Sun Deck Set Cogitation (audio installation: Leicester Phoenix version)

'Sun Deck Set Cogitation' is an acousmatic installation setting of the first set (‘deck one’) of Simon Perril’s poem of the same name. The poem is derived from the contents of two texts by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss—a highly detailed and densely descriptive moment-by-moment account of a sunset written in 1935 while en route from Marseilles to Brazil and another written on the 1941 voyage on which he escaped occupied France. Furthermore, Perril’s compositional approach takes impetus from an epiphany Lévi-Strauss had early in his career looking at the formal intricacy and structural play of dandelion seed heads that give rise to other forms. Perril’s poetic ‘treatment’ of the source texts scatter and recombine word-seeds in surprising combinations: blowing on a seed-head and spreading palimpsestic filaments. This process is further reflected in Young’s acousmatic ‘treatment’ of Perril’s reading, extracting and processing vocal fragments and working these into a palimpsestic sound design. Perril’s text conveys many absurd, surreal images and his reading projects a degree of tension as though his evocations are searching to reach a definitive expression of an indescribable scene. This inherently expressive but unresolved narrative influenced the way the sound installation was created. The recorded reading of the text was pared down to a skeletal outline consisting only of consonants and breath sounds. 16 variations were created, all precisely the same length of 5 minutes 42 seconds—a duration determined by the original reading and functioning as a ‘ground’ for the variations. The rhythmic framework provided by the consonants is continuously present, though not always apparent, and provided points of initiation and connection for materials woven around it, submerging it in layers of found environmental and domestic sounds and digitally synthesised sonorities, including digital processing of the voice. Recognisably complete fragments of Perril’s text are also retained and precisely aligned to their cognate points in the stream of consonants—ie they remain precisely synchronised to their original locations in the reading, forming a palimpsest of text and processed sounds. By imposing this additional erasure process, new aphoristic micro-texts are produced which, through the continuous persona evoked by the presence of the voice, can be read as commentary on, and conversation with, the enveloping soundscape. The 16 variations are continuously cycled in random order as long as the installation remains open. A looped video projection of a seascape in four horizontal layers is placed centrally in the installation space. This subtly varying visual stimulus offers a point of focus in the installation experience, though the sound field itself is designed to be heard from any orientation. As an audio installation, a key consideration in this work was the problem of creating a form suitable for a transient audience. This was addressed by balancing micro and macro formal considerations. The 16 variations collectively make a 92-minute cycle with each variation constructed over the same ground as determined by the duration and phrasing of the original recording. Each variation has a distinct character, but many have sonic/textual elements in common, evoking macro-form arches and connections perceptible within the randomised order of variations to create the effect of a long range narrative and encourage sustained listening. Simultaneously, the structure of each variation is composed in fixed form such that, musically, micro-narratives in spectromorphological evolution, spatial trajectories, and fleeting connections between verbal and nonverbal sound can be grasped as meaningful even in a brief engagement with the installation.