Study for Human-made Bird Calls and Microphone out a Moving Car Window

Made from clay, wood, or bone, Bird calls, friction or wind activated, create layers of texture modulated by filtered recording of driving through the desert at various speeds on a windy day with a microphone aimed out the window. My hope is that the static and artificial bird sounds appear to be in motion when foregrounded against a wind that is also fabricated.
– Raven Chacon

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, educator and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, and as part of the indigenous collective Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at the Whitney Biennial, Documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP), where he has taught hundreds of American Indian high-school students on reservations in the Southwest. He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. In 2019, he composed (Bury Me) Where The Lightning [Will] Never Find Me for bass clarinet, percussion, violin, and cello (commissioned by Arraymusic) and Horse Notations, for flute, string quartet, and two hand drums (commissioned by Oregon East Symphony).