I made this sketch using p5.js, partly in response to some time I spent recently in a rainforest, partly as a response to Francisco Lopez's 'La Selva' and partly just to experiment with p5.js.

I spent a few weeks in the rainforest this summer (with some friends on the Carribean island of Dominica) and was utterly overwhlemed. Sonically it was like being at the most extraordinary electro-acoustic concert that I've ever been to....for three weeks straight. After a week and half I was literally going out of my mind with the chaos of it all. Getting back to life in the big city, the dullness of automobile drones and HVAC was, by comparison, so peaceful.

Maybe a little too peaceful. After I got back I found myself needing more environmental sound than normal. Among the records of acoustic material I played to fill the sound void was, of course, "La Selva", by Francisco Lopez. An hour-long recording of La Selva rainforest preserve in Costa Rica. Lopez writes very eloquently about the work, and about the practice of working with sound in his amazing essay, "Profound Listening and Environmental Sound Matter." If you've never read it, I HIGHLY recommend it, you can download it here.

In it, Lopez says, "What you hear on 'La Selva' is not La Selva" -- his recording is not meant to be a representation of the rainforest so much as an exploration of the intensity of the sounding material that is present in a rainforest. After spending some time in the rainforest, I understand this desire in a different way -- before I actually went there and experienced the spatial and timbral seperation, I really didn't realize how extraordinary that experience is. Lopez' words about 'La Selva', even more than the actual piece, lead us to that edge of unexpected perception.

Lopez goes on to talk, quite beautifully, about 'the inner world of sounds....the transcendental dimension of the sound matter itself'. He speaks against 'truth' as documentarians desire it, against representation, against purity and against causal interpretations of sound. He has no interest, he says, in knowing what made the sound. What matters is the acoustic phenomenon, and our experience of (and he endorses the French composer Pierre Schaeffer here) the 'reduced', 'acousmatic' 'sound object', freed from any associations.

And yet.....he called the record 'La Selva'.

I've never had a chance to meet him (would love to! how fun to talk about this medium we both love so similarly but also so differently! maybe in two different spoken languages as well!) but I imagine that he might feel some remorse about that title. Since then, he's released hundreds of untitled records. But, I think 'La Selva' might be his best known work all the same. Ahhhhh....we all make mistakes! Lord knows I've made far too many even to remember. Even the iconic composer Schaeffer, who Lopez invokes, famously lamented that his entire career had been a failure, as he had been unable to free 'sound' from its 'musical' associations.

Now here's the thing: I think Schaeffer was right -- he failed by wanting too much purity, by wanting answers rather than questions.

And although Lopez is one of my very favorite composers, I own many of his records, I've been teaching his work for a decade and I am certain he is one of the absolute masters of our craft.....even so, I've gotta say it. I think he's wrong about La Selva and wrong about 'La Selva'. It IS a recording of a rainforest. And a recording of the rainforest imaginary. And a recording of falseness and purity, all at once. That, in my opinion, is how sound works. It is many things to many people.

I like messes. I dislike purity. Extra-acoustic associations are really ok with me. I don't want my audience to wear blindfolds, as Lopez does. (His technical rider literally calls for the audience to be blindfolded.) I believe in ideas and I believe in people enough to let them choose how pure their acoustic phenomena should be.

Also, I like text.

Like so many of my works, this piece begins with other people's sounds. Sound effects from Hollywood. In this case, I searched for various cartoon sounds, "cartoon frogs", "cartoon insects", "cartoon rainforest", that kind of thing. I put some of them in a folder, without changing the names at all, and wrote the javascript code that serves them up on the other page. I'd like to do more with this material, maybe make it into a game. We'll see. Come back and check in a while. And send me an email if you want to talk about sound, or anything else.

Cheers,

Chris Kubick, August 2016