“Self-portrait as a Meditation on Somewhere Else” is the second entry in my self-portrait series. Like its predecessor, “Self-portrait as a Mediation on Someone Else,” “Somewhere Else” is a work consisting of a combina- tion of field recordings, acoustic instruments, sine tones, and noise, taken from all around the periphery and deep in the Everglades National Park. I made it my goal while Artist in Residence of the Everglades to hike every trail available, to journey deep into the waters, to explore the perim- eter, and capture a complete audio sketchbook of the park and my time there. From human noise pollution to the rarely heard sounds of wildlife underwater, this piece is a non-linear collage and meditation of this place and our relationship to it. Deep in the mix, you will hear the resonant frequencies of certain spaces and quietly placed acoustic instruments performing pitches from this naturally derived material, giving an emotional quality to the work that places the natural world next to our subjective emotions. The Everglades is immense, and a month-long residency- compressed into a single hour-long work can never be comprehensive, just as our impact on this place can never be understat- ed. It is difficult to make a piece that is primarily the natural world without there being some underpinning narrative of environmentalism, and I think field recordings can sometimes have a voyeuristic aspect to them, but working on this piece has changed the way I think about subject vs object. It is my hope that by taking the time to immerse oneself in this work- in this space- it might open a new way of listening to the sounds all around us and to consider how we impact the sonic landscape around us, and what that means for us as well.
credits
released April 6, 2023

Written and Recorded by Kory Reeder as Artist in Residence in the Everglades Everglades National Park, Florida
June 2021

Thank you to everyone at AIRE www.airie.org
Thank you to Tom Rahill, founder of the Swamp Apes

Executive Producer, Kory Reeder Sawyer Editions, 2023 

https://sawyerspaces.bandcamp.com/album/self-portrait-as-a-meditation-on-somewhere-else