Vattuskräck at Sonic Vigil V
Vattuskräck is the Swedish word for hydrophobia, normally associated with rabies. This improvised work incorporated hydrophone underwater recordings from Donegal and Killybegs Harbour, combined with electroacoustic elements and deconstructed Sean-nós singing.
This was performed live at the Sonic Vigil V 2010 in St Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork.
Softday at work, performing Vattuskräck. Photo courtesy of Patricia Klich.
For Vattuskräck, we designed and built a special device, a large suspended steel plate and by holding a plastic bottle half-filled with water against the plate, in various locations, and singing through a plastic tube - bubbling the human voice - we could pick up a "drowning voice" with a contact microphone. This was set against a backdrop of electronic sounds and samples from a number of percussive everyday sounds sequenced and processed in pd.
Experimenting with "drowning voice".