Högskolan i Skövde

A 6.1 channel surround work exploring the Vaholms covered bridge national heritage site in Sweden, incorporating field recordings, psychoacoustic principles and electroacoustic composition

The covered bridge at Vaholm:

A 6.1 channel surround work exploring the Vaholms covered bridge national heritage site in Sweden, incorporating field recordings, psychoacoustic principles and electroacoustic composition. The covered bridge at Tidan is a rare example of wooden architecture from the 1800’s that is seldom seen in the Nordic countries (it is today unique in Sweden for example) The architecture was, however, carried to the USA by Swedish emigrants and is far more common there. The Vaholms covered bridge work was intended to be an exploration and reflection of the site itself as a unique and evocative piece of cultural heritage and inspiration for acoustical and musical experimentation and interpretation. I approached this work initially through conversation with local people and field recordings made at the site itself. 

The covered bridge at Vaholm - Program note from performance 2025-10-18:

Bridges are movement, travel, change. One side to another, one time to another, one place to another. Connection, separation, arriving and leaving. The sounds here are familiar and rooted in the landscape. Church bells, water and wind, jetties creaking and rattling on the lakes. Recordings from barns; tools, materials, workplaces. Human also, in the form of the voice, altered, distorted and distanced - people who are half heard and people who have moved on in one way or another. Unrecognised and disrupted. Migration, travel, uprooting, resettling. Emigration and immigration. The sounds hint at larger movements as well. Movement of the planets observed through the electromagnetic spectrum. Sounds of the magnetosphere, storms and lightning in the radio frequency spectrum. Radio noise from Jupiter. Constant, continuous and orbiting the centre. Radio static and interference weave in and out of the human, natural and abstract.