last goodnight amidst Superior fog (for sinfonietta and fixed media) explores one recorded sound, analyzed at three increasingly quiet amplitude thresholds. From these analyses, I created three harmonic collections, each comprised of the thirty loudest tones under the chosen amplitude thresholds.
Although a re-synthesis of the first collection sounds very similar to the actual acoustic model, the quieter collections point less clearly to an identifiable source. While a computer can show us that these tones exist in the source, what is their role in our perception of the sound? Do they create a background to the loudest tones, adding subtleties that make the sound unique? Or are they beyond our perception, filtered out by our psychological and physiological limitations, and only evident through technological means, like the observation of ultraviolet light? With these questions in mind, I wrote this piece to explore the ambiguous space between these two realities: one close to our perception, and one far from it.
We spend much of our lives saying goodbye. Each of these moments is a threshold between two states of being. Through this piece, I seek to place the listener in this point of transition – a situation in which they are perpetually moving on, but in a sense, not moving at all. Uncertain of boundaries, a process may be perceived as unified - as if observing a single moment from many perspectives.