I was asked by artist John Holt to deliver a sound installation for his exhibition ‘Fragments of a lost river.’ The piece includes field recordings from the River Thames, River Lea and a river inside Phong Nha cave, Vietnam and vocals by Serenella Noseda. More information on the ‘Fragments of a lost river’ concept are detailed below including images by the artist. The music and sound will be released after the exhibition featuring artwork by John. You can stream the full version now.
Fragments of a Lost River (H.). A recent discovery of a series of detached fragments (sherds), from a lost river (H.). The classification and reconstruction of ancient and lost parts out of fragments (so called sherds) is an important aspect of archaeological research work. Up to now this is a time consuming, inaccurate and subjective task which leads a multitude of unclassified fragments in hidden archives.
The fragments displayed here represent an important find in relation to the archaeological search for lost and stolen rivers (H.). I proposed a bottom up strategy to classify these fragments. The profile section (which is a section of the fragment in the direction of fluid axis) is segmented into its primitives (with certain properties like length) and relations among this primitive (like position and curvature of connecting points.). These primitives and the relations form a description language in which different profiles have different prescriptions and classified relationship to the original patterns of flow. Fragments are lost pieces of memory: shards of the history of a life and a flow. We need to re-member the river of flow (H.), to use the river fragments to classify and make whole.
Fragments of a Lost River will be installed in the exhibition “Diverse Images” in the Up Country Gallery, Holmfirth on The 30th June. Musician and composer “Alex Monk” has been commissioned to produce a piece of music entitled “Fragments of a Lost River” to accompany the installation.
John Holt. Feb 2014.
27.11. 13 You can buy now buy all releases in the shop below including strictly limited vinyl editions of ‘Indiscreet Mirror’ & ‘The Safety Machine’ Previous 2 CDRs are now sold out but are still of course available as downloads and will be released on Reverb Worship
Alex Monk 