Rock Art in the Dream World

Journey to the Art Place
Creating the Art
Reflecting on the Art
Finishing the Art
Into the Dream World
Return

Rock Art in the Dream World is inspired by Hawaiian petroglyphs, and native American and Australian rock paintings. The characters depicted in the rock art, such as Kokopeli in the American Southwest, and Namarrgon (the Lightning Man) and Kuringali (the Rainbow Serpent) in Kakadu in Australia, have traditional stories, which belong to the peoples who created them. I was inspired as much by the idea of the ancient peoples who left their stories behind on stone as I was by my encounter with the artwork itself. From the “Dreamways” of the Iroquois to the “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming” of the indigenous Australians, these stories have been described as dream worlds.

In Rock Art in the Dream World, I have created my own story. The characters are the people who traveled through their natural world and their dreams to create the rock art. In this story, the native American flute and the didgeridoo represent two human characters. Accompanied by their synthesized dream selves, they stroll through a natural environment of birds and crickets. The rock tap rhythm seems to dance as they create the art. In a solo, the didgeridoo (accompanied by its dream self) contemplates the art, and together the flute and didgeridoo add finishing touches. The thunderous flapping of a large flock of small green parrots opens the gate into the dream world. The rock rhythm stops, time slows down. In the dream memory, the bird songs are stretched out, the cricket chirps become long tones, the footsteps and rock taps are backward. Are the characters trapped in the dream? The flute begins to call the sentinel bird, but, where is it? At last, the bird responds and the green parrots open the gate to return to the natural world. The return is a emory of all the experiences of the natural world, making the rock art and the dream world, at a quick pace as the pressure of time returns. Must we return by sunset or reach a meeting point by a particular time? Kangaroos hiss at us as we complete our journey.

I would like to thank David Hudson and Ash Dargan, whose recordings I used (with their permission) to analyze and synthesize the dream didgeridoo using timbre morphing in Csound, and whose playing inspired this piece. Jim Akins made the native American flutes and turtle medicine rattle used in the piece. I recorded the footsteps, crickets, kangaroos, kookaburra and other birds in the Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Watarrka and Namadgi parks in Australia, and then synthesized the crickets and most of the birds using an additive synthesis design. The only sampled bird is the kookaburra laughing in the natural world, and the synthesized kookaburra in the dream world uses a timbre morphing design based on the didgeridoo design. (2007)