UBEATS Camp

July 2009 I was artist in residence for the UBEATS summer camp near Greensboro, NC testing new biomusic curriculum for grades 2-5. Twice a day for a week we made instruments and prepared a site-specific performance in the woods with 60+ people.

We had a mile long pathway that the audience was shepherded around, led by me playing the flute. After passing through the magic bubble machine bubbles, the first station was an old shack where the adult participants were to be found singing a Slow Song. Then we moved to an open platform area with a Rapunzel Tower nearby; the kids did a circle ritual dance with hoops, paintstick bullroarers, and rattles while 3 drummer girls played from the tower. We took advantage of a triple echo from the distant buildings by playing some rhythmic percussion. Then we walked across the Troll Bridge which was being played from all angles (including beneath). Then we entered the Enchanted Forest where everyone gathered to make jungle bird calls.

These were not bird imitations but human street cries (The Cryes of Greensboro), touts and jingles composed by the participants, that were sung and vocalized throughout the space. Some examples:
"Treehouses. Treehouses. Treehouses. Foreclosures. Foreclosures. Foreclosures. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap."
"Bird Bingo Tonight"
People also played straw oboes, panpipes, squawkers, and that amazing invention, the acorn whistle. The effect was marvelous and one called it the most effective recreation of a rainforest he had ever heard.

Emerging from the forest we encounter the ball field where two giant instruments were waiting to be played by everyone: the baseball dugout koto, and the machine shed long string instrument. The former was played with wooden shim plectra plucking the welding-wire strings (it sounded great inside the shelter), and the latter was made of tasut fishing line with rosin. The wind would have sounded it had there been any, but we dragged cups and resonators along to make sustained tones. The best resonators are no longer Dixie cups as I have found, but rather Percy's 9 Lives catfood cans.

Here's an audio recording of our walk on the WILDSIDE. Thanks to all the many collaborators who came together in grand style (especially Patricia Gray).

Beyond Neverland residency

June 2009 I led a group of 2nd graders attending summer camp at St. Paul's SteppingStone Theater in the art of instrument building. The camp theme was loosely based on Peter Pan and Neverland so I watched most of the Disney version on Youtube as preparation.

We made sea urchin shaped pan pipes, cat food can steel pans, fishing line guitars with styrofoam resonators, straw oboes, drainpipe trumpets, and string telephones.

We also recorded vocalizations and sounds of the instruments that I brought together into a bizarrely hallucinogenic composition: NEVERLAND

Philip Blackburn and his Talking Plant

Here's the video of some of the reactions and interactions with my plant. You can't even be vegan any more without eating a sentient being.

Bird Dance at the Singing Garden

View in Hi Def for better results (those millett rattles sound terrible when compressed). Also here is a 3D interactive model of the event using 625 photos by Preston Wright.

People/Plant Dialogues

One of the surprise hits of the festival was the Talking Plant. It was amazing to see the pyschic shock and awe when people (of all ages) realized their behavior could affect a plant's internal life. I told them that plants have evolved successfully because they are responsive to their environment: light, water, heat, vibration. That activity can be measured in the small amounts of electricity it generates, picked up by the EEG sensor, mangled by the MaxMSP patch and made audible by triggering some of the 2000+ samples.

Some people danced, asked it questions (Are you a girl or a boy? What's your name? What's your favorite color? What's your favorite drink?), tickled, fondled, caressed, struck, blew, watered and communed with it.

It was interesting to me to see that normal people can accept the weirdest blips and vegetable booping noises if it is related to their actions and context, whereas sitting in a concert hall the same sounds would be eagerly rejected.

A video of these moments will be edited one day. In the meantime here are some stills.

What a week it was!

Here is the complete timelapse video of the Rise and Fall of the Singing Garden. More to follow;

We are in business

The flowers and sounds are in place, lovely dancing from Jan Louise's team, and young and old are enjoying the plant orchestra. Here's the video of the setting up process. The tear-down will follow all too soon.