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Piper (Recordings from Home)
Video with sound, 6:07 duration, 2025
In Piper (Recordings from Home), we explore the capabilities of a new instrument programmed to play a shared collection of recordings captured around each of our homes.
A collaboration with artist Marla Hlady, Piper (Recordings from Home) began with a shared interest in found sounds and field recordings. From our respective cities — Marla in Toronto, Liam in Nanaimo (both Canada), Aliayta in London, and Paul in Cambridge (both UK) — we gathered small recordings: incidental sounds, passing noise, textures of our environments.
Marla then designed and built Piper, a handheld instrument with sixteen buttons, internal speakers, and no fixed rules. Without a clear front or back, and with no “correct” way to hold or play it, the instrument offered a tactile, playful means of exploring our database of sounds.
Guided by a graphic score, we each recorded our parts remotely, each with our own copy of Piper. These recordings — video and audio — are stitched together into a single performance that collapses the distances between us. Time becomes porous. Disembodied sounds are recontextualized.
As such, Piper is a vessel for shared experience, a point of contact, and a way of reaching across space. Piper (Recordings from Home) is less a composition than a confluence — a composite moment made from many.
Performed by THIRTYMINUTES and Marla Hlady
Instruments by Marla Hlady
Sound and video by THIRTYMINUTES
Additional video editing and consulting by Peppercorn Imagine Studio
Audio mastering by Pouya Hamidi
In Piper (Recordings from Home), we explore the capabilities of a new instrument programmed to play a shared collection of recordings captured around each of our homes.
A collaboration with artist Marla Hlady, Piper (Recordings from Home) began with a shared interest in found sounds and field recordings. From our respective cities — Marla in Toronto, Liam in Nanaimo (both Canada), Aliayta in London, and Paul in Cambridge (both UK) — we gathered small recordings: incidental sounds, passing noise, textures of our environments.
Marla then designed and built Piper, a handheld instrument with sixteen buttons, internal speakers, and no fixed rules. Without a clear front or back, and with no “correct” way to hold or play it, the instrument offered a tactile, playful means of exploring our database of sounds.
Guided by a graphic score, we each recorded our parts remotely, each with our own copy of Piper. These recordings — video and audio — are stitched together into a single performance that collapses the distances between us. Time becomes porous. Disembodied sounds are recontextualized.
As such, Piper is a vessel for shared experience, a point of contact, and a way of reaching across space. Piper (Recordings from Home) is less a composition than a confluence — a composite moment made from many.
Performed by THIRTYMINUTES and Marla Hlady
Instruments by Marla Hlady
Sound and video by THIRTYMINUTES
Additional video editing and consulting by Peppercorn Imagine Studio
Audio mastering by Pouya Hamidi
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