The Magic Hour

Today is take-down day.  It seems a shame to be leaving the Botanic Garden after spending so much time here over the summer.  It’s always nice to work outside and, of course, fun to be working alongside a group of artists.  Still, I bet the gardeners will be glad to get the greenhouse back (as well as the rest of the garden)!

Last night the weather was better and the audience figures were up to what they were on Thursday.  The bats were out all evening and so I was able to simply ‘press go’ and run the piece for the whole event, giving me time to do some impromptu performances around the garden at different times with my CrackleBox and portable Theremin, and finishing off with a nice trio with my trombone with Tim Hill and Max Eastley.

Although last night’s Magic Hour was a very special event, funnily enough, I think my favourite evening was the Friday, after it had finished raining.  With less people there, the garden had the wonder of an unexplored land about it, providing a more intimate experience.  And, as for the bats, whereas for the other evenings the different species seemed to be following their normal routine of feeding at different times of the evening, it was like they all came out at once, providing a quite special spectacle.  It was interesting to observe how inclement weather can actually add to the evening’s experiences in a positive way.

I am grateful to Oxford Contemporary Music and the Botanical Garden for the opportunity to try out my Echolocation sound installation idea, and I have been pleased by the results and excited about its potential.  In the programme, I called this piece Echo 1.  Now I must look out for other opportunities for the creation of Echo 2, and so on.

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Well, that weather forecast wasn’t correct!  The rain began at 7pm, but people still came, though in smaller numbers.  When the weather did clear (unfortunately with most of our audience) the place was truly magical as the few people who were left had the garden and its strange sounds and illuminations all to themselves.

Most of the school students that I had been working with on the Predator piece also came tonight and seemed to spend most of the evening enjoying their music and ‘jumping’ to the loud bits.  Their screams emanating from the secluded Spring Walk pathway was a rather humourous addition to the sounds in the garden.

The bat activity over the river was pretty minimal during the first part of the evening, I guess as a result of the rain, and so I also fed in a recording of their visit on another evening earlier this week.  Eventually, though, the rain did stop, by about 9pm, and then the bats came out in force and put on quite an amazing display, darting in and out of the shafts of light that we have installed along the river.

Well, our first night went really well.  About 500 people came and we apparently had some very good feedback about the various pieces.  I haven’t seen this yet, but when I do, I will post some of it on this blog.  The weather too was as good as could be expected – a still night with no rain.  Not so good perhaps for some of the aeolian harp sculptures elsewhere in the garden, but excellent for the bats!

I was really happy with how my bat piece sounded.  I spent the first half of the evening in the vicinity of the installation talking with people about how I created the work, and receiving many nice comments, especially from those who realised that they were witnessing a live event, in the sense that the music was being triggered by the bats themselves and was not simply a prerecorded composition.  Now, this morning I have a meeting with some of the ‘Friends of the Botanic Garden’ to talk about my work and how it connects with the garden, and then I have a bit more fine-tuning that I still want to do.

There has been a meteorlogical weather warning for Oxford today with apparently high winds and 50mm of rainfall expected today (60.9mm is the normal Sepetember average!) but the good news is that this is all meant to happen this afternoon with a return to quieter conditions by 7pm, which is when our performance is due to begin!

Last night we had our run-through.  It was a bit of a race to get everything finished in time, but we just about made it.

We have a sort of timetable for each evening, with different sounding events occurring at roughly fifteen minute intervals, so it was good to see how that timing felt and to check on the consensus regarding other details, such as sound overspill, and so on.

My bat piece, of course, remains silent until the bats arrive at the Botanic Garden, and then it springs to life.  Last night we had our first bat at eight o’clock, and by 8.30pm the piece was very active with lots of sounds.

Based on this experience, I would still like to do some fine tuning on the various sounds within the bat piece, to try and improve on the musical clarity in order to give listeners a deeper listening experience and also to perhaps make the sounds a little more ‘insect’-like - to make a connection with why the bats are there in the first place.  So, again, a lot to do before the doors open at 7pm tonight for the first performance.

For my bat piece I am also making use of some spotlights that shine across the river alongs the flightpaths of the various bat species.  For the Daubentons, the lights skim the surface of the water, whilst for the pipistrelles and serotines it is the are just below the the overhanging branches of the trees that are illuminated.  These lights do not affect the whole river, but instead provide just enough visibility for viewers to pick out the bats as they listen to the resulting music.

Another effect that the lights have is that they appear to attract insects, which of course is what the bats are there to feed upon, and, in turn, they probably help to increase the concentration of bats providing more data for the sound installation.  I had the idea for this after noticing that (at home) bats were often in close proximity to streetlamps – probably because they attracted the larger moths.  Usefully therefore, my lights along the Botanic Garden river bank also help link my sound installation to the Botanic Garden location and to the flights of the bats, and thus help to ground the piece, or at least one’s experience of it.

The weather in Oxford has been pretty blustery, with bouts of wind and the occasional heavy shower.  Actually, today’s not too bad, but we had a lot of weather yesterday.

The changing conditions are ideal for testing the durability of each installation’s set-up outside.  I was concerned, for example, if whether the weatherproof housing for my bat detectors would be effective in a strong wind.  Well, we’ve had the weather to prove that not only is this the case but that the bat detectors can survive a lot of rainwater!  (I left them out to record overnight last night, and when I arrived this morning I realised there had been quite a downpour).

This is all good stuff as the time to test everything is now.  Much better this way than perfect weather on the run-up to the event, and then posed with with a testing performance environment.

For this final week I am resident at the Botanical Garden, setting up my various sound installations.  In the end, I will have seven pieces: 4 dna compositions (previously created for the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden), an insect piece (created last summer for La Cité des Insectes), my new bat installation, and also the Predator soundscape that I have composed with St Barnabas Primary School – so, a lot to be getting on with as each requires setting up in their own particular way.

I have been allowed to set up all my equipment in a Temperate Zone Cactus Greenhouse, next to where my bat installation will be and full of plants I mustn’t touch, and with the windows open so that it is always cool – I even have cooler fans!  What a pity it’s not warm outside!!  As well as the cactuses I seem to be sharing my accommodation with a rather beautiful spider, which sits to my left, waiting for its next meal.

There is a sense of excitement in the air at the Garden now as all the artists involved in Magic Hour are also on site, preparing for the public performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.