An Indecipherable Cause @indecipherablecause - Tumblr Blog

Thank you for hosting such a lovely reception for Alaska Sesquicentennial activities, Governor and First Lady Walker! #alaska150 #sesquicentennial (at Alaska Governor's Mansion)

#alaska150 #sesquicentennial

Calling all history enthusiasts and museum buffs! Have you seen the Alaska Historical Society/Museums Alaska 2017 Conference Call for Papers? Send us your proposals for papers, panels, and poster sessions exploring the legacy of the Alaska Purchase. (Link in bio) #alaska150 #alaska #history #sesquicentennial #justaprettypictureofsitka

#alaska150 #justaprettypictureofsitka #sesquicentennial #alaska #history

Congrats to the most recent recipients of the Alaska Historical Commission's 150th grants! Exciting projects are in the works... (link to full list in bio) (at Juneau, Alaska)

icphoto

From ICP Curator Maya Benton: Ruth Gruber took some of the earliest known color photographs of the Alaska territory, in the early 1940s. I will never forget the moment that she first held a color print of her Kodachrome transparencies, at age 100. Ruth had never seen prints of her color work from Alaska. The original slides had faded and a master printmaker at ICP, Nikol David, painstakingly color corrected the digital images and created stunning prints. When I visited Ruth in her apartment and opened the box with the test prints, she beamed. Ruth held the 14x11 inch print in her hands, looked at me, smiled wide and said, “Wow! It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s really gorgeous. I never knew how beautiful my color work was until just now. Don’t you think that’s something?” Indeed. It was. 📷Eklutna woman reading LIFE Magazine, Hooper Bay, Alaska, 1941-43. ©Estate of Ruth Gruber, courtesy ICP

Burning the midnight oil

flyartproductions

That Illuminati mess in the air

Witches in the air (1798), Francisco Goya / Formation, Beyoncé

Finally ☀️

In/Out of the Shadows

In early November, I collaborated on a soundtrack for a shadow puppet play created by Kimi Eisle called In/Out of the Shadows. Kimi writes, this is “a shadow puppet theater tribute to the Alaskan Yellow Cedar tree (Calliptrosis nootkatensis), a tree that grows in coastal Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. In the last 100 years, the tree has been dying off due to climate change. In the poorly drained soils of low-lying muskegs, it once thrived as snowpack insulating its delicate root systems from the cold. Now, warming temperatures have meant more rain than snow leaving the tree vulnerable to freezing.”

Sarah and I began by improvising together, playing with sounds and combinations of my voice and her cello. We improvised looking at the paper-cut images as Kimi created them, responding to the images with sounds, words, colors, musical techniques, dynamics, and accents. Sometimes we tried to illustrate an image in the play with our music, and other times we tried to illustrate a feeling, quality, or mood. After each run-through, Kimi told us what fit with her vision for the piece—what to do more of and what to leave behind. She gave us a lot of creative freedom to imagine all the ways a snow storm is audible, what a musical motif for industry could be, how the humorous and sad image of the trees packing up their suitcases and walking away might sound.

Sometimes new music forgets to be playful, and forgets it can be fun. While the subject matter was deeply serious, there was so much pleasure in the moving images and sounds; moments of humor and lightness in a dark narrative of climate change and ecological loss. The project pushed us both to listen to each other, to be open to outcome, and to enjoy the process of making something new.

#sitka #alaska #music

In/Out of the Shadows

In early November, I collaborated on a soundtrack for a shadow puppet play created by Kimi Eisle called In/Out of the Shadows. Kimi writes, this is “a shadow puppet theater tribute to the Alaskan Yellow Cedar tree (Calliptrosis nootkatensis), a tree that grows in coastal Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. In the last 100 years, the tree has been dying off due to climate change. In the poorly drained soils of low-lying muskegs, it once thrived as snowpack insulating its delicate root systems from the cold. Now, warming temperatures have meant more rain than snow leaving the tree vulnerable to freezing.”

Sarah and I began by improvising together, playing with sounds and combinations of my voice and her cello. We improvised looking at the paper-cut images as Kimi created them, responding to the images with sounds, words, colors, musical techniques, dynamics, and accents. Sometimes we tried to illustrate an image in the play with our music, and other times we tried to illustrate a feeling, quality, or mood. After each run-through, Kimi told us what fit with her vision for the piece—what to do more of and what to leave behind. She gave us a lot of creative freedom to imagine all the ways a snow storm is audible, what a musical motif for industry could be, how the humorous and sad image of the trees packing up their suitcases and walking away might sound.

Sometimes new music forgets to be playful, and forgets it can be fun. While the subject matter was deeply serious, there was so much pleasure in the moving images and sounds; moments of humor and lightness in a dark narrative of climate change and ecological loss. The project pushed us both to listen to each other, to be open to outcome, and to enjoy the process of making something new.

#sitka #alaska #music

Keep it coming

Doing my civic duty! Don't forget to vote today

Fairies on the Cross Trail

Postcards from Sitka

Snapshots from my first few weeks in Alaska! Unusually sunny for the first few days, we reveled in the vitamin D and prepared for the deluge that has been (and will be, I think) the norm. People have been incredibly warm and generous, welcoming us with 60 lbs of salmon, invitations to karaoke, and hiking/running trail recommendations. Sitka (according to the Fine Arts Camp) has one of the highest numbers of Steinway Grands (3!) per capita in the country--but only because the population numbers here are so low. Regardless, it's a beautiful and creative place to plop down for a while, and I'm really glad to be here.

#travel

Finally feeling like fall

The @americanantiquarian is the stuff of dreams... And they gave me a library card!

At the edge of a caldera

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An Indecipherable Cause