A ‘night camera’ is an imaginary listening aid that like an infrared scanner allows one to probe regions lying beyond the common, everyday frame of experience. Each scene of the composition Night Camera is situated in its own identifiable, and rather ordinary, environmental setting. The listener’s journey is a quest for worlds existing within the territory of the ordinary. As Don Ihde puts it in Listening and Voice, “listening begins with the ordinary, by proximately working its way into what is as yet unheard.”

Each scene unfolds inside a recording from the World Soundscape Collection housed at Simon Fraser University.

Night Camera premiered on December 11, 1993 at the Western Front in Vancouver during Journées Électro-Radio Days (JERD). Special thanks to the individuals who made the recordings for the World Soundscape Collection, and to Barry Truax for his critical and technical support through the compositional process.

Premiere

• December 11, 1993, Journées Électro-Radio Days: 5 — Vancouver CFRO 102.7 FM, Western Front, Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada)