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Container or music series
The Nature of Things
Wellington 2019
Neil Aldridge & Charlotte Crichton
The Nature of Things' is a fifteen-minute sensory experience composed at Earthskin. Enveloping the audience in an aural and visual meditation, the work explores continuities and discontinuities between environments in India and Aotearoa — seemingly a world apart, yet both an integral part of the same biosphere. It signals notions of our changed and changing relationship with the natural world and our collective global responsibilities towards the environment and each other.
It incorporates: manipulated acoustic instruments; environmental field recordings from India and New Zealand; spectrograms (unique fingerprints of these recordings); fused with still and moving images. Large-scale, dream-like images radiate from the darkness immersing the audience in imaginary landscapes of textured light and sound. In this context, time and space combine to invite the audience to contemplate the precarious tensions and paradoxes, expressed through our current symbiotic relationship with the natural world.
You are welcome to come in at any time, but The Nature of Things starts on the hour and every fifteen minutes thereafter.
Neil Aldridge is a sonic artist working with music and environmental recordings. He spent fifteen years in the music industry in London followed by ten years in the film industry in Wellington before moving into academia. He has created work for the London Aquarium and more recently exhibited a long-form process-music composition. In 2018, he completed a month-long artist’s residency to compose, record, and craft the audio component of ‘The Nature of Things’.
Charlotte Crichton is a mixed-media artist working in painting and installation. Her work has been exhibited in public and dealer galleries in New Zealand. She has a BFA (film) from Ilam, Canterbury University, and is currently undertaking a Masters in Climate Change Science and Policy at Victoria University of Wellington. Her background in museums and oral history informs her experiential art practice. Concerned with narrative in a conceptual and abstract form, observations from the real transform into interpretations of the essence.
Charlotte and Neil are very grateful to:
Earthskin, Nancy King, Massey University, Lars Vandrey, Suzanne & Paul Crichton, Bronwen & Sam Newton, Peter Heller & Tara Harper (US), Chris & Ruth Coles (UK), Nicola Pauling & John Foreman, Louise Parkin & Pete Edge, Brian & Yvonne Pauling, Helmich de Vries & Charlotte Sloet van Oldruitenborgh & Frederik Hendrik Sloet van Oldruitenborgh (Holland), Polly McKinnon & Ryan Cole(US), Mike Hogan & Suz Jessop (India), Tony & Julie Pearse, Keith and Helen Ferguson, Gerda Leenards & Lindsay Missen, Trish Sarr & Keith Johnston, Georgina Barber and Tim Ward, Elspeth Terry, Carey Young and Chris Bleackley, Simon Terry, Alejandro Sepulveda
Supported by Wellington City Council Public Art Fund
