Cedar Forest

Greg Dixon – music

Stephen Lucas – video.

 

In Mesopotamian mythology, the Cedar Forest is the glorious natural home of the gods. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's quest to chop down the tallest trees of the Cedar Forest to build a great cedar gate for the city Nippur. The story centers on the conflict between humanity and nature, with Enkidu representing humanity's "uncivilized" roots in nature.

 

Cedar Forest (2013) explores this conflict as represented by relationships between the sounds of the natural world and human noise. Do sounds and noises that humanity creates convey significant messages to animals in the wild of which we are unaware? Will the sounds we make influence wild animals to evolve to create sounds that are distinctly separate from our constantly changing sonic footprint? Will human noise pollution, left uncontrolled, have the eventual effect of destroying the sonic landscapes of natural animal biomes and ecosystems around the world?

 

Some of the musical material from Cedar Forest is from pre-recorded improvisations performed by the composer along with: Nevada Hill, electric and acoustic guitar Rachel Yoder, melodica. Thanks to David Townsend for helping to facilitate the creation of some of the synthesizer sounds (made using his modular synthesizer).