Anne Guthrie: Hackle 2
Exhibition Information:
February 10 - May 5, 2019
Daily, 9-5pm
Opening Reception & Performance:
Sunday, February 10, 2019
3-5pm
Lincoln Park Conservatory*
2391 North Stockton Drive
Chicago, IL, 60614
In a sheet of glass, the surface near a fracture point may be unmarked. But minute marks present in the fractured edge can act as a map of the fracture, describing the history of the event that caused the glass to crack. Short parallel marks called “Hackle marks” can be read to tell us the direction in which the crack propagated along the glass. Hackle 2 is essentially a pile of broken glass, material left over, half-formed thoughts that can be shifted through and overlaid to create something resembling a collage.
Cole Swensen’s book “The Glass Age,” a collection of poems from 2007 surrounding the early cultural history of altered vision, through greenhouses, windows, film, etc. A composition, Hackle, which was performed on January 10 by the Other Minds Ensemble (Randall Wong, Liam Herb, Edward Schocker, Flora Espinoza, and Sydd Urgola), uses this text as its main source material. From her text: “i grieve for the infinitesimal difference between what you can see and what you cannot see.“
A greenhouse is a frame, focusing the attention on something inside. The flora in the Fern Room is meant to represent a prehistoric Chicago, based on archeological interpretation. Similarly, our sonic debris and decaying media may be used in the future to create an archeology of us, one that may be heavily distorted from reality. The many fragments that fell into this work will shed their contexts and stories in service of something hidden.
For the opening reception, Anne (french horn) will perform with Graham Stephenson (trumpet) an improvisational piece based on the Hackle score.
About Anne Guthrie:
Anne Guthrie is an acoustician, composer, and French horn player living in San Francisco, CA. She studied music composition and english at the University of Iowa and architectural acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she completed her Ph.D in 2014. Her music combines her knowledge of acoustics and contemporary composition/improvisation. Her electronic music has focused on exploiting the natural acoustic phenomena of unique architectural spaces through minimal processing of field recordings. Her composition has focused on the orchestration of non-musical sounds, speech in particular. Her French horn playing has focused on electronic processing and extended techniques used in improvisatory settings, as a soloist and with Fraufraulein and Delicate Sen, among others. Her acoustics research has focused on the use of ambisonics for stage acoustics. She is an acoustic consultant with Arup, an engineering and design firm working in the built environment.
http://www.fraufraulein.com/anne/