May 5, 2007 10:30 a.m.
Swamp, Koh Payam, Thailand, 6:00 a.m. February 12, 2005

Featured on the above video : laptop running pro-tools, a 1965 Roberts tube amp, and a 1980 american acoustics lab speaker in the window (mono).

The Seattle Art Museum celebrated it's grand opening of the newly expanded downtown facility May 5-6, 2007, and was open for 35 hours straight. I currently live right next to the Seattle Art Museum in the Diller hotel, a building that currently houses many artists & musicians.

For 20 minutes, at 10:00 a.m., I played a field recording I gathered of an early morning swamp in southern Thailand out the window on to First Avenue, LOUD enough to be present amongst the sounds of the city. The sounds of many critters, a beautiful orchestra of sorts, made of many un-identifiable players, was bounced off of the buildings in the area. I walked outside to listen for myself. No one really seemed to notice. My wife Linda mentioned that a small group of chickadees came and hung out in the tree next to the window, curious about these mysterious sounds made in another language.

I like to think of it as an ephemeral time based audio painting, an ear photograph that I poured out the window and bled into, with, around, and through all of the architectural spaces downtown, blending with the sounds which occurred at that time.

I also enjoy the surprise and random element in delivering this piece, pure sound, on to the street, a time past memory, other animals in
another land; in an area in a city where there were once ancient tidal flats with their own ecological history and animals, which are now gone.

BACK