Water Shadows: Tributary

COMPOSER: Julia White

Water Shadows is an installation of sound sculptures that celebrates the mystery of water and features field recordings of watery places of significance to myself and others in my community. Water Shadows was inspired by an experience I had with water, when amazing ice patterns appeared on my studio window in the deep silence of winter 2015. The ice patterns looked like ‘water temples’ and were strangely akin to the drawings I had been working on since the fall, that were pinned on the wall next to the window. It was clear to me that water had its own voice and that it was communicating with me in an organic language without words. Water Shadows is a body of work that is an extension of this conversation, and in its own way through engaging with people, is still participating in this dialogue. I welded sculptures out of steel then wove, sewed and wrapped them out of strips of old bicycle inner tubes that I collected locally. As one moves through the ‘water temple’ complex, the unique sound ecology of each water-recording site is experienced as one continuous flow. The raw recordings of both natural and machine-made sounds blend together, dissolving boundaries and allowing for a rich interplay of voices to be heard. I have created this sculptural score that I call Water Shadows: Tributary, in honour of Pauline Oliveros, who I know would appreciate this experience of listening. This mini ‘water temple’ holds all of the field recordings from my Water Shadows installation, becoming a vessel for all of the different streams of sound to flow together as one. Water Shadows: Tributary also includes an audio-visual element with the projection of images, both of the ice crystals that formed on my studio window and of my installation of Water Shadows in the granary at the Electric Eclectics Festival 2016 in Meaford, Ontario. I offer my score as a way for us to connect with our own sonic architecture and become a virtual ‘water temple’ complex in our own rights, as we recognize that our bodies are temples and we are, primarily, water. In this way, I hope to inspire an experience of listening and vocal, non-verbal improvisation with water, as water. This work holds space for a network of water songs to vibrate and flow through the deep undercurrents of our world and our Beings, both physical and non-physical. Water Shadows is a sanctuary of sorts, a place of gathering, of listening. As Herman Hesse writes, “They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”