Evolution

Inspiration for Evolution comes from a recording made from a central heating timer. This gave the main concept of the piece, time. The manipulation of this fixed media audio file, as well as other recordings made with similar sound characteristics to layer and/or compliment the timer recording created movement in the piece and gives a feeling of space in both meanings of the word, 'space' the universe and 'space' the distance between two objects. The piece was then arranged into sections that shows the evolutionary stages a universe goes through from beginning to end. Starting at the big bang there is fast moving layers of rhythmic textures that move in and around each other giving an illusion of solid mater forming around a central sun. At 1’20 The planets slow down and life starts to evolve. High frequency sounds are introduced, inspired by Hildegard Westerkamp’s 'Kits Beach Sounds'. In that piece Hildegard uses very small high frequency sounds found on the beach in New York and quotes 'High frequencies charge our brain and give us energy'. This is something I wanted to experiment with in “Evolution”. Time starts creeping in slowly building as the clock and rhythms get louder, then life settles and mutation/evolution begins. The rhythms disappear and small and large sounds representing different life evolving move around the stereo space. The sounds get larger and faster as different life fights for survival until, finally, everything slows down again and only small life remains after the battle. Sounds start to mutate once again as evolution moves on and the effect I wanted to give is a jungle type setting with small sounds chanting and the listener has the illusion of being in a futuristic soundscape full of invisible life. The final minute of the piece is the universe slowing down to its end when everything is sucked back towards the central sun to form a black hole.

Sound Source:
All sounds are from recordings I have made apart from 1. Explosion: NuclearGenocide.wav (Acclivity) http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=20740