Sound artist Kaitie Sly takes listeners on a sonic journey through the mind, December 9
The bassist-singer-songwriter’s Traversing the Mind is an immersive experience
Kaitie Sly.
Kaitie Sly presents An Evening With Kaitie Sly: Traversing the Mind in 4DSOUND + Syreim at Lobe Spatial Sound Studio on December 9 from 7 to 9 pm
KAITIE SLY’S MUSICAL career is multifaceted, to say the least. She was eight years old when she began performing as a pianist and vocalist across B.C.; adding bass to her repertoire, she has, over the last 20-plus years, appeared on stages all over Canada, the U.S., and the UK. The session musician and private instructor of upright and electric bass has a master’s in music from UVic, where she specialized in music technology. More recently, she has developed as a sound artist, earning an artist residency at MONOM Spatial Sound Studio in Berlin, Germany, and in 2021 holding a residency at Vancouver’s Lobe Spatial Sound Studio. The singer-songwriter, who also holds a degree in bass performance from the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, performs with and co-directs Vancouver afro-soul group Serengeti and has an experimental-rock project called Syreim, which has been featured in Rolling Stone.
When Sly performs at Lobe Studio this weekend, she’ll share her interactive soundscape composition, Traversing the Mind, in 4DSOUND as well as several other original compositions, the latter with a backing band.
Sly describes Traversing the Mind as a hybrid between a musical composition and a sound journey.
“I aimed to bring elements and instrumentation of sound healing and meditation into this piece, to go along with Lobe's mandate of using spatial sound immersion to assist in cognitive-behavioral therapies, meditation practices, and somatic therapies,” Sly says in an artist statement. “This piece features performances on singing bowls and gongs by sound healer Bonnie Starcevich; and Mongolian/Tuvan throat singing from internationally renowned throat singer and sound healer Matthew Kocel.”
To experience the piece, one listener will don an EEG (electroencephalogram) headset device, which records electrical activity produced by the brain. It’s complicated, but the device analyzes the listener's brainwave activity for the amount of alpha (relaxation) and beta (concentration, gamma [peak focus], theta [meditation], and delta [sleep]) frequency ranges.
Sly explains that brain waves in these frequency ranges are then mapped to different elements of the soundscape and will control and/or manipulate these elements based on the fluctuations in brain activity being received from the headset. The result is a literal and figurative journey through the mind. Although at times subtle, audience members will hear the soundscape being manipulated directly from the mind of the person wearing the EEG.
“Traversing the Mind starts us off in the external world, then it takes a deep dive into the internal world of the mind where the listener is taken on a sonic journey through the darkness and tranquility that exists within all of our minds,” Sly says. “The truth is, although I made this piece with meditation in mind, when we meditate, the process is not always pleasant. Sometimes, our thoughts are racing, sometimes different things come up while we sit - thoughts and emotions that we have to face. When you meditate, there is no longer anything to distract you from your true thoughts and feelings. And so you have to learn how to sit with your own mind. That’s why they call it a meditation ‘practice’. You will of course, encounter moments of tranquility in your meditation sometimes too and this piece seeks to reflect this whole process and to reflect the complexity of the human mind. But the world of the mind is infinitely complex. Thus there are elements of dissonance and consonance. Peace and hostility.”
Syreim, meanwhile, stands for Symbolic. Real. Imaginary. Sly on bass and lead vocals will be joined by guitarist Johannes Grames, acoustic guitarist Seb Chamney, drummer Chris Couto, and backing vocalist Tissa Rahim.
More information is here.
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