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Oliveros

 Pauline Oliveros

Dan Harpole Cistern

If anyone is producing a new horror movie and is in need of music to make it scarier they should probably contact Pauline Oliveros. I am sure she would do a great job… The empty water tank she visited is of course a great spectacle when it comes to unique sound. The acoustics in the Dan Harpole Cistern are, in my opinion, almost church like. Oliveros used the building, her voice, and the movement of her body to create “music“. Her scary howling noises together with the incredible echo of the place for me create a sound as if someone was suffering immensely. Shouting “ha“ or walking around hitting a pole interrupt the sustaining howling harmonies and I found that rather annoying. Although the end-product could have been straight out of a horror movie, it was also (surprisingly) quite calming. The sound almost feels like it surrounds oneself. It appears louder through the echo and as it bounces off of the walls it comes from every side of the room. One could get lost in it.

            I would argue that as a child almost everyone had fun experiencing the echo. If it was in an empty room or on a cliff, I think everybody shouted into the emptiness and was happy to receive something back. Olivero’s experiment could be compared to that experience. What I also know is that an echo makes one’s own voice sound much better, almost like autotune. So if I would want to sing and normally sound horrible, I would join Oliveros in this water tank.

            I, with my western sense of music, would not have call what Oliveros did in this water tank music. However, she played around with the acoustics of a building, shouting and howling notes, and therefore kind of created a piece of music. I like the idea of creating sound with the help of the echo. Playing with places in nature or buildings to make use of their echo and create a piece of music with it sounds like that would create something that does not sound like every other western song.

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