Yird Muin Starn composition steams ahead. Mandy has sent an eight verse epic, ‘ It Would Take Eight Years to Fly to the Sun from Earth in Concorde Travelling Faster Than the Speed of Sound’ that has such a rhythm in it that I spent yesterday pumping out a rap. Perfect Sunday activity. Today, however, reveals potential for male Scottish vocals, so artist/poet Robbie Harris comes to play. Intriguing how the meaning of words change when you hear someone else make sense of them. Verse 8 reveals a metallic skinned multi-headed humanoid, neither man nor woman, still breeding and foraging for food up on that nuclear star, our SUN. 

2012 kicks off  in the studio. Last year made discovery time out in the field, so this year there are four major pieces to realize. Good. Finally time to make music again.

First, a star inspired suite for Yird Muin Starn, the star gazing shelter project in the Galloway forest, with Mandy McIntosh. I am working with Adam Parkinson  to enable the sonification of constellation data to melody. My sound sources are forest, bog and burn recordings as well as a digital synthesizer I’ve devised. It’s new and endless territory and already producing exciting results.  I also work with Adam on the salmon opera  Where are the wild ones?,  so shift from water to cosmos is merely expansive. 2012 let’s go.

The Man of Ellingfort burns. by Kristian Buss

AudRey winter festival makes its first appearance. With burning man by Magnus Irvin,  fireside shakuhachi solo by Clive Bell, indoor performances by Daniel Weaver and Dale Berning, Justine Cal and startx DJ’s and the stop global warming cake, its a celebration not to forget.

Wolfgang Hauptfleisch, collaborator on The Marvelo Project (2008), is in the house. We are developing ‘The swamp that was – a city opera from the ground of Ghanda’, a new project commissioned by timelab, Ghent  to open May 2012 as part of TRACK with S.M.A.K.  Like the Marvelo Project, this will be a multi-layered audio work performed by visitors from satellite linked audio bicycles. But this time, it will be a huge work of sonic archaeology that knits together the spirits of the living and the dead.  Did you know there was a zoo there?  And that the last elephant was eaten?

Laura Harrington is in the house. We are making the plan to realise “Where are the wild ones?’ as the large scale work it needs to be.

Proposed premiére summer, 2013 at an unusual location beside the river Tyne, with mid progress performances in London and Newcastle 2012.  This is good.

Another week of wild salmon song writing with children begins, this time in Prudhoe Middle School Northumbria. They are brilliant and we’re all excited. Today was day one so we were back on the Tyne. Here it’s wide and shallow and now cold. All is being documented online at Where are the wild ones? – the opera, currently under construction. Thanks for patience.

Today sees the start of a salmon song writing week with children at Bellingham Middle School, Northumbria. We’ll be using melodies made from the sonification of fish count against river flow data to make notes and pitches as well as oscillator processings driven by temperature and tide height. Mapped to a digital piano and underwater recordings respectively, they present an incredibly motivating score from sea to source. Today we’ll kick off with a presentation to the whole school and then a trip with Anne of the Environment Agency to the adjacent Hareshore Lin, a tributary of the river Tyne. Should be a good start to stimulating lyrics. Outcome of this work will be documented on line at Where are the wild ones?- the opera,currently under construction. Thanks for patience.

I’m back in the theatre at CCSD presenting Ephemeral Animation research made so far with puppeteer & Creative research fellow Nenagh Watson.  I show this film and 2 others, each made with different audio approaches. Vimeo  shows and tells all. We also perform ‘Conversations with an Umbrella’ through the feeble PA, but somehow it sounds pretty good, especially the insect moments.

I am alone for four days on the Suffolk coast recording the sea, the saltings and the coniferous trees that wave in clusters inland on the sandy soil. Listening time alone in nature is a rare and I remember now astonishing thing to do. Why do I not manage this more often? This morning I found the old broom which makes an ideal outdoor microphone stand. Lightweight, good stereo separation with potential hedge filter and bangs solid into a variety of terrains. Last night I frightened myself crouching alone in a creaking copse, a flock of geese  suddenly swooping barking through headphone space intense, winter night black bang descended. This morning I became mesmerised by the reeds rustling in wind driven patterns, my hydrophones documenting the underwater same time departing tide driven slooping of  fresh water on curved mud walls. Tonight I was alone with the sea on the shingle beach. It’s a clear very dark windless night, no one around, stars and planets and galaxies going on and on and on, them waves a crashing  and spreading and sucking the pebbles Suffolk style.  One of the best concerts I’ve been to all year.

The ISIS residency has not only stimulated much further Atlantic Salmon learning – adjacent pic for example shows a cock salmon with the kip it grows when right up river and ready to breed, but has set the pins in place for the making and performance of  “Where are the wild ones? the opera” in 2012.

The work is being fully documented HERE, now under development. We will announce when it is fully launched. Thanks for patience.