A sound installation / performance I did for the project ‘Kerstvloed 2017’, which remembers a catastrophic flooding which took place 200 years earlier in the coastal areas of the Netherlands and Germany. Shaping the acoustic counterpart for a light installation that Dennis Molema made for the Der Aa Kerk in Groningen, I created a soundscape from basically three ingredients: 1) The transformed sounds of the bells of the churches from all over the province of Groningen (which were rung as a warning sign, but apparently ignored, since it was Christmas night). All the bells I used were already active by 1717.
2) An extremely time-stretched ‘Water Music’ of Händel, which was performed earlier that year for a happy King of England during a trip on the river Thames
3) The fantastic Organ of the Der Aa church, built by Arp Schnittger. Also this beast has already been in use in 1717. I made an attempt to use the sub-basses for the creation of standing waves. As I like to make use of the elements that are present in a certain location, I decided to use the organ directly (and not just samples). As the organ was located on the opposite side of the church than were the installation was hung, I created a little organ-playing robot hand, which could play 5 notes, wirelessly controlled via an xBee connection.
Originally conceived as a sound installation,I discovered that the setup was much more fun to play live, and this came in useful, as I joined Slagwerk Den Haag for their concert with some nicely transformed organ sounds.
