Daniela Cinel O'Fee

Surfacing

2022

Video

25 minutes

Surfacing is a solo soundwalk performance examining settler listening positionality on topographies within the unceded lands of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc through unexpected sculptural interventions using deconstructed piano parts and obsolete media artifacts as symbolic repatriation of these materials to their terrestrial resonance. (Image: piano string belt worn in the video)

Commissioned by Vancouver New Music for Walking Festival of Sound, Seoul-Vancouver, 2022

Surfacing was screened at my BC Culture Days event "Culture Ecologies of Sound and Pace: Highlights from Walking Festival of Sound 2022" on the Thompson Rivers University campus before its October 20 premiere online.

Murmurings and Modulations: Scoring the Kamloops Soundscape

2021

30 minute audio soundwalk

This through-composed tone poem was commissioned by the Kamloops Art Gallery as a public engagement project during Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts which asks, “How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization?” The soundwalk is activated by my event score: “As the rivers converge through this land, step into its sonic flow. Move among the shifted and hidden sounds feeling resonant frequencies from all dimensions to perform your creative act of listening.”

Murmurings and Modulations.mp3

Bark Score

2021

1 minute video on loop

When snowshoeing in the forest on the edge of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, I found a piece of bark that had left its tree. I used a metal necklace and a tennis ball inside of my piano to interpret this nature score.

TRANSMISSIONS: SONIC IMPROVISATIONS ON THE SCULPTURES OF JEFFREY RUBINOFF

Thee audio works diffused in situe

Company of Ideas Forum 2023

Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park Hornby Island

"Intergalactic researchers scanning the planet have identified the ancestral territory of the K'ómoks, Wei Wai Kum, We Wai Kai, Tla'amin and the Homalco people also known as Hornby Island where a series of abstract metal formations are periodically visited by humans. Attempting to develop a method of earthly communication, the researchers decode the structures to activate sonic material reflecting their varied form, texture, rhythm, and tonality. The transmissions of approximately 2 to 3 minutes in duration are created from discarded media machines and instruments mined from terrestrial landfills".

The works were re-presented for the public in August 2024 during the Park's Sound Art Diffusion Series. The 2 day residency was also to create Coaxial: Collaborative Sound Exploration and Field Recordings in collaboration with artist Jess Conn-Potegal.

Image of Rubinoff Series 4 Number 8: S. Petrov

Graphic score of hydrophone underwater listening at Tribune Bay, Hornby Island

Sketchbook journal entry

Coaxial: Collaborative Sound Exploration and Field Recordings

2024

Chance Encounters for Prepared Turntable

2018

3D Interactive Intermedia Installation

Wood logs, wood branches, turntable, fibreboard, stones, hemp cord, glue, music stand, paper score, extension cord, 6 foot square floor space with electric power from standard floor or wall outlet. The bow may be attached to a wall or rest on a log.

Participants are invited to perform the soundscape prompted by the score:

“See and hear the suspended stone’s random dance across the surface while taking turns holding the bow with or without a partner.”

Exhibited in Sound Machines at Salmon Arm Gallery, 2021.

Environmental Listening Headsets

2018

3D Sculptures

birch veneer, leather, glue, orange oil, beeswax, twine

8 (H10” W17” D9”)

While the amplification capabilities of the headsets are somewhat minimal and their appearance conceptual, their purpose parallels how binoculars are used on a hike or tour. A suspension system using copper piano strings is under development.

The prototype (2017) along with photo documentation of my performative soundwalk “Tuning in, Tuning out for Solo Listener” are in the permanent collection at Thompson Rivers University.

It was also exhibited in Formation Inspiration at Salmon Arm Gallery, 2018

Tuning Fork

2017

3D Sculpture

wood, wax

H58” W8” D2.3”

Replicating a 659 Hz (E) metal model, my design represents a proportional enlargement by nine and resonates at approximately the same pitch when struck.

Exhibited in Midwinter Objects at Thompson Rivers University Gallery, 2018

Code…Encode…Decode: A Subjective Soundwalk

2020

4 (H12” W7” D5”)

Scanning the QR codes on mobile devices, participants access mp3 soundscape recordings composed from site-specific field recordings, archival cassette recordings, extended piano techniques, obsolete media experiments and found sound. These illuminated “sound capsules” were installed at four locations on a walkable/accessible route in Kamloops, BC as a Culture Days event. As a recipient of the Culture Days Ambassador award in 2015, I am inspired to continue creating events for each year’s program of this national culture movement.

Shelter

2019

3D sculpture

plywood, glue, wax and dislocated piano hammers

2 (H43” W84” D22”)

I have over 500 piano hammers that can be piled on the floor surrounded or covered by these panels. The maquettes are useful in considering different orientations while the panels are in storage. Repurposing deconstructed parts of my piano is a way for me to dismantle settler modes of music making toward the repatriation of mined ores, animal fiber and wood as land-based vibratory materials.

Serendipitus Morphis

2017

3D Sculpture

piano hammers and piano string

H”15 W47” D3”

In contrast to their taught confinement in a musical instrument, the piano hammers evoke a return to their forest and animal origins for a more organic flow. As an aging pianist, this precariously balanced creature in a state of flux is symbolic of my fresh transition into the visual arts.

Exhibited in Formation Inspiration at Salmon Arm Gallery, 2018

Suspension

2019

3D tape loop installation with live reel to reel audio

Vintage reel to reel tape machines, dual channel analog piano recording on tape loops, magnetic tape, electric fan, instrument cases, music stands and graphic score.

Rewind

2017

3D Installation

cast of cassette tape, magnetic tape, wood, paint, headset

mp3 player with 4:47 minute audio loop

H12” W9.5” D7”

The digital recording is the sound of two cassette machines rewinding, forwarding, loading and unloading of the cassette cartridge.

Exhibited at Thompson Rivers University gallery, 2017

The Listener

2018

3D Installation

Environmental Listening Headset (wood veneer, leather, orange oil beeswax)

Sound Score Journal (ink drawings)

Found Objects (vintage suitcase, wool blanket, leather boots, wood chair)

H37” W17” D25”

Inviting a view into a private collection of personal articles, The Listener combines familiar objects of passage with more obscure items that form the identity of an imagined persona who wears the environmental listening headset on soundwalks to amplify ambient sound and maps sonic experiences through soundscape drawings in the journal.

Exhibited in Privacy Settings at the REpublic Gallery of Kamloops, 2018

A Concise Guide to Euphonium Fundamentals

2018

3D Installation

euphonium, fabric objects, rubber, foam, paracord, cinder blocks

(an alternative to cinder blocks would be a heavy log)

If too heavy for a suspension system, this work may be displayed on the floor up against a wall.

H31” W26” D15”

Weight: 14lb

Fanfare for Alarum

2022

Two minute duration audio on loop

This soundscape composition amplifies multiple freight train horns resonating from different directions in the natural valley amphitheatre of Kamloops on traditional and unceded territory of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc.

The work was part of a 4-channel outdoor installation on the campus of Newcastle University

in the immersive A Space for Sound/The Arches Sound Project in July 2022. It was also transported into the rain forest of the Sunshine Coast, BC in August 2022 for an adjunct Walking Festival of Sound event and video.

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