2020 AR - PETE M. WYER
iForest by Pete M. Wyer
Artist Residency - July 10 to September 28, 2020
In year seven of our artist residency, Manitoga's woodland forest came alive with Pete M. Wyer's iForest - an immersive, multi-sensory sound installation. Wright routinely walked his seventy-five acres of woodlands over many years, observing, mapping and refining Manitoga’s footpaths and trails and placing his house and studio as part of a mindful and orchestrated movement through and dialogue with nature. Near the House and Studio, Wright designed the Winter Walk to lead east through a woodland bathed in morning light. An offshoot of the path brought visitors to Pete M. Wyer’s iForest within Wright’s theatrical setting of towering boulders and framed views of the Hudson River Valley. Over twenty-four audio speakers featured a 72-voice choir, The Crossing of Philadelphia, singing primarily in the indigenous Mohawk language, a western response to the Mohawk Thanksgiving Ceremony. Originally created for a forest in the Adirondacks, Wyer’s composition I Walk Towards Myself tells a story through music, echoing voices from thousands of years past who thanked every part of Nature. “Each person will experience the work differently depending on where they are walking, the weather, and the time of day. My hope in creating this piece is that people will have a deeper sense of connection to nature, to themselves, and to others because we are all part of nature. When we have that empathy, there is no longer us and them because they are us. This matters greatly because it affects the way we make decisions and how we view the world.”
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The iForest (or Immersive Forest) is Pete M Wyer’s large scale immersive sound installation. It began in 2005 as part of a research project at Portsmouth University under the title ‘The iPod Forest’. Since then, Pete M Wyer’s research and development in immersive sound has led to the creation a raft of new works that include new ways of scoring, creating and experiencing music. As well as conventional items such as pitch, rhythm, tone and dynamic, scores use spatiality as a component, mapping the trajectory of sounds that move through space. This makes for a unique way of writing and experiencing music. Fundamental to each iForest is a response to environment. Every space has its own acoustic ecology as well as its ecosystems and countless hidden stories. Great emphasis is placed on creating compositions that ‘participate’ with the environment. Many iForests feature the human voice because humans are a part of the natural world. iForests aim to create a deeper connection for visitors, a reminder that we are not simply external observers - we are part of an intricate and complex web of interaction.
ABOUT PETE M. WYER
Pete M. Wyer is a composer and musician from England with an interest in storytelling and innovation. He has created scores for the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Juilliard, the orchestra of Welsh National Opera, The Crossing, BBC Television and the Royal Opera House as well as creating seven operas and music theatre works. His immersive installation The iForest opened in a permanent home at The Wild Center in the Adirondacks in 2017. Other iForests have been created for the Winter Garden (2016) and Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan (2018) and Descano Gardens in Los Angeles (2020).
Footage from the iForest at Russel Wright Center at Manitoga, summer 2020. This excerpt from Niá wen (which is itself an excerpt from a larger piece, 'I Walk Towards Myself') is a 'hymn of thanks' to the natural world.
2020 ARTIST RESIDENCY HOST COMMITTEE
Lead Sponsors / David McAlpin & Nanci Heller McAlpin, Marilyn & Jim Simons
Sponsors / Tom Krizmanic, Gary & Laura Maurer
Supporters / Allison Cross & Henry Nye, Doug & Ellen DeNicola, David Diamond & Karen Zukowski, Lyn & John Fischbach, Melissa Meyers & Wilbur Foster, Fred & Anne Osborn, Frederic C. Rich, Bill Roos & Scott Olsen, Jonathan and Diana Rose
Artist Residency Program support also provided by the Manitoga Leadership Council and Design Circle, Sarah Little Turnbull Foundation, Ralph E. Ogden Foundation, PCLB Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Originally commissioned by and for The Wild Center, Tupper Lake, New York; Mohawk translation by Amalli Nalli with special thanks to Kamala Cesar & Chief Elder Tom Porter; The Crossing conducted by Donald Nally; Engineering by Paul Vasquez in Philadelphia and Jim Unwin in London.
Photos from top: Rick Godin - The Wild Center; iForest prototype; an early written score by Pete M. Wyer.