Program notes: Jiyeh (part 1) (2006)
Jonathan Berger
Jiyeh is a small coastal town in Lebanon built upon the
ancient city of Porphyreon, reputed to be the site where a giant fish
delivered Jonah to the shore. On July 14th 2006 a coastal power station
in Jiyeh was attacked in an Israeli air strike causing over 20,000 tons
of oil to spill into the Mediterranean Sea. Although there has been
relatively little information regarding the ecological impact of this
massive spill a series of sattelite photos show the dispersion pattern
of the oil. These patterns appear as Baroque-like ornaments that
distort the contour of the Lebanese coast line.
I was in Jerusalem in July 2006 and read a fleeting and
innocuous news report regarding an oil spill on the Lebanese coast
apparently caused by an air or ship based missile attack on an aging
power plant in Jiyeh. Little information was forthcoming although the
estimates of the amount of oil spilled were alarming. In September I
asked Jeff Koseff if he had any information about the spill. He replied
that, to his knowledge, there were only sattelite photographs and that
those were yet to be carefully analyzed. The eight-channel
electroacoustic work is the first of a set of two pieces - the second a
three movement concerto for solo violin, percussion and string
orchestra.
The electroacoustic work uses data from the sattelite photographs to
set parameters for synthesis and processing of sounds, as well as
creating source audio material using a raster scan direct synthesis
method bing developed by my PhD student Woon Seung Yeo. The music
represents the evolution of the ornate oil patterns visible in the
sattelite images to evoke auditory display of this disaster.
The concerto uses measurements and contour plots from the sattelite
images to generate sections of the work, in particular the first
movement, in which the spread of the oil is represented in three
distinct sections, and in the third movement in which the development
of the contour is mapped and translated into the increasingly
ornate violin solo.
Jonathan Berger is a composer and researcher at CCRMA.
His compositions include chamber, symphonic and vocal music as well as
works incorporating digital synthesis and processing. His research
includes developing methods and tools for effective auditory display of
complex data. Berger's recent recording of chamber music for strings
will be released this Spring by Naxos recordings on their American
Masters series. Background:
Details and examples of the sonification methods used.
Satellite Images: (courtesy DLR, Center for Satellite
Based Crisis Information and NASA)
July 15 2006
July 19
2006
July 23 2006
August 1 2006
August 4 2006
Sonification methods for part 1:
Since the oil dissemenated in a generally northern
direction,
image scans were done from south to north (by flipping the image).
Woon Seung Yeo's raster scan synthesis method of image sonification ( http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~woony/works/raster
)provided the core sound materials for the piece. Raster scann
synthesis is described in our DAFX paper: http://www.dafx.ca/proceedings/papers/p_309.pdf.
The satellite images were processed and denoised in order to focus on
the edges of the coast and of the spill.
These sounds were processed using filter settings, temporal
stretching and other signal processing methods in which the parameters
were all set by measurements of the spill contour in relation to the
coastline.
The width of the spill at each sampled location is sonified by
setting filter bandwidth (measured south to north each 25 pixels) at
each sample position.
Coastal shape as well as the western edges of the spill in each image.
are mapped to melodic pitch.
Considerable 'artistic license' was then enjpyed.
Stereo mix-down of 8-channel piece: (beware: it's
large!).
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~brg/jiyeh-stereo.aif
Please note this audio file is not for public
presentation and may not be copied or distributed.
This
work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License and ASCAP
tears
in your han
