From: The Cassette Mythos, Autonomedia 1990
The River Archive --I started it back in about 1966-67 recording a series of Welsh and Scottish rivers/streams/springs. Why? Well, I'm a New Zealander, and rivers are a major part of New Zealand life, especially if, like my family, you do a lot of climbing, etc. Very powerful, New Zealand rivers. Also, I'd been reading about the use of riverine environments for healing in Chaldes, in a book by John Michel (English writer), just when I myself was thinking a lot about sound as energy-form, its various effects on the body, etc. So the Archive was both an absurd project (since it intends to include all the world's rivers) and a practical project--a way of studying water sounds and their physiological effects.
I've not counted how many rivers the Archive now has, contributed by friends and acquaintances, as well as my own collecting. Countries include Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the U.S., Austria, India, and Canada. I make installation works using the Archive and have done four different types of installations so far with it:
-- Play the Ganges Backwards One More Time, Sam: Two rooms, one for white water sounds, one for slower-moving water--slides of old postcards showing the particular rivers played are projected in each room onto silk screens which are gently moving. (The Kitchen and The Franklin Furnace, NYC; Modern Art Galerie, Vienna)
-- Play the Ganges... outdoors, through twelve speakers hung in trees in a plaza in Hartford, Connecticut, for Real Art Ways.
-- Walking on Water : Rivers played through headphones, via cassette tape recorder; gently turning the listener's head from side to side, creating illusions of immersion and movement through the head. Another version has the listener drinking water while listening. (Avant-Garde Festival, NYC; Gateway National Park, NY)
-- A Sound Map of the Hudson River : The Hudson, recorded at twenty-six sites from source to mouth, in all seasons; played back as a continuous two-hour tape, coordinated with a wall map which gives the times (every two hours) at which each site can be heard. In addition, there's a one-hour tape of conversations with people who've experienced the river's power--a forest ranger, fisherman, farmer, pilot, etc. (Hudson River Museum commission; then shown at the National Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ; Wave Hill, NY; NTSU, Texas)
I've also done a live radio improvisation with rivers and wine glasses called Slow Glide for WKCR, NYC.
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