Three Rivulets by Kristina Warren

I. Rectangles

The opening movement suggests the emergence of life. Small synapses, stabs and pulses reveal themselves as soft and playful melodies akin to the sun rising over a city asleep. Like shaking off the frost of winter “Rectangles” comes to life, slowly, confidently, swelling into proof of movement and feeling. The sounds of brass and creaking walls are evidence. These machines are alive - the beautiful monotony of their daily voices heard, and the throughlines and patterns of their lives illuminated and grounded by the guitar that they all share. Eventually it all fades, the din of the workday giving way to a drone that leads to a place of rest and contemplation.

II. Triangles

“Three Rivulets” continues the low, the methodical, the meditative with “Triangles”. Shifting and drifting polyrhythms dance together, their 8ths, 16ths, triplets, and patterns uncountable. If the first part of this 3-act collection is “work” then this second section is “prayer”. Its slow and deliberate nature is not unlike a solemn recitation of the Hail Mary or the Hannya Shingyo in feeling. Detuned and decaying, distorted textures and buzzing swell as the work pushes towards its next stage. In time a distinctly human-feeling element finally does appear. The sway and abrupt nature of the beating of drums and soft chants make unclear what is machine and what isn’t. Throughout the bass provides scaffolding, and the relentless tapping offers further grounding as the rest swells into a sort of weather pattern. It rains.

III. Circles

“Circles” is a piece that exists in one’s body as much as it submerges it, the track’s vibrations overlaying their nodes over yours. This final act evokes the feeling of swimming, of diving, of drowning. Each sound pans about, bubbling in and out of view. Together the delay and reverb create winds and waves that rise and crash, crest and trough. The higher pitched arpeggiations feel like bioluminescent beings out at sea. Once the eyes adjust there is so much light in this water. The beginning half of this piece is certainly the most playful of the set, but all that is left when the lights go is an oppressive low cyclical hum and an expansive feeling of emptiness.

-- Dailen Williams (Caloric)

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Three Rivulets is an experimental audiovisual work which Kristina Warren premiered as a live performance piece at Providence's FRINGEPVD Festival in July 2024; this is the performance documentation. Warren created the visuals using Cathodemer and the sound using modular analog synthesizers, molding each movement literally and figuratively around a particular geometric form. Immersive, textural, and mysterious, Three Rivulets seamlessly merges human and machine, beautiful and ugly, retro and futuristic: a curiously inviting audiovisual bath.
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Sound art based in samples and synthesis, cycles of listening.

kmwarren.org