Olga Bell - Voluntary Remediation by Sound Expeditions

Olga Bell • “Voluntary Remediation”

Pleasant Run, one of Indianapolis’s six waterways, is a devastating environmental story of the rapid onset of industry and its environmental fallout. This reality lives alongside the simultaneously passionate, prideful, and painful histories that are a reality for many in Indianapolis. Olga Bell is conceptual in her approach to music and creates work at the intersection of chamber/classical and electronic music. Using data collected from secondary sources found using Google Earth, Youtube.com, and map searches, Voluntary Remediation captures a sensory interpretation of Pleasant Run with a track that asks: “Is Pleasant Run a pleasant place?” Snippets from a local newscast and the Coke Plant imposes a sonic “interruption” of recordings from the creek environment. These effects are followed by a listing out of its chemical pollutants, read aloud over an abrupt shift in the music. The gurgling synth at the end of the track is effectively Bell’s way of “playing” a water quality data set from the Marion County Health Department. Voluntary Remediation uses sounds to track historical interruptions as an urgent call to action for the remediation of polluted and abused waterways.

GPS Location: 39.752333, -86.118080
Duration: 08:08
Year: 2015
Commissioned as one of six original music pieces of the Streamlines project, funded by the National Science Foundation.

Credits:
Album art by Oliver Blank
Album image by Tad Fruits

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1323117 and supported by subaward 001096-1213TCDRLD.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

For more information visit http://streamlines.org

http://bellinspace.com/