This was the theme of an artist’s residency in Masterton, New Zealand, and continues to develop. In it i combine improvisation, recorded sounds and my own songs, exploring what it means to be human in this time when human activity is affecting our planetary systems – climate, atmosphere, landscapes, and the delicate web of life – with a force equivalent to geological changes such as plate tectonics, that normally take place over millions of years. We need to change, but what and how? What traces will we leave behind for future species, maybe visiting aliens, to discover and ponder?
I have been inspired by the sounds of New Zealand’s birds and insects, and also the book by Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin ‘The Human Planet – How we created the Anthropocene’.
The show has developed into a 30 – 40 min piece, reflecting on the rights of arthropods in a vertebrate-dominated world, the awkward situation of slugs and mosquitoes ditto, the miracle of life on earth that all exists in an atmosphere that is only about ten miles high, the tricky situation of an apex predator that only stays on top because of some fancy technology…and much more.
Here is the sound of wind, a few birds, and water
Cosmic Romanian frogs
Forces of Nature (got to be controlled)