Uncategorized – Seth Nehil

(else)where with Bruno Duplant, TJ Norris & Harrison Higgs

(else)where is a collaboration with sound artist Bruno Duplant and photographers TJ Norris + Harrison Higgs, consisting of two CDs and 10 cards in a box set. Fifteen soundscapes, each a consistent length (5:00, 10:00) are placed in conversation with 19 images, each a pairing of halves. Cards and sounds may be shuffled by the listener to create new juxtapositions. A poem by David Grubbs completes the set.

Distant instruments and voices, corroded melodies, electronic insects and low tones drift across a series of unedited field recordings – captured moments in time and space. A dream narrative emerges from fractured frames. Intersections of locations contain a collection of deceptions, interruptions and overlays. Discovered textures are placed alongside sculptural interventions and synthetic manipulations, in dialogue with the accidental.

100 minutes

aufabwegen aatp96
released March 7, 2024

installation, sound, Uncategorized

Chromesthesia

A generative, six-speaker sound installation. Three doorways with two-way mirrors display three rooms filled with saturated color and sound. Each room contains a set of rich tones joined by subtle field recordings of wind, ice and birds. Chords rhythmically pulse and shift in ever-changing patterns, while the effects of unfiltered color play with the eyes. As listeners open and close doors, moving through the spaces, different elements of the layered composition are revealed.

Commissioned by Hopscotch Gallery, Portland OR

June 2023

installation, sound, Uncategorized

AUXART – To The River

A 16-channel generative, site-specific composition, this collaboration with sculptor Philip Krohn was installed on the banks of the Willamette River for six weeks during the summer of 2022. Visitors traveled through a 300-meter long boardwalk of undulating wooden forms, woven from salvaged strips and lashed with recycled inner tubes. Beyond the boardwalk, a path led to a grassy point perched on the river, where a 50-foot diameter wooden bench sat among blackberries and wildflowers. Emerging from the bench itself, pings, chirps, tones and waves arced across the air. In ever-changing combinations, these electronic calls, whistles and roars mimicked and played with already-occurring elements of the densely-populated site, such as highway traffic, train rumble, birds, crickets, and the shouts of dragonboat crews.

The installation technology was completely unseen, with vibrations sent directly into the bench by 16 equally-spaced transducers. Audio panning behaviors ranged from slow pulses to random scatterings and audio-rate circling. From the center of the circle, the complex acoustics of each uniquely resonant soundboard created a virtual sonic theater, held among and within the existing soundscape. Lower frequencies and vibrations could be experienced through the body when seated, revealing a new sensorial layer. The generative composition wafted and waned, new voices and combinations emerging gradually. The site also served as a space for musical performances, and several musicians chose to improvise with the sounds of the installation.

Aug – Sept, 2022

Zidell Shipyards, Portland OR

Albums, collaborative, Uncategorized

(eco)systems (with Bruno Duplant)

CD released on Stellage, 2021. (eco)systems is a mix of acoustic instruments, field recordings, digital and analogue synths, structured in algorithmic cycles, random fluctuations, slow evolutions and large timescales, networks of events, systems of repetition, interactions between sound characters, a movement of cut / copy / paste, erase & rewrite in an endlessly renewed back and forth, a fluid and evocative movement, until two ecosystems emerged, as fictitious as they are real.

“Across two numerically titled pieces the duo simulate and explore various biomes, weather conditions, environments and creatures. Insect-like chirps echo in cavernous spaces, distorting synthesizers disintegrate into silence. At one moment thumping rhythms resemble a creature’s heartbeat, at another you hear what sounds like rainfall deep in a deciduous forest during a summer storm. Synthetic, almost cinematic soundscapes slowly morph into imagined underwater worlds, only to dissolve into vast, falling waterfalls. More serene, almost ambient passages evoke rays of sunlight piercing through clouds after intense rainfall.

There is an incredibly impressive fluidity and variety to Duplant’s and Nehil’s work on (eco)systems. Sound sources intertwine and morph in disorienting ways, as a listener you’re constantly being transported by the evocative nature of the music. The dizzying complexity of these pieces seemingly ignores the ocean that separates these two artists – one based in Northern France, the other in the Western United States. (eco)systems sounds like two well-acquainted friends in yet another deep conversation.”

Adam Badí Donoval for Stellage