Unite to Light the Night | 2024
Festival: Unite to Light the Night, 18-19 October 2024 (https://www.unitetolight.org)
Digital Animation | 0:07:38:00, 25.00 fps, 1920 x 1440
Media: Sound, animated projection, black screen
Site: 631 Garden Street, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Music: “Edge” ©2017 Mark K. Johnson
The non-profit organisation Unite to Light is dedicated to providing low-cost solar light and power to those without electricity across the globe, to help students study at night, equip midwives with the tools they need to save lives, offer help and hope to those suffering from natural disasters, and provide light and power to those experiencing homelessness. The digital animation “Unite to Light the Night_EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE” relates to the mission of Unite to Light by enabling a poem to appear out of the darkness. In relation to EDUCATION and LIGHT LIBRARIES, ‘Edge of the Universe’ is composed solely of projected letters of the alphabet, moving in the darkness, which form words out of light. In relation to HOMELESSNESS and REFUGEES, ‘Edge of the Universe’ is a reminder that we are all one. It celebrates global diversity: “I live on the edge of the universe like everybody else. There’s always an edge here…” It is a call to action as well as participation: “You can’t live here by chance, you have to do and be, not simply watch.” In relation to the theme of LIGHT, letters of the alphabet appear as the sole source of light in the darkness. A poem appears out of the light, about all of us coming together as one. The metaphor of LIGHT is used to provide a vision of HOPE: “With the coming of darkness, the bay opened up… splashed with beads of light.”
I live at the edge
of the universe,
like everybody else.
(Bill Manhire: ‘Milky Way Bar’ in Milky Way Bar, Victoria University Press, 1991)
… there’s always an edge
here that one must walk which is sharp
and precarious, requiring vigilance.
(Patricia Grace: Cousins, Penguin Books, 1992)
It’s true you can’t live here by chance,
you have to do and be, not simply watch …
(Lauris Edmond: ‘The Active Voice’ in Scenes from a Small City, Daphne Brasell Associates Press, 1994)
Blue rain from a clear sky.
Our world a cube of sunlight –
but to the south
the violet admonition of thunder.
(Alistair Te Ariki Campbell: ‘Blue Rain’ in The Dark Lord of Savaiki: Collected Poems, Hazard Press, 2003)
Then with the coming of darkness the
bay opened up beneath us, like a shell splashed
with beads of light.
(Marilyn Duckworth: A Barbarous Tongue, Hutchinson, 1963)
And now, as I grow in years,
I feel at times like an old
violin played on by a master
hand. …
(Patrick Lawlor: Old Wellington Days, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1959)
I live at the edge
of the universe,
like everybody else.
(Bill Manhire: ‘Milky Way Bar’ in Milky Way Bar, Victoria University Press, 1991)
The soundscape by Mark K. Johnson has six movements representing the atmospheres evoked by the six poems. The music is derived from the structural characteristics of lines from these New Zealand poems. The number of syllables in a word, the location of stressed syllables, the length of phrases, and the word order determine the musical notes and their durations. The upward and downward direction of the melody alternates between adjacent words, while the voices represent the lines of the poems. In this way, the poems’ texts are transformed into the soundscape itself, as well as the visionscape.
