Crow Stone Tone Poem

Crow Stone Tone Poem, 2016-2020, 02:08
In collaboration with Julie Andreyev, and a crow

Crow Stone Tone Poem is the first project in a series of on-going collaborations with a free-living crow family who live in the territory that includes Julie’s home. This project is based on interspecies play using stones, initiated by the adult male crow who gifted a pebble to Julie, in the summer of 2015, as acknowledgement for water she left for his family. The ten stone arrangements were adapted into a score used to compose a soundscape made up of field recordings of the crow’s calls, and Julie’s theremin responses. 

I used a Max patch to process the crow’s vocalizations and Julie’s theremin responses using IRCAM’s Modalys physical modelling software. The material properties of the Modalys models matched the materials of the various stones—granite, marble and sandstone. Each stone acted as a resonator for a crow call and a theremin response. These new resonant sounds were then composed into a soundscape using the stone arrangements as a score.

Stone arrangements: First the crow’s stone, then Julie’s response on the right, then the crow’s response next line down, and so on.