Motu Rangitoto – winds fair and foul - Phil Dadson

A head-phone listening experience focussed around an aeolian harp located on Rangitoto Island in the Hauraki Gulf (Tamaki Makaurau-Auckland), installed and recorded during a week of different winds and weathers through mid November 2022.

The aeolian harp instrument is an ancient one, traced historically to early Greek accounts of gut strands drying in the wind, picking up harmonic vibrations amplified by the membrane of the skin the strands were attached to.

This sound work is an offshoot of a more expansive climate monitoring project titled Kõea o Tāwhirimātea / Weather Choir, devised in response to an Aotearoa invitation earlier this year to participate in World Weather Network, a worldwide regional climate response project initiated by Art-Angel in the UK.

Kõea o Tāwhirimātea and other Aotearoa projects have an online presentation hosted by TeTuhi Contemporary Gallery in East Auckland …..
Weather Choir : https://tetuhi.art/world-weather-network/koea-o-tawhirimatea-weather-choir-artwork/
World Weather Network : https://tetuhi.art/world-weather-network

The Weather Choir project involves eight wind harps and participants in eight diverse climate challenged locations within the Aotearoa/Pacifica region, collaborating for local and global online presentations.

Unique to this project, the aeolian harp is considered a metaphorical ‘body’ responding harmonically to the variabilities of wind and weather, consonant when calm, dissonant when wild. Weather Choir operates as a collective data-mix and conceptual chorus (video and audio) for viewer and listener interaction.

A major exhibition of both the Aotearoa and worldwide projects is planned to open at TeTuhi Gallery in June 2023.

Vibration is a Universal. Everything we perceive in the macro/micro worlds, visibly and invisibly vibrates in proportions of harmony and dissonance. If, for example, we think of climate as the big picture and the effects of climate as small scale impact, all is harmonious when weather patterns are calm and predictable, and dissonant when storms, rising tides, coastal erosion, melting glaciers etc are experienced.

A string is much like a person responding and vibrating to the vagaries of weather – harmonious when calm, not-so when wild.

KŌEA O TAWHIRIMĀTEA-WEATHER CHOIR, was conceived by Phil Dadson as a collective project subsequently titled Breath of Weather Collective.  
Locations and participants are;
Cook Islands: Te Ipukarea Society;
Kelvin Passfield, Paris Tutty, Terena Koteka-Wiki,
Kingdom of Tonga: Uili Lousi;
Niue Island: Mark and Ahi Cross;
Samoa: Maina Vai;
Whakatane, Aotearoa/NZ: James McCarthy;
Haumoana, Aotearoa: Ricks Terstappen,
Dianne Reefman,
Parihaka/Taranaki, Aotearoa: Pasha Clothier;
Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa: Phil Dadson.

For more information, feedback or whatever feel free to contact
Phil Dadson – dadsonic@xtra.co.nz
Instagram: phildadsonic