The Tidal Bore of the Maccan River
1st performance: offline studio production, CJRT Radio, Toronto, 1981.
The recorded sound of water is fead into a two-tape recorder system (the first machine recording on a tape that travels approximately 5 meters to another machine that plays it back into the first, as in Hear and There). Over time, the sound builds up and is manually filtered by a graphic equalizer according to a score that is derived from overlaying a map of the Maccan River onto a time-based graph. (The Maccan River branches off the Bay of Fundy, and a tidal bore, a small tidal wave approximately one or two feet high, is created twice each day as the tide reverses. The river flows out to sea as the tide recedes, and as the tide rises, the river changes its direction of flow, thus creating a tidal bore. This tidal bore travels upstream approximately 5 kilometers, for approximately 45 minutes.) This piece is a subjective audio representation of the tidal bore moving up the river. Here I am proposing that the changing shape of the river’s shoreline is a factor in changing the shape of the small tidal wave. Correspondingly, I use the geographic shape of the river to shape the gradually transforming recorded sound of water (by graphic equalisation) as it travels through the piece. This piece is set up as a short-duration (20 to 40 minutes) sound installation/performance.
