Instant Places
BellCurve
Churchill Square
Festival Events
June 27 - 30
10:30 PM - 11:30 PM
Monday July 1
9:30 PM - 10:30 PM
Artist Statement
We are reflecting on the roles a clock tower plays in the life of a city: timekeeper, a landmark that helps you find your way. In BellCurve we are folding time, layering past events with the present moment, imagining transformations still to come.
A young person pedals a bike on a country road outside of Edmonton. The time is the late 60's, the summer before Apollo 11. Time is stretching out. Is that a single bell on the wind from Skaro? Or strings humming, a wire of messages that haven't yet been received...
Recorded texts playing over speakers along the plaza of City Hall are transformed by a computer program that granulates speech, creating weightless drifts of particles that continually obscure and reveal fragments of narrative. The computer also sends messages to the carillon tower that layer evolving sequences of bell melodies over the sonic landscape.
about the artist
Under the name Instant Places Laura Kavanaugh and Ian Birse have created intermedia performances and generative artworks on location throughout Japan, Australia, Argentina/Uruguay, the United Kingdom and Europe, New York/Chicago in the USA, and from Makkovik Labrador to Victoria BC in Canada. In their work they create custom hardware/software systems for live transforms of images and sounds and activate them in spontaneously-composed performances and regenerative installations.
Among recent projects are compositions for Ensemble SuperMusique (Montreal) and GIO Global Orchestra (Glasgow), hybrid physical/virtual performances in Milan and Florence with Company Blu Dance, an audio commission and livestreamed performance in Vienna for Kunstradio ORF, and livestreamed audiovisual performances for the international telematics collective Art's Birthday.