Tim Feeney performs, composes, improvises, and builds sensory environments in forests and grain silos, concerned with unstable sound and duration. He appears in bookstores and basements with Sarah Hennies and Greg Stuart as Meridian; in galleries and libraries with Vic Rawlings and Annie Lewandowski; in tunnels and train stops with Cody Putman and Cassia Streb as Tasting Menu; in colleges and museums with Holland Hopson and Jane Cassidy; and in the occasional festival or concert hall with Anthony Braxton and Ingrid Laubrock.
Artist Location: North Hills, CA
Social Media:
PARTICIPATION
Glazing describes a process of polishing sand or stone via fire and extreme heat.
Two or more stations along the walking paths throughout Angels Gate, as best fits among the others in the park, using one or more of the following:
One speaker-object, assembled from a wooden box prepared with audio exciters and filled with debris including stones, metal, and charred wood, cycling through sound abstracted from high-tension wire crackle, air traffic, and highway noise collected at Whitney Canyon, CA, during the summers of 2020 and 2021.
One projection screen, assembled from a wooden window frame prepared with parchment paper, cycling through videos taken of sunsets during clear conditions at Whitney Canyon in June 2020, and choked by wildfire smoke in September 2020. This location was denuded of vegetation by wildfire in August 2020.
soundpedro 2021 participation: N/A
Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2021:
Four sunsets
If installation, single-channel video, 1280×720, rear-projected onto wooden window frame prepared with parchment paper; stereo sound via portable speakers.
If festival is online only, video of said setup.
Included: single-channel video via YouTube; photos of window frame projection screen; test of video projection
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Four views of sunset over Whitney Canyon, Newhall, California, during clear conditions July 8-9, 2020, and choked by wildfire smoke September 11-12, 2020.
Sound including the cracking of high-tension wires recorded onsite.
The Soledad Fire burned 1500 acres in Agua Dulce, fifteen miles to the northeast of this location, July 5 to 6, 2020.
The Elsmere Fire burned 200 acres at this location, stripping it of most of its vegetation, August 3 to 5, 2020.
The Lake Fire burned 34,000 acres near Lake Hughes, thirty miles to the north of this location, August 12 to September 28, 2020.
The Bobcat Fire burned 116,000 acres of the Angeles Forest, forty miles to the southeast of this location, September 6 to December 18, 2020.
Temperatures at this location, just south of Santa Clarita, peaked at 113° on September 6, 2020.
Smoke from these fires blocked the sun throughout North America and reached Europe.
Virtual Breakout During the Outbreak June 6th Livestream
Virtual BreakOut During the OutBreak Videos [VBODOBV] II
Whitney Canyon
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Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2020:
An extension of immutability
I will build six speaker objects from sheets of 2’x4′ plywood, preparing each with a small speaker element and amplifier. Each plywood speaker cycles through sounds, including crackling and 60-Hz hum, abstracted from those made by high-tension power lines. These sounds wax and wane according to fire and drought statistics from six sites around greater Los Angeles, including near the Angels Gate Arts Center.
These speaker-objects are placed in the field near the entrance to the complex, near the old dugout sites, and along the walking path towards Angels Gate, such that an observer starting at one object and walking towards another can just barely hear the sound of the second when losing that of the first.
During a public event such as soundpedro, when observers are deliberately gathered and walking the site, they encounter the sounding objects and become aware that our seemingly static surroundings are changing, implacably, at scale and speed too slow and large to be grasped at an instant.
At the top of each hour, when each speaker is making sound at peak intensity, a listener might stop to contemplate both the acceleration of climate change and its impact on a dense and rapidly changing urban location.
Resonant Spaces is a series of installation works using resonant “speaker-objects” built by attaching small speakers to snare drums. The sounds of these hybrid electronic and acoustic instruments activate the resonant frequencies of their locations, delineating the physicality of a surrounding environment defined by architecture and materiality.
Previous pieces in the series engaged aspects of recollection and conjectured history concerning the unique properties of their siting, whether the massive reverberant acoustic of a grain silo complex in Buffalo, New York, ca. 1925; the operational sound of the twin steam engines pumping Boston’s drinking water, ca. 1900; and tracking the coastal erosion of Sarasota, Florida, from 1987 to 2015. In “Angels Gate,” for Soundpedro 2019, I will stage sounds around the common path from the Cultural Center to the Battery Leary-Merriam, such that an observer standing at one beacon can barely hear the sound of a neighbor. Their sounds arrange themselves in the form of a clock, such that different beacons arrive together at the quarter and half hour. When all four speak at the top of the hour, their combined sound reproduces the spectrum of the Korean Friendship Bell.
Participants listening to a beacon experience the interaction between nearby and far-away reflections, engaging, simultaneously, the acoustic reality of their immediate location, and a wider geography defined by memory of the others. This generates an imagined sonic topography operating at an expanse both unpredictable and too large to fully grasp at any individual instant.