FUAIM Concert: language land sea, 13/10/23, 1.10pm, Aula Maxima

18 Sep 2023

Happening On 13/10/2023

Concept + Composition by Karen Power

for Human: Loré Lixenberg + Nature: Environments 

Multichannel Sound, Video + Live Performance

Karen Power’s language land sea (2023) is a multi-disicplinary paen to the natural world. Conceived for experimental vocalist Loré Lixenberg, the piece creates a sonic, visual and theatrical space. The piece places Loré (singer/performer) in a sonic macro environment, which is composed of multiple real and imagined places. Once inside, Loré and our listening audience are invited to re-hear or reconsider our (human) role on this planet.

lls is built entirely on field recordings made by the composer of heard and unheard sounds from some of the most remote and local environments around the world. It is conceived in response to my realisation that we are increasingly present everywhere, even in the most remote locations on earth. In its simplest ambition, lls creates time and space for us all to ask questions about our what relationship with our planet is? Through a series of sonic and visual cues, we are offered time to listen to our world differently and perhaps appreciate the natural diversity abundant within any ecosystem. We ask you to consider that our ‘footprint’ lasts and infiltrates the life of an ecosystem long after we have departed.  

Loré Lixenberg’s unique and extraordinary voice, presence and extensive creative work with birds makes her the perfect partner to these environments. Our human conditioning means that we begin our work in a state of dominance. As Loré attempts to find her place, listens and understands the needs of the environments she occupies, her behaviour and mannerisms become altered. Loré helps us to hear our way forward. Her voice and her uniquely diverse musical background offer an endless rainbow of characters, embouchures, techniques and styles, as she lets each place at first alter her persona, but gradually, as she learns to respect + communicate with our planet we find a new, shared, universal and multisensory language that is common to all.

Karen Power is an Irish composer/sound artist, based in Cork, Ireland. Her compositions utilise two primary sources: acoustic instruments and everyday sounds. Her creative output is diverse, both in its approach and delivery, seeking to capture and translate the essence of an idea through a variety of forms, media and methods of dissemination. For example, recent musical works have been presented as sound installations and multi-sensory walk-through experiences, staged orchestral and ensemble pieces, wordless opera, collaborations between sound and dance, sound and image, free and guided improvisations, solo instrumental works, duets, musical happenings and most recently Augmented/ Virtual and Expanded Realities. Power’s practice has included field recording elements since 2012. As a recipient of a DAAD fellowship, she focused on developing aural scores and parts, as alternate methods of communication with performers within the context of working with sounds/materials from outside of the Western Art Tradition. Specifically, this approach allows performers and environmental sounds/places to come together, so as to temporarily alter the shared performance/listening environment. Many of Power’s recent works have been centred on expanding this approach, often using new and exploratory types of scores, and, most recently, building expanded instruments.