An hour-long, ambient score composed by Colin Bragg, which corresponds with the changing colors of twilight, performed around the perimeter of the Fourth Ward Park lake.
Analemma is a musical score to be performed by eight players around the circumference of the Fourth Ward Park lake at twilight. The tones produced by the performers will correspond with the subtly changing hues of the twilight hour, roughly from 7pm to 8pm on either October 7th or 8th.
In order to broadcast the sound clearly around the lake, and to mirror the continual change of atmospheric colors, the performers will play electric or amplified acoustic instruments through loud-speaker systems. The performers are to be spaced evenly around the lake to ensure that at every point along the lake path, sound can be heard by attendees.
Analemma is not a traditionally notated score. Musical gestures are synchronized by stopwatches, so that spatial effects can be timed around and across the lake effectively. Since these gestures are not related to tempo and beat but to duration, the score is comprised of slowly changing timbres, perhaps more akin to a cloudbank rolling across a landscape, or cicadas singing in the trees.
The piece derives its name from the plot of the sun’s position at the same hour throughout the year. In graphic form this plot resembles a slim figure eight, which evokes the shape of the Fourth Ward Park lake, the number of performers, and calls to mind both the yearlong time shift of the twilight hour and the octophonic nature of the work.
About the artist: Colin Bragg is a composer, sound designer, and musician in Atlanta, Georgia. His musical inspirations mostly stem from a continued interest in natural phenomena and the visual arts. These extra-musical influences inform his main goal of exploring instrumental timbres and combinations of seemingly disparate musical elements to create fresh aural connections.
Colin has collaborated and performed with a number of Georgia creative institutions, including Crossover Movement Arts, Core Dance, Flight of Swallows / Full Radius Dance, Georgia College & State University Theater Program, Horizon Theater, Film Love, and the Fourth Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra. He is a past Eyedrum Gallery board member and Hambidge Fellow.
Credits:
Created with images by Steve Carrell - "HDR photo of lake and path at night" • nshivar - "Old Fourth Ward Park Atlanta GA" • sonstroem - "Twilight Moon" • FranckinJapan - "synthetizer analog moog" • Karlheinz Stockhausen - "Studie II"