Sound — cianwalker.com

A sound piece recorded with Ella Bertilsson based on ‘The Sirens Of Titan’ by Kurt Vonnegut.

In the process of making, we explored ideas of; hurtling through vast space, vacuums, voids, and different kind of environments.

From an intergalactic slow dance tropical-themed-disco, to planet Mercury (that sings like a crystal goblet), to an abounded spaceship 2

in 1 parking/garage; beacon signals sent in various directions. Things and beings communicates with each other across space and time,

millions light-year apart, in the here and now and for eternity. An obsolete and dusty transit-radio tunes in and out of multiple space stations

located on unknown and familiar planets. Dodgy wiring and unstable connections clashes and expands into chaos and nothingness

all at once.

To record the soundscape we used; Modular Synths, Ciat Lonbarde Plumbutter, Stylophone Gen x1, Casiotone MT-52, Stylophone Beat

Pocket Drum Machine, Nino Percussion, a hand drum, guitar, squeezy plastic toy eyeballs, a very territorial Dublin 2 seagull and a scream-ish-like

recorded flute.

We made the soundscape as a response to a sci-fi novel we both love; The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., that was first published in 1959.

The story follows Malachi Constant, a wealthy playboy who is drawn into a cosmic journey orchestrated by Winston Niles Rumfoord, a time-traveler,

who exists across space and time due to a phenomenon known as the chrono-synclastic infundibulum. Together they embark on a space

adventure across distant planets like Mars, Mercury, and Titan.

‘Don’t forget to remember’ is a documentary by Asbestos and Ross Killeen that deals with the advancing of Asbestos’ mother’s Alzheimer’s.

Asbestos asked me to compose a piece using audio from the documentary for a weekend-long performance in the Millennium Studio in

The National Gallery, Dublin. The original composition was cut to 7” vinyl and for the performance we played and re-recorded the piece

while also capturing the sounds within the space- this process was repeated 48 times until by the end of the performance there were no

traces of the original left, merely an almost-absence of sound, the quiet ambience of a gallery fading.

A sound installation made with Bryan Robson to accompany Eleanor McCaughey and Lucy Sheridan’s ‘Pay no attention to the man

behind the curtain’. We performed a two-hour live set as part of the show’s opening, and this piece played in the space for the

remainder of the exhibition’s duration.

Eleanor McCaughey invited me to contribute a sound piece to accompany her installation as part of the ‘Bones in the attic’ exhibition.