Ataraxia: Tesseract featuring CrossCurrents, an evolving immersive sound story

 

              

 

Ataraxia: Tesseract and CrossCurrents

Set list, acknowledgements, sample list, and attributions

The mainstage set I put together for this very special event included tracks I’ve recorded and sung over the past 15 years, both alone and with live electronic groups I’ve been part of. In the ambient space I premiered a soundscape I spent the last two years developing. Half of my work was obtaining permission to use any samples I did not create myself, and even developed new friendships as a result. I’ve worked very hard to source and pay proper respect to everything I did not record alone or myself. This is the result of a vast amount of work on my part but would not be possible without the support, samples, production skills, and passion of these other people and their hard work. This event and soundscape gave me an opportunity to acknowledge people who have been wonderfully supportive in my life, and these acknowledgments tell much of the story of what this work is about and why it’s so meaningful. So please read on, and check out the other work of these wonderful people and communities. This document will evolve along with the soundscape as well. If you are in here and would like to be listed differently (for instance you want your last name included, or your name linked to a site), just let me know! With sincere thanks and love, Rhiannon

 

CrossCurrents

An evolving urban and wildlife soundscape / immersive sound design story by Rhiannon Catalyst)

Premiered at Ataraxia: Tesseract

This is a still evolving story told through sound and natural acoustics (with no artificial reverb applied to the samples or vocals) about water, waves, culture, cities, and nature. These currents, waves, and laws of physics that connect us all, the beauty of the physics of sound, and the incredible acoustics in places underground and underwater in spaces that need our attention lest they continue to become less and less habitable. If you look and listen closely enough you will find that there are magical places hidden in our cities where wild nature collides with industry… I believe these places tell very poignant stories about the planet and power of community, and sometimes even act like portals (or port-holes) between worlds. Note: There may be (there definitely are) pirates in this story, but I’m not THAT kind of pirate- every sound sample you hear in this work was thoroughly researched and cleared with permission granted for use in this piece.

Massive thanks and gratitude:

To David Rothenberg (http://www.davidrothenberg.net/) for generously sharing your work and deeply inspiring recordings with me, to my family for your support and encouraging and inspiring me to dream and care so much, to Liz for introducing me to the bilge (in all her beauty, meaning the bilge but Liz too), to my father Simon Gruber for introducing me to David Rothenberg and being a water protector all my life, to my mother for (among other things) the software I needed to start learning and make this, to Zhenya for being as crazy as I am, to Seva for the boat, to Jungles for your friendship and service to the community, to Captain John Cirenza for being so awesome and working to heal our lady, to Zionysus for the revelation of bilge verb, to Kaya for always staying luminous, to Steele for encouraging me to tell my stories, to the creators and users of freesound.org for existing and appreciating sound, to Kenji for pushing me to reach even higher, to Kurt and Rachel for such a proper canvas and opportunity to share this for the first time, and to everyone truly working to heal and protect the ship (and waters, and earth), which became a very clear metaphor for our planet to me as I became more and more connected to her. She’s more precious than words, the waters are toxic, it takes a village, and we only have so much time, so let’s get to work on both fronts shall we?

(Email me if you’d like to help us save the beautiful ship and community center I’m referring to!, or check out this link to support bioremediation of the toxic waterways of Brooklyn: http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/, or this link about our oceans and changing the way we think about plastic: https://plasticoceans.org , or this link to the show I manage that inspires people to care about and protect the planet by making you feel like you’re an astronaut looking at the earth from space: http://www.bellagaia.com/ It really is all connected. And P.S. thank YOU for reading this ! 🙂 <3)

 

Crosscurrents Sample list and acknowledgements (in order of appearance in the piece):

  • Rain and puddles in Delaware (recorded by Rhiannon Catalyst with a Macbook and Snowball Blue mic)
  • “Travelin To Yo Mama’s Crib” (produced by DJ Element aka Mark Carranceja)
  • “59th Street stop announcement on a NYC subway train” (by flcellogrl*)
  • “The sounds of a residential street in Brooklyn, NY after a rain shower.” (by Edm_2000*)
  • “OKM Binaural recording in New York- 2100_FX_NewYork_Sirenes on street4Police” (by Davidmenke*)
  • Samples from the ship and my Bilge Siren Project lovingly recorded and engineered in the cavernous bilge compartments (compartments 3,5,and 8 specifically) of a slowly sinking and steadily resurrected pirate ship (by Zhenya Warshavsky and Rhiannon Catalyst with support from Captain John Cirenza and Shuvo Vas). All vocals by Rhiannon except the wonderful impromptu quote “I think you’re safe” from Zhenya. Note that without these three I never could have achieved the dream of recording the bilge properly that I worked towards for two years, and considering the massive amounts of mold, rust, ice, snow, and toxic waters we braved together, they truly did help keep me safe and alive too. All bilge samples recorded with a Zoom H4n)
  • “Crackling ice water” (by David Rothenberg)**
  • “Tongan Whale Denoise noverb mix” (by David Rothenberg)**
  • “Tibicen Walker quarter speed”  (by David Rothenberg)**
  • Tibicen Walker half speed (by David Rothenberg)**

*These samples researched and sourced from the site and field recording community https://freesound.org . All samples from https://freesound.org are approved for free cultural works under Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

** These samples generously provided by David Rothenberg http://www.davidrothenberg.net/ , author of “Why Birds Sing,” and Terranova Music- check out their full catalog of releases at: http://www.terranovamusic.net/

 

Ataraxia: Tesseract Mainstage Set

  • Silence Becomes The Noise (by WHISPERKICK aka Jeremy D. Slater and Rhiannon – made for and released on NoDAPL Noise, a for a benefit album for the water protectors and Sioux Nation)
  • Butterfly Effect (by Lamb. My stars do I love Lamb)
  • On Chrome (by Subatomic Sound System, Modus Vivendi, and Rhiannon. Lyrics by Rhiannon)
  • Rest Your Weary Head (a lullaby by Rhiannon)
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