Magnet Bay Farm

Magnet Bay Farm is about fifteen minutes drive from Little River in Banks Peninsula, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I have stayed there three times in the last nine months and have grown to love the place.

My initial two visits were in order to rehearse for a national tour with the show Voices of our Ancestors - an exploration by three Ngai Tahu women, through story, sound and song, of histories both family and tribal. As we all lived in different parts of the country, it seemed fitting to come together for rehearsals on Ngai Tahu soil. We all shared ancestral linkages with Wairewa marae, and so it was a great privilege to be able to base at Magnet Bay Farm, which had recently been regifted back to Wairewa marae by farmer Jim Wright.

I wasn't very well on the first stay, and so wasn't up for a walk down the farm, but Mahina and Ariana went and came back very excited about the assortment of farm equipment (read here as 'sound-making objects').

The next time we visited, I was able to go for the walk - and certainly wasn't disappointed!! Fifty metres from the house it begins - yards and yards of farm equipment in various stages of repair - wire cages, sheds galore, a sheep transport trailer, 44 gallon drums, pots, old tractor, hap makers, a saw mill...it really iwas like heaven! That afternoon we walked from pile to pile and hit, scraped, and jumped on things. The next day I went back with an H2 zoom and over the course of a few hours recorded as many of the items as I could.

Mahina kicking a wee drum

Ariana with a metal sheet

Over a period of time I want to archive the sounds and explore them in combinations. I can't help feeling there is a piece of music to be made on-site. Robin and Ngaire, who now manage the farm on behalf of the marae, have certainly indicated there are stories to be told, and they are keen that Jim not be forgotten.


Here is the first sketch-combination of some of the sounds on Magnet Bay Farm.

sounds from my neighbourhood - the water tower

the water tower is on a hill at the back of a reserve behind our house. it's pretty much completely made of concrete but i took a contact mic to see what i could find.

pipe

a series of pipes run around the perimetre of the tower. i chose one and began tapping it - it has amazing overtones and a long sustain. the pipe itself doesn't make any sound, it's only when it's activated you get to hear the sounds travelling through it.




the first sound is from me scraping the outside of the pipe with my hands.

Pipe 2 by christinewhite

this sound is from circling the inside of the pipe with a stick.

Pipe 3 by christinewhite

steel casing

further around the water tower was the main stairwell to the top. at the base of the stair structure was a metal guard with a steel box mounted on it housing a padlock.


i had a lot of fun with this structure, running the back of a cello bow over it.

Steel box by christinewhite

i also placed the box inside the cavity of the box casing and moved it over the surface. this created a breath-like timbre with tonal changes.

Inside steel box by christinewhite

i was also able to pull a metal sheet around the casing which reverberated through it. this recording is complete with text message (DM tweet) from my partner Hinemoana in the wild west of wyoming.

Rattling the steel by christinewhite

house study 132 - heater

having now moved from a bach-style cottage-on-a-hill to a modernised bungalow on the flat, i am beginning a series of sound studies for our new home...and it begins with the gas heater.

i actually became aware of some beautiful heater drones the day after World Listening Day (18 July 2010). my partner hinemoana's new poetry book 'koiwi koiwi' was launched on World Listening Day - it has some pretty amazing sound imagery coincidentally. you can find out more about it here.

anyways, i got pretty crook that night (not self inflicted no) and so the next morning was partially spent lying on the floor in the lounge recovering. in rest and stillness we can often hear sounds we otherwise wouldn't, and it was in this state that the heater came alive for me. it possibly was made all the more present because my head was resting on the wooden floor and so the drones of the heater travelled from the floor and in through the bones of my head.

on that particular day it was very calming.

so, with homemade contact mic in tow, i have now recorded the heater. my flatmate marian commented that it sounds like a whole haunted house is residing in there...we could hear metallic booms and banging that aren't always obvious in the living room or that otherwise sound like small creaks. i also particularly love the overtones when the fan is on.

i have added some eq to try and minimise the static sounds and tones which seem to be part and parcel of the homemade contact mic set-up i use.

some sounds are of me lifting the cover to turn on/off the fan or to turn the heater up. it's a right playground.

a whole world right there in the heater.

long time no hear...

well, it has been such an incredibly long time since i have appeared here - it was getting more difficult to do so - but here i am - if only to say hi and start again.

i moved house about a month ago which took me out of routine for a few weeks, but for some reason, this feeling of displacement, busyness-with-nothing-really-to-show-for-it, a feeling of over-emphasis on house/domestic/practical matters etc etc has just continued to elongate! i finally need to stomp it on the head and try and find some semblance of interest in the things i were interested in and involved with - if only to regain sanity!

and - so it seems - combining strange sounds and making little non-consequential movies still seems to reign. the movie below was the culmination of an improvised sound-play session combined with an attempt at small movie-making which combines my love of origami with my budget/material capabilities. hopefully this play and more like it will give formation to a larger piece - but for now this is it.

crude awakening

this piece crude awakening was performed by chris black and myself in 2008 as part of our sonic arts studies at victoria university. the piece utilised radio static and a speaker chain whereby contact mics attached to speakers picked up sounds from speaker boxes and transmitted them to other set of speakers - this altered the sound as it traveled through the chain.

we also utilised contact mics picking up the sounds of guitar strings and wires being shaken and then further processed. we also placed a speaker against a shower bath, picking up this altered sound using additional contact mics on the bath. there was also an old operation game used.

a high point of the performance occured when chris sawed into a speaker - wot fun!

both chris and i loved the raw sounds generated using these materials. this was probably one of my favourite performances throughout the study period. i also thoroughly love working with chris. we did a larger version of this idea using the fixtures and fittings of the adam art gallery which i will post at some stage.