The Tiber winding through Rome

States of Water was inspired by the multiple physical transformations that water is constantly subjected to. Motion, stagnation, evaporation, condensation, and falling are the states explored by these field recordings. Water produces an infinite variety of sounds throughout the entire range of audible frequencies, sometimes creating the perfect white noise, i.e., the equal overlapping of all audio frequencies. The sound of water also moves through rapid transformations of intensity and spectral envelopes. Sometimes, albeit rarely, water creates tones.

Observing and carefully analyzing this microcosm of pitched sounds inspired me to organize the concrete sound of water into a tuning system that uses the whole ratios of Zarlino’s system (XVI century). Multiple resonating filters were combined into different harmonic series for the purpose of ordering chaotic frequencies along natural intervals.

The field research stage has been carried out along all the entire course of the Tiber river from its springs in the Monte Fumaiolo to the outlet in the Tyrrhenian sea. It involved many recording techniques, including special microphones and movements along sound sources: springs, streams, waterfalls, caves, waves as well as the sea. In order to record the sound of fluid within the human body, I also experimented with the recording of a sound scan of a six-month-old fetus. In this work, I pay tribute to water as a symbol and a metaphor for the various states of mind and emotion.

The original composition of 30 minutes, a multi-channel sound installation with 18 points of sound diffusion on an 80x500 meter site, was created for Tevereterno, a site-specific project designed and produced by Kristin Jones, celebrating the Tiber River in Rome for the summer solstice of 2006. This stereo version of the piece was first presented at the Ear to the Earth Festival in New York City, 2006.

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