© video projections by Toon de Zoeten
Installations /
electronic works
Als het tij keert (As the tide turns)
2024
Aeolian harps and voice(s)
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Premièred on June 29th at festival Almere Speelt by Miranda Driessen
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Aeolian harps designed by Jan Heinke and constructed by Steffen Hartmann
At the bottom of the former Zuiderzee, we find ourselves in an imaginary sea of ​​time. Where once the ebb and flow marked the movements of this sea, but also in time, there now lies a still undeveloped headland. For this place, and this specific moment in time (June 29, 2024), Almere composer Miranda Driessen is currently working on a 6-hour performance for 8 wind harps and solo voice. Within this time frame, the average duration of the tide at sea, sung and wind-generated sounds mingle with each other in slowly shifting shades. In addition to the tide, the wind also has a major influence on currents and water levels at sea, and thus determines safe shipping routes for ships. These were marked by beacons. When the tide turned, the beacons had to be moved. In Driessen's performance, the wind harps function as beacons that literally demarcate the playing field within which the singer moves. In the 6 hours that the composition lasts, she shifts the beacons at set times to then make new sounds audible and set a new course. The need to turn the tide at this moment in history may be clear. The idea that we as humanity would still have plenty of time to do so is increasingly proving to be an illusion. 'When the tide turns' is an attempt to make the decisiveness and perseverance that will be needed for this tangible.
© André Sietsma
Sanctuary of sound
2023
Tiny compilation of field recordings
Commissioned by Oranjewoud festival
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Premièred on May 26-29th 2023 at Oranjewoudfestival Heerenveen by Miranda Driessen and Ricardo Huisman. Aeolian harps by Jan Heinke and Steffen Hartmann
Sanctuary of Sound is a composition with a duration of 72 hours, performed in an open space in the open air, demarcated by 8 wind harps: an architectural space without roof or walls, in which the listener, sitting or lying in the grass, is invited to open the senses and surrender to a potentially infinite variation of sound in time and space. The performer is the wind, which makes the strings of these sound objects vibrate and thus makes a continuously moving palette of overtones audible, which moves with the wind. The gust of wind that you feel on your skin can be heard directly in the movement of the sound in the wind harps. Music made on the basis of overtones is something that has occupied composer Miranda Driessen for years. Listening to these sounds is fascinating and comparable to looking at the ever-changing colour shades of light at sunrise or sunset. Sound, time and space are quantities within this that require demarcation and structure. To do this, Driessen used principles from the architecture of Dom Hans van der Laan and the Plastic Number. With these, she calculated different orders of magnitude, each with its own tuning or sound ratio. The points in time at which the tuning of the wind harps changes in Sanctuary of sound form, as it were, a door to other sound/time-space, each with its own characteristic and atmosphere. The performance of a piece of music with such a duration, left to something as unpredictable as the weather, is not without risks: what if it rains, or there is no wind? Accustomed as we are to controlling nature, we now see the limits of this approaching us. In doing so, we are asked to look beyond the boundaries of our personal lives and to think about what we want to leave behind for future generations. This applies not only to nature, but also to culture. In any case, this work reaches beyond the boundaries of the life of the maker of the 8 wind harps, Jan Heinke, who died last April at the age of 53. For this composition, Miranda Driessen drew further inspiration from ideas that were already discussed centuries ago: the tuning of the strings in Pythagoras, ideas about consonance and dissonance from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ideas about time in John Cage and sound development in Eliane Radigue. The work thus emerges from a stream of human creativity that spans more than 2500 years. In that light, 72 hours is a minuscule fraction. Time and space are essential to allow the spirit to continue to blow.
Vers la lumière
2022
Multi-media installation
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Video-projections by Toon de Zoeten
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Premièred from May 26-29th 2023 at Museum Bèlvédère, Heerenveen
Vers la lumière is the result of a collaboration between composer Miranda Driessen and filmmaker Toon de Zoeten in which field recordings, texts, and images that emerged from personal reflections on the relationship between man and nature are incorporated into a 4-track electronic, spatial composition and image projections. The starting point here is not the anecdotal, but rather the abstraction of the various elements, which creates a total experience that transcends the personal story. The installation is suitable for festivals and/or museum presentations, and premiered in May 2024 at Museum Belvédère in Heerenveen during the Oranjewoud festival. In the winter of 2020/2021, Miranda Driessen visited a nearby park every morning to experience the sunrise there. Every day she recorded 1 minute of ambient sound, and observed what happened as accurately as possible: sounds, light, temperature, weather conditions, animals and people. When she got home, she made short notes of what she remembered most that morning. Looking back, these observations invariably raised all sorts of questions about the relationship between man and nature, the awareness of vulnerability and transience, the need for surrender, the limitations of human language, the desire to be part of nature and at the same time the realization of its impossibility. All these sound recordings, the images, the texts and the total experience of this special period of time required a synthesis: a recreated reality by restructuring these elements within an immersive, multi-media installation. In order to realize this, she sought collaboration with filmmaker Toon de Zoeten. The result of this collaboration is an installation that consists of combinations of image projections on multiple transparent cloths and spatially placed speakers. Depending on the position of the viewer, different combinations of moving images and sounds are created each time. The composition consists of four soundtracks of different durations that are looped and played from four corners in space. As with the image projections, this also creates constantly changing constellations of sounds within the composition. For the composition, Driessen conceived the phenomenon of time as a space within which various sound objects were placed. For the division of this time-space, she used the so-called Plastic number, and the method with which architect Dom Hans van der Laan used it to create harmony within the spatial proportions of his buildings. The sounds from the field recordings were abstracted by removing them from their daily context and re-edited in a constructivist manner. The texts were placed in time-spaces in a similar way, which on the one hand alienates them from reality, but at the same time gives them a musical progression through the mathematical design.
Epitaph
2022
Mezzo soprano and video-registration
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I.M. Jan Heinke
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Premièred on Aug. 14th 2022 at Palais Sommer festival Dresden
Video-registration of Jan Heinke's performance of Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen? Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen. Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich, nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich, der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht. Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt? Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand? O süßes Lied.
Eva
2020
Electro-acoustic online work
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Part of Telephone, an international online artspace:
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During the first Covid-lockdown in 2020 I was asked to take part in an international online art project. For this I was asked to respond to a painting by an anonymous artist from somewhere on this planet in just a few days. In the proces of ekphrasis to the watercolour painting I received, I decided to immediately follow each idea that came up. Clearly the painting has a direct connection to the book of Genesis. At first I thought it looked as if Eva was being crucified to the tree, as a female predecessor of Christ, sacrificed in order to bring development to the world. But then it appeared as if she is being merged with the tree, as if she gradually will become part of nature again. First the melody played by the bassoon came to my mind, and the eyes on the branches became whispering voices, reading from Genesis in different languages.
Then I kept thinking why the desire for gaining knowledge by eating the apple would be something bad since it also evokes development and progress. This brought me to the poem of Rilke: Eva Einfach steht sie an der Kathedrale
großem Aufstieg, nah der Fensterrose,
mit dem Apfel in der Apfelpose,
schuldlos-schuldig ein für alle Male an dem Wachsenden, das sie gebar,
seit sie aus dem Kreis der Ewigkeiten
liebend fortging, um sich durchzustreiten
durch die Erde, wie ein junges Jahr. Ach, sie hätte gern in jenem Land
noch ein wenig weilen mögen, achtend
auf der Tiere Eintracht und Verstand. Doch da sie den Mann entschlossen fand,
ging sie mit ihm, nach dem Tode trachtend;
und sie hatte Gott noch kaum gekannt. The big eyes, crying behind the tree of course I couldn't ignore. Gaining knowledge also means loosing innocence. Paradise lost became the wailing women's voices. And then finally the magpies, stealing the eggs of other birds, I recorded in the park near my house.
© Maggie Sharar
Tijdglas - installatie
2009
4-channel electro-acoustic installation. Sounds recorded from glass objects by Joost Bicker Caarten
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Premièred on July 10th 2009 at GlasHart exhibition, Fort Vuren
Played during the International Glashart exhibition for glass sculptors at Fort Vuren in the summer of 2009. This piece was constructed out of 'leftover' sounds I gathered and designed for Tijdglas for baroque flute. It was made of 5 tapeloops all of different durations that were played from 5 different speakers placed along the wall of a round tower. The listener could experience different combinations of sounds, being surrounded by it. The sounds were designed from recordings of the glass sculptures of Joost Bicker Caarten which were digitally edited and sometimes mixed with quotations from early baroque flute pieces. The installation was played 24 hours a day during the period of the exhibition in the heart of a fortress that was part of the Hollandse Waterlinie.
Other performances
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Oct. 25th 2015 GBV gallery, Aldtsjerk