Aeolian Duo at Edsviken [Elektronisk resurs]

• These site-specific improvisations were recorded on a stony shore by Edsviken, north of Stockholm. Here there is water passing between stony shores and cliffs, in sight of apartments, villas, boat houses and Ulriksdals slott, a castle from the 17th century. The area is replete with the sounds of boat engines and the distant motorway, water both still and stirred, distant bells and all manner of land and water birds.  Stefan Östersjö plays aeolian guitar, an acoustic instrument, with strings extending out from the bridge, strung around trees on the site. The extended strings allow the performer to capture harmonics played by the wind, but also to control their pitch, and the number of strings playing. Katt Hernandez plays a violin with a low scordatura. She is focused on extending the sound and voice of that instrument through twin practices of playing with a varied array of improvising musicians from all walks of life, and of playing with animals, birds and all manner of inanimate entities in long walks across all the cities where she has lived. Here, she played to unite the sounds on the site with the sound worlds created by the aeolian guitar through the multi-faceted use of extended techniques drawn from those years of listening. These respective ecological sound-art practices seek a connectedness to place through immediate interaction with the elements at play on the site. Although a particular stillness characterized Edsviken on this day, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the amount of activity is also striking. Not only do a few motor boats occasionally pass at a distance, but ducks sometimes dominate the soundscape, while the ever changing sonorities of the waves on the shore continue to ornament the shifting inflections of the duo improvisations. So they played at Edsviken one afternoon in July – the water, the motors, the birds and Stefan and Katt – on an outcropping of the stoney shore, between the forest and the water. 

Ämnesord

Humanities and the Arts  (hsv)

Arts  (hsv)

Music  (hsv)

Humaniora och konst  (hsv)

Konst  (hsv)

Musik  (hsv)

Musikalisk gestaltning  (ltu)

Musical Performance  (ltu)

Genre

government publication  (marcgt)

Indexterm och SAB-rubrik

ecological sound art; Aeolian Guitar; improvisation; site-specific