The six works represented on these two compact discs might be heard as historical artefacts in the sense that they exist as documentation of performed events that are not repeatable in the same way that notated musical works generally are. However, while they involved improvisational elements, they are not to be regarded as improvisations since they were rigorously composed for the environmental circumstances in which they took place. They represent an attempt to articulate an aesthetic of environmental interactivity through sound-making, which occupied me over a fifteen year period. During that time I generated a diverse body of work from which these six examples have been chosen in order to illustrate the range of those activities. All of these works share the characteristic of having been outdoor performances. They also demonstrate a purposeful transition that my investigations pursued over those fifteen years: a progressive expansion of context, moving from my interactions with a single member of another species toward interactions with complex environments. Foremost in these experiments was a concern for sound as a means to explore the emergent intelligence of non-human living systems. My interest was in regarding the complex web of environmental sound-making as evidence of complex-minded systems – a way of experiencing what Gregory Bateson has called “the integrated fabric of mind that envelopes us.”
These recordings were often made under less-than-ideal technical circumstances. The listener must tolerate a wide range of unusual acoustic spaces and an even greater range of technical quality. I recommend that listeners adjust their audio expectations to accommodate these eccentric demands through understanding that the non-studio production values were intentional and inseparable from the reality of the art.
- David Dunn
Nyahh Recordings, 2024