Margaret Campbell attended another performance at the Electric Fields Festival.
As people started to file into the Champagne Baths pool Nov. 25, they stared curiously and anxiously at a man and his drum set, which seemed to be floating on an island in the shallow end.
The man was composer, percussionist and Carleton music professor Jesse Stewart, who was about to use a swimming pool as part of his musical performance for Swim Sound, one of four components of the Electric Fields festival.
The festival, organized by new media arts group Artengine, ran from Nov. 23-26. This year’s festival focused on the relationship between space and sound by commissioning artists to create projects specifically for unique sonic spaces, including a neo-Gothic church and a public pool.
“We couldn’t think of a more unique acoustic space,” said Ryan Stec, Artengine’s artistic director. Stec is a first-year master’s student in Carleton’s architecture program.
Swim Sound took place at Ottawa’s first municipal swimming pool. Artengine commissioned two artists who had never worked together before to engage with the public pool environment, Stec said.
Stewart and his clear-bodied drum set were stationed on a platform in the shallow end of the pool, while new media artist Rob Cruickshank was on the mezzanine level above the pool, using electronics to process sounds.
The performance began with Stewart playing his waterphone, an unusual instrument consisting of bronze rods of varying lengths welded to a round metal base containing water.
“I’m one of relatively few people in the world who plays [the waterphone] extensively,” Stewart said. “I have a long-standing interest in both the visual and sonic possibilities of water.”
Throughout the 30-minute show, Stewart struck the waterphone in the traditional way, allowing the prongs to echo within the space. He also partly submerged gongs in the water to create different tones. In the second half, Stewart mostly played his drum set. Stewart poured water on the heads of the drums, which splashed away as he struck them.
Up above, Cruickshank electronically processed some of the sounds he collected with microphones, live , as well as adding in his own works.
The overall effect was rumbling noises at different pitch levels, which seemed to echo endlessly in the pool environment.
“It was really great to work with [Cruickshank],” Stewart said. “I particularly was enjoying that he was taking some of my sounds and processing them and then looping them. For me, that was a lot of fun. It’s just nice to get to know one another through music.”
Audience members chose whether they wanted to watch from the pool or the mezzanine level. About 60 or 70 people were in the pool, or sitting along the edge, while a few chose to watch from above. Though everyone in the pool was free to swim around as they desired, most people spent the majority of the performance quietly treading water or hanging on to the pool’s edge.
Many people tried to listen from underwater, probably hoping the performance would have a special effect while submerged since the drum set was level with the water and Stewart dipped his gongs into the pool. But from below the surface, the show mostly just sounded muffled, and Cruickshank’s rumbling tones sounded like distant whale noises.
Swim Sound received so much interest that the artists and organizers decided to add a second show at the last minute.
Though the second show took a similar shape, Stewart said, the nature of the performance was improvised, so it was largely different. Additionally, Cruickshank turned up the volume on his electronics.
