Ice Follies 2016
February 13th - 27th, 2016
Theme: Ojichaagobiishin: It reflects in water
A call to action for other groups to engage the festival by responding to water as the source of all life on earth. With the imminent threat of land development and pipelines looming over Canada, both Aboriginal Territories and Municipalities turn their attention towards “Life”. Without the fresh water sources such as Nipissing nothing can survive. “Ojichaagobiishin” forces us to reflect on water and look at what we see. Looking in water reflects our own image back forcing us to look at ourselves. In order for the world we live in to change towards a safer, healthier place, we have to change ourselves.
Darren Copeland, Fishing for Sounds, 2016
Presented by White Water Gallery
“Fishing for sounds” is a transmission art installation that transforms the gallery into an immersive underwater soundscape, composed of sounds ‘caught’ on, under, and through frozen Lake Nipissing. This two-part project features a nationally and internationally recognized experimental sound artist and curator, Darren Copeland.
Part one is a community sound and radio workshop (Feb 13-15, 2016); this workshop has been scheduled to coincide with the New Adventures in Sound Art’s “Deep Wireless” festival. Ten community members will go “fishing for sounds” with the artist on frozen Lake Nipissing (about 3 blocks from the gallery, where they will have access to a couple of ice fishing huts that will be installed about 500 meters off shore as part of the Ice Follies festival); learn how to edit those sounds using computers from the Near North Mobile Media Lab; and use their sound art pieces to experiment with creating a transmission installation in the White Water Gallery. The micro-radio transmitters and contact microphones used in this workshop will be constructed by participants on day one, under the guidance of a technician from New Adventures in Sound Art. Interested participants will have the opportunity to contribute sounds, gear, or installation support to the artist’s exhibition.
In part two, the artist will create, present and exhibit a transmission art installation at White Water Gallery (Feb 20-Mar 12, 2016). Using sounds ‘caught’ using contact microphones, zoom recorders and a hydrophone on Lake Nipissing, Darren Copeland will compose sound art pieces at his studio in South River (using his computer and software). Meanwhile, an installation technician will have turned the gallery into a black box, by constructing a false wall to block out ambient lighting from the storefront window, and will have installed a stage light on the ceiling. So at the centre of the dark gallery a circular column of light will shine down, as though from a fishing hole in the ice above.
Working with a qualified sound technician (and any interested workshop participants), the artist will create a series of sound sculptures with radio receivers and transmitters hanging from components related to ice fishing (e.g. fishing line on small rods) – which will be suspended from the ceiling around the perimeter of the light. These mobiles will naturally swing in and out of the light, and as they swirl the sounds will shift from directly reflecting the sounds recorded, to being noisy (as the transmissions interact with one another).
This variable transmission underwater sound mobile will be heard in the gallery, where audience members can experiment with moving around the space to experience the soundscape in different ways (e.g. more or less in the dark, where audial faculties tend to become heightened); and it will also be heard on the street outside the gallery – where a portable radio will be hanging off an old fishing pole.
The gallery storefront window will look onto a sound fishing ‘trophy’ wall. Polaroids of audience members holding a sign with a word identifying a sound they ‘caught’ (e.g. with an onomatopoeia) will be displayed on a false wall made of faux wood panelling. This visual ‘trophy’ reference will provoke the audience to think more about what makes a sound compelling.
The Artist Talk will take place at the opening reception of “Fishing for sounds” on February 20th (planned to follow on a community-based theatre presentation on Lake Nipissing, to provide audiences a place to warm up, and continue to imbibe arts together). All phases of the project will be video documented (because this process driven installation lends itself to time based media), so as to create a short documentary for the WWG online archives and for the artist’s use (no more than 8 minutes).
Artist Bio:
Darren Copeland is a Canadian sound artist active in Toronto since 1985. He is also the founding and current Artistic Director of New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA). Key interests of his work include multichannel spatialization for live performance, fixed media composition, soundscape studies, radio art and sound installations.
Copeland’s fixed media compositions have explored both abstract and referential sound materials. Many of these works are published on the empreintes DIGITALes label and have received mentions from Vancouver New Music, Phonurgia Nova, Luigi Russolo and other competitions. His radio art works engage in the associative qualities of environmental sounds in relation to spoken text and have been commissioned and presented by Deutschlandradio Kultur, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, and Kunstradio (ORF). His sound installations include gallery and sited works which examine the relationship of sound and place. Activity in that area includes projects with Andreas Kahre as Copeland+Kahre, which includes a permanent installation in Edmonton, Canada.