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Long Division  
   

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Photograph: David Wheeler - IOU
At twilight the air is alive with whispers

A sound installation presented as part of Salisbury International Arts Festival.   At twilight, in the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral, the air is alive with whispers. 

Long Division is a reflection upon the divisions of time.   Periods through the day and night are here imagined as brushing past one another, carrying urgent, whispered messages.   A male and a female voice float across the historic cloisters, exchanging thoughts in a succession of rhyming phrases.   The sound installation creates a pattern of cycles from these rhythmic speech patterns, sending a wash of sound rippling along the walls.   Memories and histories echo through the twilight. 

Long Division begins as the clock chimes the hour and there follows a sequence of sixty hushed exchanges, timed to the divisions of the clock.   The whispering phrases gather in intensity second by second, falling silent again at the start of each new minute.   The soundscape which evolves is resonant of rhythms and patterns in nature, the elements and also cycles of growth and decay.



 

Long Division was commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music and  Oxford Botanic Garden for The Magic Hour event, September 2008.


This show is available for 2009.  
Please contact IOU for more details.

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