Voices and dominoes

Yesterday I went to a really interesting guest lecture as part of my course at the Sydney Conservatorium. The speaker was Lachlan Skipworth, who lived in Japan and studied Shakuhachi, a japanese bamboo flute, for a number of years. I have huge respect for someone who can totally immerse themselves in a new skill like that. He really knew what he was talking about and had some very interesting and well thought out ideas. His work for Shakuhachi and vocal ensemble sparked in me a previous idea I have had for using voice and loop pedal. I would like to have a text which I completely break up into syllables, giving different parts of words to different vocal parts. Using the loop pedal, I would layer the parts, the final text not making sense until the last part was added. In my head I can see a painting/drawing of restless waves, in which the layers slowly fade in to form the complete picture. This I think could be realised through a set of photographs documenting the process of the picture, which would then fade to each other on film.

I have also been reading a speech made by Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, at the Harvard Humanist Society. Here is the link for any interested. This is an excerpt which I really liked;

The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don't need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It's not just an idea, it's reality. We're discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day. The inverse square law of gravitation is amazing. Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.
The nearly infinite set of dominoes that have fallen into each other in order for us to be here tonight is unfathomable. Truly unfathomable. But it is logical. We don't know all the steps in that logic, but we're learning more about it every day. Learning, expanding our consciousness, singly and universally.

I particularly liked the image of the dominoes falling to bring us to where we are now. Perhaps this is also something I would like to include.

Jane
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