Hans Peter "ashore..."

Text for "ashore..." a contribution to the NorthSouth project by Hans Peter.

The NorthSouth project has been a unique opportunity to share personal soundrecordings, relating sounds I know and have recorded myself to recordings made by persons I have never met from faraway places I have never been. Is it possible to "reach out" and internalize sounds of foreign origines? At least as an individual, I think the answer is yes.

The project is founded on the idea that one portrays oneself and one surroundings - possibly unconsiously - through recordings. One may ask whether composers of one continent form a cultural unit? I find that though one is not necessarily representative of one native country as an culturl entity, however local, sitespecific or exotic one remains, ones cultural backage is nervertheless mirrored when trying to relate to exotic sounds of another continent.

The project has thus challenged me to go beyond the safe resort of personal material and to seek for relations in sounds, that allows the combination and incorporation of disperate material from remote companions. During actual work, I often imagined being at the locations of the recordings where I have never been. To my own positive surprise I realize that the orgines of the sounds formed an imortant part of how I treated them.

When choosing sounds I was first looking for some that could match each of my own recordings (frogchoir at night, rushes in the wind, music from the comunionshouse). I choose arctic terns (actually recorded in Iceland, but could have been at the south pacific), chilenian pifilcaflutes, brasilian churchbells and a train rocking its way to God knows where. Next I combined the pairs in likely scenes and designed how they would change in a flow with a dreamlike associative character.

I am living on an small island traditionally founded on shipping trade and farming, the men often being absent for long periods, bringing back news, goods and customs from the big world. 'Here' and 'abroad' has a lot of meaning to the islanders. The island itself is one big pile of sand, situated in the 'vadehavet' with wide, flat, empty shores with dunes and dikes, sometimes sparkled with amber, driftwoods and other valuable items, and rather big tides flushing the shore, making it always similar, always changing.

I was imaging laying in the low waters, dreaming, sounds drifting ashore from far away melting with memories of sonic experiences from this very island. Flowing between recognisable sources and strange elaborations - being here or abroad? - the dream favors neither one, but rather the changes themselves and end by a quiet waking up ...

The Composer, march 2008.