Irides

Irides is an amalgamation of soundwalks, listening experiences as well as experiences of smell, vision, touch and taste. It is based on different environmental recordings I made, mostly – but not always – on the same theme, and on memories connected to the places that appear in the recordings.

I was particularly drawn to my experiences near the end of rainy incidents, when raindrops become more sparse. Starting from elements that many composers are influenced by, shapes and colours, I picked up one of the most conspicuous visual elements that appear just after rainfalls, the rainbow.

Irides literally means rainbows. In Greco-Roman mythology, rainbows were thought to be bridges made by the goddess Iris that connected heaven and earth. Irides are multicoloured arcs caused by diffraction and dispersion of light by water droplets in the air. Similarly, in this composition, momentary sunny spells and droplets of rain give rise to spectra, bands of colours and arcs, mostly heard as upwards and downwards spectral glissandi; these are often superimposed, creating double, triple and multiple sonic rainbows that permeate the scenery of the piece.

The composition explores the relocation of the visual, gustatory, olfactory, and haptic environments into the aural space. It also examines interrelationships between music, time perception, timescales in different senses, memory and the listening environment.

The work was premiered on 24 April 2017 at the Sound of Memory symposium at Goldsmiths Great Hall, London. It has been subsequently selected for performances at the ISSTA (Irish Sound Science and Technology Association) conference at Dundalk, Ireland (2017); at the Sound/Image conference in London (2017); at the ICMC2017 (International Computer Music Conference) in Shanghai, China; at the Helicotrema festival in Venice, Italy (2017), in a concert curated by the renowned composer and sound ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp; at the SMC2018 (Sound & Music Computing) conference in Limassol, Cyprus (2018); at the CIME/ICEM MUSICACOUSTICA 36th General Assembly organised by the Electroacoustic Music Association of China, in Beijing (2018); at the Electroacoustic Music Days in Corfu, Greece (2018); at the San Fransisco Tape Music Festival (2019); at the 'Electroacoustic Music in Great Britain: Past/Present/Future' conference in London (2019); at the 'Rediscoveries 11' concert series in Aberdeen (2019); at the 'Mapping Spaces, Sounding Places: Geographies of Sound in Audiovisual Media' conference, Cremona, Italy (2019); and at the 'Convergence' conference at De Montfort, Leicester (2019). Irides is published by Sonos Localia.