{"id":3924,"date":"2012-09-18T10:42:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T15:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=3924"},"modified":"2024-07-02T13:33:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:33:23","slug":"fluid-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=3924","title":{"rendered":"Fluid Music: UNC musician explores sounds created by water"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
UNC music professor Lee Weisert records water sounds at a rock quarry pond in Caswell County, N.C. (photo by Steve Exum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Lee Weisert first heard the chords in \u201cThe Rite of Spring\u201d as a high school student, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a physical quality to the music that created a direct engagement with sounds I had never heard before,\u201d says Weisert, an assistant professor in the department of music. Inspired by Stravinsky\u2019s opus and influenced by John Cage\u2019s pioneering work in seeking out new models for musical composition, Weisert embarked on a path toward music composition.<\/p>\n

Weisert composes three types of music. \u201cI create acoustic chamber pieces for various combinations of cello, piano and other traditional instruments,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are purely electronic pieces that I write for the computer, usually for a fixed multichannel playback. And then there are sound installations on which I collaborate with a colleague, Jonathon Kirk, a professor at North Central College in Illinois.\u201d<\/p>\n

These installations explore the sounds created by water in its liquid and solid states. Last year, Weisert and Kirk created \u201cCryoacoustic Orb,\u201d which featured multiple illuminated acrylic orbs filled with slowly melting ice. Hydrophones (underwater microphones), frozen inside the ice, amplified the sounds of the melting process. Those sounds were then electronically processed and broadcast through the gallery space, creating a soundscape that evolved over the course of several hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m interested in the acoustic ecology movement which is a cross between the natural sciences and music composition,\u201d says Weisert. \u201cPeople have been recording interesting sounds in the environment from different areas of the world with some of the most beautiful recordings being the ice floes cracking and moving in the Arctic.\u201d\u00a0 Weisert says that this work was a trigger for his project as were the hydrophones he and Kirk purchased for their 2008 collaboration, \u201cThe Argus Project.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Weisert and his collaborator Jonathon Kirk created “Cryoacoustic Orb,” which featured multiple illuminated acrylic orbs filled with slowly melting ice. (photo by Steve Exum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That site-specific sound installation explored the sound sources from beneath the surface of a natural pond. \u201cThe pond supplied all the sonic material, like the gurglings and bubblings and the occasional fish trying to eat the microphones,\u201d says Weisert. \u201cAll of those sounds were captured by the hydrophones. In addition, we had sensors that picked up changes in the environment, such as temperature and light, which was translated into data that the computer altered into sounds.\u201d Weisert says that the pond becomes both the instrument and the performer. He plans to stage this piece in Chapel Hill in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am intrigued by the sonic accessibility to a place that you can\u2019t access in a normal situation without all of this technology,\u201d says Weisert. \u201cThat direct simple discovery of this sound world is exciting.\u201d\u00a0 Weisert says that the sound installations inspire his other musical compositions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI, along with other composers of instrumental and computer music, am always looking for new things to base my compositions on outside of the traditional forms, ideas or gestures,\u201d says Weisert. \u201cThese sound installations offer textures that I would never think of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weisert says that he can take the sounds he discovers and reshape them for a string quartet or another more traditional piece of music. \u201cSome of the sound worlds, behaviors and shapes that came out of the installation are definitely creeping in to the electronic part of a piece I am now writing for saxophone and electronics,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Watch a video of \u201cCryoacoustic Orb.” <\/em><\/p>\n

[Story by Michele Lynn, fall 2012 <\/em>Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Read more stories about water:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Troubled waters<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oyster Culture<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Future of the Outer Banks<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Water in the Classroom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Precious Resource<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNC composer Lee Weisert’s installations explore sounds created by water. This feature and more water initiatives in the fall 2012 issue of Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,15,1,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carousel","category-fine-arts-humanities","category-uncategorized","category-undergraduate-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45522,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions\/45522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}