Michael Futreal, musician and multimedia artist

A Long String of Nows

UPDATE:
Several excerpts from "A Long String of Nows" are included on 2020 album Piper at the Gates of Dusk.

The Background

Visual artists Ben Moss and Jeormie Journell commissioned me to create a soundtrack to accompany their Artspace Shreveport exhibit, On the Margins, running from January 25 through February 23, 2019.

As Jeormie and Ben created their murals that visually referenced, respectively, 1950s picture book and 1970s comic book aesthetics, I decided to sonically reference the kind of 16mm educational films we grew up with in the 1970s. Researching this ephemera on archive.org, I became enthralled with The Meaning of Time in Science, from which I sampled a few narrative moments as inspiration for "A Long String of Nows", a new piece featuring chromatic dulcimer, overtone flute, and electric gourd that I would compose and record while Jeormie and Ben painted.

Along with the 20+ minute "A Long String of Nows," I also reworked another unreleased piece together for the show as "Imbued with the Power," and I programmed these two together with a variety of existing recordings mostly from my ARNA residency and my scores for The Court of King Skebal and Counting for Thunder. The result: an hour long soundscape looping in the room during the exhibit.

served from michaelfutreal.com