TONSPUR B Kristina Warren: Lavender Lauds

8-channel sound work & 7-part series of A1 images by MQ Artist-in-Residence Kristina Warren

All sound is rhythm. At very small time scales, we observe that audio waveforms are in fact a kind of pulsation, whether regular and recurring or irregular and erratic. Lavender Lauds takes this rhythmic reality of sound as a starting point, examining cyclicality at various levels and time scales.

While in residence at the MuseumsQuartier in Spring 2023, I took many photos, videos, and audio field recordings in Vienna and the surrounding area. From these I created several unique software oscillators, which act as audio and/or modulator signals. For instance, along the Danube I observed mistletoe hanging off pine trees in a varied left-right pattern around the tree trunks, so I translated this into a panning oscillator controlling spatial position of sounds along the length of the TONSPUR_passage. Or alternatively, I accelerated a recording of a political protest chant into a recurring pattern of noise and texture. All of these unique oscillators move freely above and below 20 Hertz, or in other words between rhythmic and pitched, cyclical and tonal realms.

Furthermore, Lavender Lauds considers the rhythms of nature and ritual. Lauds is one of the Catholic hours of worship (others include Matins, Vespers, and Compline), when, traditionally around 5:00am, monks and nuns would rise from sleep to pray and chant. Together, all the hours of worship create a recurring, daily cycle of meditation and contemplation. Lavender Lauds, then, considers how daily human rhythms, along with natural rhythms such as the annual blossoming of flowers, can refract into perceptible and imperceptible time scales in sound.

— Kristina Warren

Kristina Warren, born 1989 in Detroit, Michigan, United States of America, lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America. MQ Artist-in-Residence, selected in cooperation with TONSPUR and Fulbright Austria.