Project
Glacier Music
Matthew Burtner
Glacier Music
Burtner: My name is Matthew Burtner. I'm a composer, and I work with environmental sound and music, primarily in a method that I call eco acoustics. I'm also a professor at the University of Virginia in the music department, and I co-direct with colleagues in the Humanities and sciences, the Coastal Futures Conservatory.
So the conservatory is a project that integrates the arts and humanities with science around coastal change. So we, we created a conservatory which in music is traditionally a place to for the folk a study of music, but also, you know, resembles conservation and which is one of the primary goals of the of our coastal research center, the Virginia Coast Reserve. And so, you know, the conservatory here is kind of re figured from a music conservatory into a sound environmental sound conservation conservatory around coastal futures.
eco acoustics is a kind of practice that has it's kind of multifaceted. It's it comes out of the sciences. So eco acoustic methodologies were first used to measure the vibration in the natural world and to try to understand the world through sound. Then you know, I kind of expanded that into the field of music, imagining that you know, we would apply the methods of eco acoustics, which were largely kind of using emerging technology and data sciences to to understand the world, apply those same things to the creation of of artistic work. And then the attendant scholarly field, there's eco acoustic scholarship now that's basically using the same methods and then writing about that work. So that field has been really exciting to see developed over the last 20, 30 years. because it's so in a disciplinary gives us a kind of access around which to collaborate and share our research methodologies and then have those things expressed in different in different ways.
So one of the the nice things about about sound and music is how it resides outside of language. I mean except the use of, you know, texts in language like we can separate out music and I feel like that non lexical quality helps us disturb the centered ness of a listener. it sort of is for people, but also is a little bit inhuman in that it's like of the world we can imagine, you know, where we don't share language even among groups of people, but certainly not with, you know, other animals or plants or, you know, other beings. we do share sound with those other beings. And, you know, insofar as our range of perception overlaps with with their range of perception. So it's it's a really interesting that an expression through sound, a vibration in the world could be perceived by a whole host of beings, and that they're interpreting that in different ways. And then it kind of challenges our assumptions of our own perceptions, recognizing that we have a limited access to vibrations in the world. We we only hear limited bandwidth of sounds, limited velocity or amplitudes of sounds. We only hear a small part of the vibrations in the world. and other beings may perceive different, different scale of the vibration. So even as we listen to and understand the world through eco acoustics, we can also understand that we're, proceeding, just a small part of that. And I find that really helpful in imagining kind of multispecies communication or, you know, post-human relationships to the world, somehow keeping it outside of language helps the focus on that broader sense of being in the world. Glacier Music, is really imagining how we can participate in a in a form of music creation with glaciers. And so part of that is understanding the the way that they sing right, the way that they through sound. And that's a great system to to look because you know, a lot of the the vibrations of glaciers are below our range of of hearing. So, you know, significant oscillations are happening outside of our mode of perception. But yet with microphones that are calibrated to those vibrations, we can pick up the movements of the glacier and the expressions of the glacier as sound signals. And then we can transpose them into our range to hear them or perceive them in some other way. I mean, embodiment has been such an interesting area of study in sound in several ways, but in through electro acoustics. One of the most interesting things about it is how we re embody, like through recording technology, or we can display sensory and body instruments, you know, sources, people in the electro acoustic domain when you place the microphones around the glacier and then hiking up a a space that exceeds the capacity for a human to hear. the glaciers that I record are sometimes hundreds of miles long. So, you know, obviously, like I can only record the most I've ever done is like half a mile, which is a long ways. I mean, that's a lot of space to cover, but it's not, you know, even close to the extent of the ice on a glacier. But then when you record that half mile or whatever, you bring that into the studio and you kind of re embody it in the surround sound studio. And then you listen to something that you couldn't hear on the glacier with your ears, with your body. But then in the studio you're getting some kind of re embodiment of that of that glacier. it's neither the thing that you would experience there or the thing itself. It's some other kind of body. And so there's this really interesting aspect of embodiment in electro acoustics where you can take things like, So for example, I've taken the saxophone, which is an instrument that I play and I've put it on the glacier and played the glacier. They put a microphone inside the saxophone to filter the glacier through the saxophone so that you're listening to a glacier saxophone. And then I've taken the saxophone signal and recorded it through the glacier by putting mikes inside the ice and then playing at the ice. And then you hear the human generated signal filtered through the body of the glacier. And then you combine those things and it really creates like an unusual re embodiment of a human and a glacier. Those kinds of things are really interesting to me because they address that same issue of kind of disturbing the centeredness of a listener or a human in general. In my case, you know, I'm listening, but I'm also performing with the glacier when I do that. So electroacoustic embodiment I think is a really interesting area of, of research because it, it can create human nature hybrids.
Yeah. So I'm in my cabin in Alaska, which is a place that my parents built. And I grew up in this in this cabin. It's in the two gosh mountains in traditionally dena'ina land. And you know, we built this place when well, starting when I was just very, very young. And then it's continued to grow and change with the generations. But it's become a kind of base for the, for my work with eco acoustics, and particularly in Alaska yeah, so, you know, people come from around the world to visit me here and we take them out into the, you know, out into the mountains just right behind the cabin. And we listen to, the mountains and talk about noise and stuff like that. the wilderness or the environment is a little more present than it is in other parts of the United States, for sure. The what we call the lower 48, like in Virginia, where I also live it's a little less impressing on normal life. The the weather and the the environment and the, fauna. At least that's been my my experience. I'm sure that there's people who live in parts of Virginia where it's very you know, they live without electricity and without running water and they would dispute that that claim so that it's becoming less and less something that we experience being with nature in a kind of unmediated way. A lot of the problems here around where I live, the the problems of people getting in trouble, like when we have to search and rescue is an ongoing thing up here. And people, you know, fall off the mountains or get attacked by a bear or something. And whatever it is, it usually arises because they're trying to live in a mediated way with the natural world. So they're trying to, like, put their phones between them and the environment. And so they're not really paying attention in the, you know, as an animal in the environment. Th paying attention as a as a mediator in the environment. I also work with media, right? So like recording sounds, eco acoustics is is mediated. And in a way like you might say by definition, more than the mediation though is the in place experience of the world because like a step beyond mediated world is the sampled world where you don't actually experience the thing yourself, but rather you live vicariously through someone else's and mediation of that place. And we accept the mediator as a first hand experience of the place. You know, watching the A Nature channel about that. you know, in my field in particular of composition, it's a field that's driven much by sampling, you know, sampling is a big part of music, which means, you know, taking the mediated experiences of someone else as a first source into a new product of work. And, you know, I don't question the authenticity of the new product of work through sampling, but I do question the in-person experience with the source and the value that that brings to the activism of the of the project or the depth of the experience of the project. So I usually advocate for people to not listen to nature recordings, but rather to go into nature and listen, you know, and if you if you can't get to the places, then you don't use the recordings, right? Just don't do that. Do something else. And it's fine to work locally and it's fine to, not shoot around the globe, like recording lots of sounds because everything's interesting. The recording doesn't happen through the microphone, right? The recording, I believe, happens in the imagination. The recording itself is just a kind of a file locator for an experienced that you have with the natural world. That's something that happens in your imagination, in dialogue with the environment.
Burtner: My name is Matthew Burtner. I'm a composer, and I work with environmental sound and music, primarily in a method that I call eco acoustics. I'm also a professor at the University of Virginia in the music department, and I co-direct with colleagues in the Humanities and sciences, the Coastal Futures Conservatory.
So the conservatory is a project that integrates the arts and humanities with science around coastal change. So we, we created a conservatory which in music is traditionally a place to for the folk a study of music, but also, you know, resembles conservation and which is one of the primary goals of the of our coastal research center, the Virginia Coast Reserve. And so, you know, the conservatory here is kind of re figured from a music conservatory into a sound environmental sound conservation conservatory around coastal futures.
eco acoustics is a kind of practice that has it's kind of multifaceted. It's it comes out of the sciences. So eco acoustic methodologies were first used to measure the vibration in the natural world and to try to understand the world through sound. Then you know, I kind of expanded that into the field of music, imagining that you know, we would apply the methods of eco acoustics, which were largely kind of using emerging technology and data sciences to to understand the world, apply those same things to the creation of of artistic work. And then the attendant scholarly field, there's eco acoustic scholarship now that's basically using the same methods and then writing about that work. So that field has been really exciting to see developed over the last 20, 30 years. because it's so in a disciplinary gives us a kind of access around which to collaborate and share our research methodologies and then have those things expressed in different in different ways.
So one of the the nice things about about sound and music is how it resides outside of language. I mean except the use of, you know, texts in language like we can separate out music and I feel like that non lexical quality helps us disturb the centered ness of a listener. it sort of is for people, but also is a little bit inhuman in that it's like of the world we can imagine, you know, where we don't share language even among groups of people, but certainly not with, you know, other animals or plants or, you know, other beings. we do share sound with those other beings. And, you know, insofar as our range of perception overlaps with with their range of perception. So it's it's a really interesting that an expression through sound, a vibration in the world could be perceived by a whole host of beings, and that they're interpreting that in different ways. And then it kind of challenges our assumptions of our own perceptions, recognizing that we have a limited access to vibrations in the world. We we only hear limited bandwidth of sounds, limited velocity or amplitudes of sounds. We only hear a small part of the vibrations in the world. and other beings may perceive different, different scale of the vibration. So even as we listen to and understand the world through eco acoustics, we can also understand that we're, proceeding, just a small part of that. And I find that really helpful in imagining kind of multispecies communication or, you know, post-human relationships to the world, somehow keeping it outside of language helps the focus on that broader sense of being in the world. Glacier Music, is really imagining how we can participate in a in a form of music creation with glaciers. And so part of that is understanding the the way that they sing right, the way that they through sound. And that's a great system to to look because you know, a lot of the the vibrations of glaciers are below our range of of hearing. So, you know, significant oscillations are happening outside of our mode of perception. But yet with microphones that are calibrated to those vibrations, we can pick up the movements of the glacier and the expressions of the glacier as sound signals. And then we can transpose them into our range to hear them or perceive them in some other way. I mean, embodiment has been such an interesting area of study in sound in several ways, but in through electro acoustics. One of the most interesting things about it is how we re embody, like through recording technology, or we can display sensory and body instruments, you know, sources, people in the electro acoustic domain when you place the microphones around the glacier and then hiking up a a space that exceeds the capacity for a human to hear. the glaciers that I record are sometimes hundreds of miles long. So, you know, obviously, like I can only record the most I've ever done is like half a mile, which is a long ways. I mean, that's a lot of space to cover, but it's not, you know, even close to the extent of the ice on a glacier. But then when you record that half mile or whatever, you bring that into the studio and you kind of re embody it in the surround sound studio. And then you listen to something that you couldn't hear on the glacier with your ears, with your body. But then in the studio you're getting some kind of re embodiment of that of that glacier. it's neither the thing that you would experience there or the thing itself. It's some other kind of body. And so there's this really interesting aspect of embodiment in electro acoustics where you can take things like, So for example, I've taken the saxophone, which is an instrument that I play and I've put it on the glacier and played the glacier. They put a microphone inside the saxophone to filter the glacier through the saxophone so that you're listening to a glacier saxophone. And then I've taken the saxophone signal and recorded it through the glacier by putting mikes inside the ice and then playing at the ice. And then you hear the human generated signal filtered through the body of the glacier. And then you combine those things and it really creates like an unusual re embodiment of a human and a glacier. Those kinds of things are really interesting to me because they address that same issue of kind of disturbing the centeredness of a listener or a human in general. In my case, you know, I'm listening, but I'm also performing with the glacier when I do that. So electroacoustic embodiment I think is a really interesting area of, of research because it, it can create human nature hybrids.
Yeah. So I'm in my cabin in Alaska, which is a place that my parents built. And I grew up in this in this cabin. It's in the two gosh mountains in traditionally dena'ina land. And you know, we built this place when well, starting when I was just very, very young. And then it's continued to grow and change with the generations. But it's become a kind of base for the, for my work with eco acoustics, and particularly in Alaska yeah, so, you know, people come from around the world to visit me here and we take them out into the, you know, out into the mountains just right behind the cabin. And we listen to, the mountains and talk about noise and stuff like that. the wilderness or the environment is a little more present than it is in other parts of the United States, for sure. The what we call the lower 48, like in Virginia, where I also live it's a little less impressing on normal life. The the weather and the the environment and the, fauna. At least that's been my my experience. I'm sure that there's people who live in parts of Virginia where it's very you know, they live without electricity and without running water and they would dispute that that claim so that it's becoming less and less something that we experience being with nature in a kind of unmediated way. A lot of the problems here around where I live, the the problems of people getting in trouble, like when we have to search and rescue is an ongoing thing up here. And people, you know, fall off the mountains or get attacked by a bear or something. And whatever it is, it usually arises because they're trying to live in a mediated way with the natural world. So they're trying to, like, put their phones between them and the environment. And so they're not really paying attention in the, you know, as an animal in the environment. Th paying attention as a as a mediator in the environment. I also work with media, right? So like recording sounds, eco acoustics is is mediated. And in a way like you might say by definition, more than the mediation though is the in place experience of the world because like a step beyond mediated world is the sampled world where you don't actually experience the thing yourself, but rather you live vicariously through someone else's and mediation of that place. And we accept the mediator as a first hand experience of the place. You know, watching the A Nature channel about that. you know, in my field in particular of composition, it's a field that's driven much by sampling, you know, sampling is a big part of music, which means, you know, taking the mediated experiences of someone else as a first source into a new product of work. And, you know, I don't question the authenticity of the new product of work through sampling, but I do question the in-person experience with the source and the value that that brings to the activism of the of the project or the depth of the experience of the project. So I usually advocate for people to not listen to nature recordings, but rather to go into nature and listen, you know, and if you if you can't get to the places, then you don't use the recordings, right? Just don't do that. Do something else. And it's fine to work locally and it's fine to, not shoot around the globe, like recording lots of sounds because everything's interesting. The recording doesn't happen through the microphone, right? The recording, I believe, happens in the imagination. The recording itself is just a kind of a file locator for an experienced that you have with the natural world. That's something that happens in your imagination, in dialogue with the environment.
Religion & Place in Light of Environmental, Legal, and Indigenous Studies Summer Institute guest speaker Matthew Burtner, co-creator of the Coastal Conservatory, discusses the eco-acoustic method: How sound and listening offer us a way of knowing and experiencing a place unlike other practices of observation, and a way of collaborating with the environment, as human-nature hybrids, in the creation of music.
Dr. Burtner is composer of the album Glacier Music.
