Gregory worked on Segment 16 of the river, near the town of Epfach (map). We stopped there for lunch and visited one of the many fish passages built around the dams. It was noon, and the nearby church bells began to chime, perfectly capturing the atmosphere of this quiet, charming village. We reached out to him, asking about his work. But first, let’s get to know him better. GREGORY - I’m Gregory Scheckler, a multidisciplinary artist from northwestern Massachusetts. I play drums and linear and modular synthesizers, and I draw, paint, photograph, write and film too. Much of my artwork overlaps with a love of and concern for nature and the environment. Rivers often act as a potent metaphor in my art, such as in my Timepieces series, of timing and change and flow. I’ve always loved the famous philosophical note that “One cannot step twice into the same river, nor can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but it scatters and again gathers; it forms and dissolves, and approaches and departs.” (– Heraclitus (Kahn translation)) Written at around 500 B.C.E., that sense of dynamic change in nature was contemporary with the works of Lao Tzu, and those of the Buddha. Heraclitus proposed a universal sensibility, called panta rhei, meaning ‘everything flows.’ This has been a core sensibility in my recent art-making, whether considering the processes of climate change in my Sky Stories works, or now in the FLOW project. RICCARDO - Gregory, you were handed a section of the river, with some material and geo-historical context, and returned to us with a musical composition. How did this happen? GREGORY - First I relied on several rounds of deep listening, finding tones and patterns within Riccardo’s field recording. It’s full of oddities, and you can hear the water bounce against some concrete and repeating echos that might be a set of fish stairs along the river at Epfach. Sometimes I played the recording at reduced speed, other times increased speed, and other times layered with itself. So for example, I found that a pacing of 104 beats per minute worked well with the recording’s sounds. I also used granular synthesis to isolate tiny sound moments within the recording. This led me to create a variety of drum sounds out of the field recording, that became a playable granular synthesizer instrument that I now call the ‘Flow Snare.’ You’ll hear this electronic drum in the compositions as a fluttery rhythm somewhat like steel brushes on a snare drum. The repetitious Flow Snare also inspired me to wonder more about short bursts of repeated rhythms. This then inspired a fundamental sixteenth note pattern that begins the composition and repeats throughout, especially in the bass line. Another prominent sound in the field recording is a church bell. I asked Riccardo which church in Epfach had rung, and he said it was St. Bartholomaues - a small beautiful church that overlooks the river. The church bells created important rhythms and a sonic world too, and so my own added percussion, other than the Flow Snare, grew focused mainly on bells, cymbals and similar sounds (which also sometimes repeat the phrasing of the theme of the main round). I tried to open up my composition in its middle, much like the large bend in the river around Epfach: geomorphology inspired compositional forms. I also went on a ‘virtual drive’ through Epfach, using Google Earth. This provided a rough sense of the lay of the land and the village, which is quite beautiful, and somewhat industrial along the river. As I ‘drove’ I also found several repeating motifs, and even a roadside sign that spoke of the river’s geomorphology, including the words ‘Andere Zeiten, Andere Landschaft,’ which seemed to me to hint at the whole idea of the project. All of this together had me thinking about progressions and changes in time - which eventually prompted more layering and repetitions until my composition grew into the form of a round, of different voices repeating various phrases along the way. I pulled the main melodic phrase out of a few tones I heard in the recording, and I tried to open up my composition in its middle, much like the large bend in the river around Epfach: geomorphology inspired compositional forms. There were several ‘happy accidents’ too, like this image from the virtual drive (see attached) struck me as useful and also particularly silly — a stretched moment from Google Earth as its camera-car morphed the famous statue at the bridge near Epfach into a two-headed twin. Somehow it seems appropriate to the ideas I was considering, of creating a round of similar phrases repeated next to each other. I’d like to add here that as a young college student I studied in nearby Innsbruck, Austria, in ’87-88. For me this was a generally happy time, and the Epfach recording prompted many recollections of similar church bells, the Inn river, many ancient histories too. I also thought about the adventurous joy of that time of my youth, and the many street festivals, holiday festivities, travels here and there in Europe, and how we people migrate through so many geographies. Some of us students did a fair amount of hiking along the Nordkette in Innsbruck - probably I’ve seen the Lech from far away and above. That the river Lech isn’t too far distant from this memorable geography felt close and familiar, although I’d never been to the river or to Epfach. I’m grateful for the good memories from nearby, and hoped to reflect them with my composition by setting an uplifting, curious, and adventurous tone. R - The science behind this project raises ethical questions — about control, restoration, and coexistence with rivers. Did any of these ideas resonate with you, and how did that find its way into your music? G - One thing I learned from the scientific studies of the river was just how tightly interwoven river systems are with the needs of biological life forms, and the often radical depths of human interactions with rivers… the majority of life on Earth flourishes around and near rivers. The impact then, of human industry in and around rivers, is potentially stronger than in many other ecosystems. But this impact also complicates efforts to return a river to a more natural state. We must ask how far back in time do we go to find ‘natural’ given how some rivers include thousands of years of human interaction too. I tried to relate to these complexities through the composition Epfach Round, by mixing together sounds that might be considered eminently technological, in contrast to the more natural found in the watery aspects of the field recordings. R - Can you tell me about how you participated in the ‘connected sounds” initiative? Why did you choose the sounds you shared, and how did you use the other sounds? G - Connected sounds: this was such a delightful idea! (Thank you to Salma Ahmed Caller for this critical sensibility!) I provided the ending notes of my composition to make a literal connection, and a recording of the ‘Flow Snare’ in case that might be interesting to anyone. And I incorporated Salma’s snippet of a gentle lapping / rowing sound from upstream, by simply overlaying that into the introductory phrases of my composition. Beyond these literal connections, the idea of connectivity also clarified how I might end my composition. In the ending, it ceases being a round of voices separated by delays in timing, and instead the voices come together in unison, perhaps like the waters flowing together as one down into the next segments of the river. Connection was also a comforting part of the entire project. We live in difficult times, and our vivid challenges here in the US do make it much more difficult to focus on making artworks. But in contrast to these horrors, it has been greatly consoling to me to see so many of us collaborating in goodwill across international boundaries, through art and science projects like Flow. Thank you for being here, to everyone associated with Flow, and to all who find joy and meaning in the music. Thanks for reading Art Music Science! Subscribe to receive new posts and podcast episodes. Flow is a project by Martina Cecchetto, curated by Riccardo Fumagalli, with the scientific contribution of Florian Betz. In collaboration with Cities & Memory, University of Padua (Italy), University of Würzburg (Germany). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit artmusicscience.substack.com
