“There’s a place I always go… the tangled, messy border where human and nature collide and collude. Edgeland.” – NYTimes writer Rob Cowen

This idea of Edgelands – that space between city and country, wild and tamed, was the inspiration for this fifth edition of the Elemental series.  For this topic we asked Catherine Pancake, a US-based sound designer and composer, to create an original soundscape based on the idea of Edgelands.  Using Catherine’s piece as the starting point, we each created a video interpretation to accompany the sound- one more narrative, the other more experimental- yet both walking that imaginary line.

On August 21, 2017 a momentous astronomical event took place in the US, a total eclipse of the sun. The year of Elemental marked this event by asking French sound designer Patrick de Caumette to create an original sound composition.  With eclipse footage supplied by Derek Muller and John D. Boswell, Sandy and LeAnn took wide inspiration from the word and phenomenon of eclipse.

sound composer: Patrick de Caumette

editor: LeAnn Erickson with Sandra Louise Dyas

videographers: Sandra Louise Dyas, LeAnn Erickson, Derek Muller with John D. Boswell

Derek Muller is Veritasium

John D. Boswell is Symphony of Science

As the year of Elemental continues, our third sound artist, Ng Chor Guan, chose the prompt Sense as his inspiration. Perception is defined as the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.  Using the prompt and Guan’s haunting soundtrack, we each created separate videos, yet both pieces share a number of visual themes.

The Theremin is an early and unusual electronic instrument where the performer plays the device without ever touching it. Malaysian composer Ng Chor Guan, a master of the theremin, chose ‘sense’ as his prompt to create this haunting soundtrack. Inspired by the feeling of mystery and loss, I created a piece based on an isolated artist residency I completed at the National Seashore of Cape Cod.

Elemental: Sense is a collaborative work using a hauntingly beautiful sound track created by Ng Chor Guan, an internationally acclaimed, award winning composer from Malaysia. This experimental video was inspired by the otherworldly musical composition as well as my obsession with the cyclical dimension of the human condition.

The year of Elemental continues!  Our second collaboration features the sound work of Dublin-based composer George Higgs.  Using the umbrella prompt of Elemental, his light, yet haunting composition led us to choose Dreaming as the sub-prompt.

Elemental: Dreaming is a collaborative work using a contemplative sound track created by George Higgs, an Irish composer whose work comprises opera, songs, chamber work, experimental electronics and music from instruments of his own making called Higgsturments. The video footage was shot in and near Copenhagen. This experimental cross between a dream and nightmare piece was influenced by Higgs’ meditative sound track as well as my carnivalesque footage collected in Copenhagen and at the Yoko Ono retrospective at the Louisiana Museum of Art, located 25 miles north of Copenhagen.