Sirens is an ongoing project about
the acoustic sirens used in music and warning systems,
the Sirens that appear in stories,
and the warning systems of the planet and the human body.
Link to Live solo Trailer
Volsap Foundation – co-production
The work
We use warning systems.
We use them to warn ourselves and others to pay attention to danger and escape demise.
These systems come in all forms:
from physical objects that make noise
to stories that perpetually change to fit the times,
to physical and psychological messages,
to changes in rain and temperature.
When the word Siren is mentioned in conversation, everyone has their own vision and comments on what the word brings to mind.
The plan is to uncover and bring to light the many facets of Sirens
and to inspire people to reflect on their relationships to them.
The acoustic siren was invented by a Scottish philosopher named John Robison in the 1790’s as a musical instrument to power specific organ pipes. It was improved by Baron Charles Cagniard de la Tour to also produce sound underwater which linked them symbolically to the mythological sirens since they could be used for warning signals on ships. This inspired la Tour to give them the name Siren. For the first time, the sirens could create tones of specific frequencies and measure frequencies of other sounds by comparing them to the measurable sounds of the sirens. This interested scientists as well as musicians and the possibilities and usefulness of acoustic sirens has grown to include the social, industrial and institutional warning systems throughout the world.
The mythological sirens were originally both male or female who had alluring voices and were given non-human traits by various gods including wings, webbed bird feet and tail fins. The male versions disappeared and by the Greek mythology of Homer they were seen as female singers who were half-human and half-animal who were a symbol for the dangerous temptation embodied by women. Later they became synonymous with mermaids with upper female human bodies and fish tails. Homer’s Odyssey has the most well known Siren story of today where he had his sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the ship mast so he would avoid their fatal seduction to jump into the sea and drown. A plethora of variations on this myth can be found and throughout western art the term siren song has referred to an appeal that is hard to resist and if heeded will lead to evil or misfortune.
The warnings that our planet is sending us concern the survival of the human race. The burning topics of climate change and pollution include a long list of disaster stories. We are most interested in those that affect us directly such as: When the tornado blew my house down. When the fire burned my home. When the flood ruined the downtown.
The internal messages of danger and dread that humans carry with them are a form of virtual sirens that relate to the temptations of the mythological Sirens and the whoop, wail and roar warnings of the physical sirens. The shapes of internal messages are often similar to the Doppler effect of a passing sound in that they begin imperceptibly, increase in volume and pitch and then decrease in both volume and pitch after they have passed.
I have been developing a performance called Something About Sirens that references, re-tells and re-invents stories about warnings by using music, soundscapes and guest performers. My aim is to inspire people to reflect on the crazy collection of myths we think we know and to revisit the broad and complex field of Sirens. Our stories are about the ambiguity of crisis, the fascination for gloom and doom, hope, sense of time and place, memories, experiences.
In the past couple of years I have been creating text, music and sound design using processed and synthesized audio that I have been able to use in various improvisation settings.
Something About Sirens has become my long-winded research project that continuously finds ways to develop both on stage and off.