02 TBA21–ACADEMY: DARK MORPH
HYDROPHONIST VIRTUOSITY
Seventy-one percent of our planet is covered in water, the vast majority of which is ocean. It is through their ancient yet ever-changing character that oceans can extract from you all sorts of potent emotions ‒‒ serenity, terror, humility, frustration, curiosity, admiration. Given this, it is no surprise that the musical duo, Dark Morph, have found with the ocean, a welcoming but uncanny musical partnership.
Dark Morph is Stockholm-based composer and visual artist, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, and composer, Jónsi Birgisson, best known as vocalist and guitarist of Icelandic group, Sigur Rós. Working in conjunction with TBA21–Academy, the pair boarded the Dardanella research vessel. They returned with all sorts of sea-based sonic material from locales such as Fiji and Jamaica, manipulated the sounds on laptops and, later, in a studio in Burbank, California. The culmination was 2019’s, The So(ng)qe/Tovuto Kyrrahafið Sound Field, which was presented as a sound installation at Ocean Space, TBA21–Academy’s new hub for oceanic public awareness through the arts. This sonic work seems to distill the grandeur and complexity of the oceans’ scale, from colossal whales to microscopic phytoplankton, so that, you can almost sense these ocean inhabitants as you listen.
Birgisson is no stranger to creating music which might conjure up oceanic imagery. Sigur Rós’ 2006 single ‘Sæglópur’ is Icelandic for ‘lost at sea.’ The song's accompanying video portrays a drowning child who is eventually rescued by a diver, though in the end, we are left wondering whether the child survives. Similarly, the cover art for the band's 2012 album ‘Valtari,’ depicts a ship mysteriously hovering in the air above a calm, boundless body of water. Between Birgisson's scintillating falsetto and a collection of astutely chosen instrumentation, what is often summoned by the group's sonic vocabulary is the physical sensation of ‘chills’ within the listener, and a sense that something ‘miraculous’ has taken place – much like the artwork of the hovering boat. There is a sense of awe, of being made to feel small about one's position in the natural world. Some psychological research proposes that these kinds of chills are a neurological response to the unknown, or something that might have posed a threat to us in our evolutionary past. But, because music is, by its very nature, non-threatening, the chills result in a pleasurable experience (Huron, 2006). Sigur Rós has stated that they do not seek to elicit particular emotional responses from their audience, but for von Hausswolff, the making of The So(ng)qe/Tovuto Kyrrahafið Sound Field was a process of coping with a deeply-rooted emotional reaction.
‘I suppose that ever since certain various life forms crawled up on land from the ocean,’ says von Hausswolff, ‘there has been a quantity of fear of crawling back. The ocean is still a frightful place to many people and that includes me. I love the ocean but as a land creature, I fear it as well. This is why it is, for me, very interesting to work with the sound of the ocean. It operates as a kind of auto-psychotherapy for me - to overcome fear and to be able to function in and on the ocean in a peaceful way.’
In terms of how von Hausswolff and Birgisson came together though, fear was not a part of the equation. Despite their distinct, idiosyncratic personalities, the duo instantly felt comfortable working with one another. ‘In a collaborative situation there has to be 100% trust in the people involved,’ says von Hausswolff. When they first boarded the boat, ready to cast-off, they had little idea about the creative direction in which the expedition would point them, nor did they know one another very well. But, the moment Chairwoman Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza began to pull out hydrophone microphones – encouraging the two composers to record the sounds around them – they soon felt that, together, they were on to something substantial. After capturing all kinds of euphonies from far-flung places, the pair did not hesitate to upload the recordings to their laptops and to manipulate them in unique and playful ways. The duo would later call themselves ‘Dark Morph,’ going on to create two albums of music – 'Dark Morph' (2019) and 'Dark Morph II' (due out 1 May 2021) – and give concerts in Venice, Italy, and Palm Springs, California.
In 1950, calling hydrophone microphones and computers ‘musical instruments’ would have seemed incredibly alien, but composers like von Hausswolff are fully aware of the contiguous developments of music and technology: ‘with every development there's always a new perspective. The development from the acoustic guitar to the electric guitar created fabulous opportunities for creating new music. The development from writing a score on a piece of paper to being able to use a computer for this, created a very different way to compose sheet music. And, the introduction of the MacIntosh in the early 1980’s was a revolution in the history of music.’
Seventy years later, although minds are changing, there still exists a more traditional school of musical thought which sees the manipulation of recordings via a computer as a gimmick. This perspective is as strange as criticising a painter, merely for using oils. Vastly more important than the medium, is whether the work is aesthetically moving, and/or what conceptual systems are involved. ‘It was important to create a framework and then let the various sounds fall into place,’ says von Hausswolff. ‘The framework should also ensure that it's not too short in time, and that it can be played in a loop. We used eight channels in order to create several of these loops, and these various loops have different durations, which creates interesting ‘meetings’ within the work as the sequences change position in the whole.’ One could analogise these different loops as the behaviour of ocean waves -–- refracting, reflecting, and interfering. Instead of looking at the laptop as a symbol of musical convenience, Dark Morph plainly shows it to be a valid tool with which to synthesise and invent potent new sounds.
What seems clear in The So(ng)qe/Tovuto Kyrrahafið Sound Field, is that Dark Morph aimed to be equal parts audio documentarians and musical composers. ‘Once the sounds have been recorded,’ says von Hausswolff, ‘it's important to try to work ‘together’ with the sounds and not just exploit the ocean as a commodity. There has to be a humbleness towards the sounds and deep respect for the life forms recorded.’ One of the goals of the duo was, ultimately, to turn the recordings into something aesthetically new. According to von Hausswolff, they decided not ‘to have them sounding too much like real sounds, [but to] turn them into something else.' He gave an example of their process thus: ‘I had done some drones, some long tones out of a bird or something, I gave it to Jonsi and he started to peel off certain types of melodious things, and then play it to me. And then we started to just throw the ball back and forth.’ Droning, atmospheric, and at times, metronomically pulsing, the sounds emit an oceanic essence — an indicator to the listener that the sonic material is much larger than the composers themselves.
Being a part of something eco-systematically larger, has given von Hausswolff a chance to imagine, as yet, undeveloped technologies which Dark Morph might use to further highlight this broader sense of ecosystem. The composer longs for a future where we might create devices that would translate animal communication into something like human speech – that way humans could sing with the likes of whales and dolphins. But, he admits, ‘maybe that’s too much to ask for’. As of now, the concept is pure science fiction, but there is an extensive scientific literature on whale and dolphin ‘songs’, clicks, and whistles (Janik, 2013) (Tyack & Clark, 2000). While it is unlikely that dolphins, themselves, have syntactic language, evidence shows that they can understand human sign language, and even comprehend individual words in a simple sentence, such as ‘touch the Frisbee with your tail and then jump over it’ (Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984). Whether dolphins would be able to grasp the concept of joining words to their melodic contours, is an entirely different matter.
Shifting from marine biology to science in general, von Hausswolff tells us that he, ultimately, sees music and science as two different sides of the same creative coin: ‘I'd like the Dark Morph work to be inspiring to scientists in the same way that science is inspiring to me.’ For the composer himself, ‘listening to music is, in many cases, a meditative form, and … in this meditative state, new ideas surface ... It’s the platform of creativity that both artists and scientists stand on.’
As for the future of Dark Morph, von Hausswolff says that the last few years of the group’s activity have been ‘very intense.’ ‘At this moment, there are no new projects … we’re filling the oxygen tanks right now, while being eager to see what the future has to offer.’
You can learn more about Dark Morph and about TBA21 at www.tba21.org/#item--darkmorphinstallation--1949 and at www.tba21.org
Listen to Dark Morph here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfJ8UEdVNLZDa72gFv2SdKg
The album ‘Dark Morph II’ is available for pre-order at https://pomperipossarecords.com/pages/dark-morph
For more information on Carl Michael von Hausswolff, please visit https://cmvonhausswolff.net/
For more information on Jónsi Birgisson, please visit https://jonsi.com/
REFERENCES:
Herman, L. M., Richards, D. G. and Wolz, J. P. (1984) “‘Comprehension of Sentences By Bottlenosed Dolphins,”’ Cognition, 16(2), pp. 129–219.
Huron, D. (2006) Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. MIT Press.
Janik, V. M. (2013) “‘Cognitive Skills in Bottlenose Dolphin Communication,”’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), pp. 157–159.
Tyack, P. L. and Clark, C. W. (2000) “‘Communication and Acoustic Behavior of Dolphins and Whales,”’ in Hearing by Whales and Dolphins. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 156–224.
Images shown courtesy of TBA21-Academy, Dark Morph, and © 2021 Enrico Fiorese