CYPRESS TRILOGY (2010)

Cypress Trilogy is a site-specific interactive performance installation by Leah Barclay commissioned for the Sunshine Coast Council TreeLine initiative—one of Australia’s most ambitious green art projects. This ephemeral work features national and international artists in an innovative performance of sound, light and imagery inspired by the Noosa Biosphere Reserve.

Cypress Trilogy opens with a collaboration between Lyndon Davis, Leah Barclay and the Gubbi Gubbi Dance group on the banks of the Noosa River. This is followed by the three movements of Cypress Trilogy ‘Dusk, Darkness and Dawn’ performed inside the Gallery with live visuals from James Muller intertwining with Barclay’s signature environmental soundscapes recorded in the Noosa Biosphere.

The performance provides a rich tapestry of local history abstracted through the soundscape and features pioneering Korean taegum artist Hyelim Kim and virtuoso guitarist Anthony Garcia. Performance artists Jeremy Neideck and Mary Eggleston provide another rich layer for this interactive work.

New notational methods have been developed for Cypress Trilogy based on the textures and shapes of trees, particularly the coastal cypress pine. Lines and shapes extracted from these images have been used to generate gestures, rhythms and sonic filters in the creative process of this work. All of the electronic sounds heard in Cypress Trilogy have been processed with images of trees which appear in elusive fragments throughout the imagery.

Cypress Trilogy is an ephemeral collaboration with creative input from all the artists involved. The work is scored graphically and encourages real time audio-visual dialogue. At some points the musicians are responding to the electronics and live visuals and other points the electronics will respond to real time improvisations from the other artists. Cypress Trilogy concludes with the sounds evolving in the Sonic Babylon Installation with projections and lighting set amongst the trees and the Noosa River.