Frostbyte – liten snø trinn

Description

frostbYte – liten snø trinn is a short, 3 part ecoacoustic dance piece expressed via
metaphor, realised within the context of electroacoustic music. The work seeks to
address the struggle surrounding the Arctic Archipelago’s battle for continued health, vitality
and survival.

Whilst undertaking manifold field recordings of the region for use in my own creative
artworks, I happened upon numerous glacial ice sheets of varying shapes and sizes. Each
encounter (it seemed) was more unsound than the last. Skidding and sliding, wobbling and
lurching, I aquaplaned across the surface of the ice in all manner of bizarrely contorted
ways, frantically trying to keep my balance. In the throes of these ungainly poses, it
occurred to me that I was involved in a uniquely unfettered dance within this breathtakingly
pristine, yet deeply endangered environment.
The energetic pacing of the work is (loosely) based on an archaic dance form within the tradition of a
French dance suite. However, unlike this regal suite, my own freestyle
interpretation was anything if elegant. The piece uses extended computer transformations of the field recordings, along with piano (both prepared and standard) and some percussive elements made from a computer modelling of the classic drum machine, the Akai MPC60

The title itself, ‘liten snø trinn’ translates to ‘small snow steps’ in Norwegian, and is
intended, in some small way to contribute to the critical global discourse surrounding the
high arctic, seen through the lens of climate change, art music, socio-political and socioeconomic contexts. Although originally composed in 5.1 surround sound, the version presented here has been meticulously remixed into stereo.