Soft Verges, created by Brandon-based cellists Leanne Zacharias and Ariadna Ortega Torres, explores the question: What does it mean to be modular? The sound-art piece premiered at the sixth edition of Prairie Wires Modular’s Festival of Electronic Sound, which centres around modular synthesizers, meaning its stages are usually packed with tables of equipment sprouting tangles of rainbow-coloured cables. Zacharias and Ortega Torres, however, approached the theme from a more conceptual angle, with a series of what they described as “sonic and visual stations that act as modules in a grand structure.”
The artists explored relationships between these stations in a way that was both improvisatory and intentional as they moved around the room, triggering their electronic and acoustic “modules” in different combinations: murmuring into a microphone; bowing a cello lying on a table; activating an electric metronome; clicking the sliding weight of another metronome up and down its pendulum arm; adjusting the settings on an effects pedal chain; working the keys of a prepared piano; reading aloud a snippet of poetry; pulling and snapping a bass drum skin with a motion not unlike an early Moog player reaching overhead to swiftly patch a cable from one input to another.
These thoughtfully curated components interacted to create soundscapes characterized by echoes and ticks, gentle drones, and playful auditory gestures, evoking impressions of, perhaps, a reverberantly dripping cave, distant conversation down a twilit street, or a watery sonic expanse.
The installation’s visual and spatial aspects accentuated the soft palette; the crowd sat in near darkness in a semicircle overlapping the musical workspace while a veiled stage light and overhead projector provided dusty pink illumination, capturing the performers’ silhouettes against a computer screen or shadowy reflections in a partially shrouded mirror. Both the seating arrangement and the ambiance lent to the sense of delicateness and confluence denoted in the piece’s title.
As sounds and scenic elements intermingled, an immersive experimental artwork emerged: inquisitive, fluid, and softly adventurous.
AVA GLENDINNING is a Winnipeg-based musician, writer, and editor. She reviews music for Cups N Cakes, has contributed to Reductress, and published her first novel, Bukowski’s Broken Family Band, in 2024. She plays guitar with her indie trio Bicycle Face and other groups and works as the managing editor for CV2 Magazine.