Noise Floor 2022
The piece Yano Ma, initially composed for a site-specific installation, is a combination of concept, instinct and machine collaboration. An ensemble of entities, biotic and abiotic intelligence, music that seems cyclical permutations of computer-generated tones, rhythms and frequencies combined and improvised with other objects that work as instruments. Produced in my home studio during the pandemic using real-time recording mixing, this piece is an artistic response to a Yanomami Indigenous ceremonial dialogue called Wayamou, recorded by David Toop in 1978 in the Venezuelan Amazon, as part of his album Lost Shadows: In Defence of the Soul (Yanomami Shamanism, Songs, Ritual, 1978) – today included in the vast sonorous world of The British Library Archive.
The composition does not intend to “reproduce” or “highlight” the actual ceremony and the colonial legacies of recording the “other”, which is often undressed of its social function. Instead, it’s a critical and internal negotiation within myself to destabilise time perception and generate other possible sensory passages inspired by traditions of world cultures. What can we re-learn from them?
