Temporalities, and Speculative Practices.
Live Performance by Alex Braidwood
