speculating on what is to come
speculating on what is to come is a series of orchestral music, written in response to feelings stemming from the uncertainty of future. Seeing plants in a secured greenhouse environment of the Botanical Garden in Zürich, (while listening to Subaerial by Lucy Railton and Kit Downes, one of my favourite albums) I experienced a feeling lingering between dreamy dissociation and anxiety. Their names engraved on little tags reminded me of cemeteries. A cemetery of undead biotopes. Some of those plants face eradication as a result of the changes to our shared living space.
I decided to concern my writing by reflecting on these feelings, as they visit me often. I speculate on the future. But I also choose to stay curious- by learning about the factual realities imminent in our futures, and active by protesting for environmental causes.
part i., they would move under the ground
for symphony orchestra (2024)
part i., they would move under the ground, is a recreation of a situation in which I experienced a feeling of transformed reality. A bicycle rave, attended by over 1000 cyclists, took to the streets of Helsinki at night, carrying portable boom boxes playing techno music, decorated with fairy and disco lights. When this rave made it to a tunnel, a dystopian shadow descended upon the way I felt the present. I pondered a situation where cars would no longer play a role in transport, but the infrastructure would remain. The environment above ground would be hardly habitable, and people would take subterranean space into use.
A clan, a tribe, a new form of organising society holds a celebratory feast in my piece. I recreate the soundscape of a bike rave passing through a tunnel and leaving it- every dream has its end. I work with contrast in wet and dry acoustics as a continuous process, which also influences the form. Inspired by computer-aided orchestration tools that analysed my recordings, I zoom in and out of the environment, focus micro to macro, time slows down or stops.
parts ii. and iii. coming soon