Dustin Hamman
Dustin Hamman is a musician, writer, performer and activist residing in Silver City, NM. He primarily creates songs and performs them live either solo (under his own name) or with one of his two bands (“Run On Sentence” & “No! Wait, Yes!”). He is currently writing a screenplay and working to expand the ways in which his music and other creative talents intermingle with various aspects of the world.
I’ve had the good fortune to find myself in Green River, Utah on many occasions. Since about 2010, I’ve been passing through an average of 2-3 times a year. A day here, a night there, a quick bite at the local tavern or a nice summer dip in the Green River to cool off in the middle of a long drive from somewhere to somewhere else. Every time, I wonder, “what’s it really like?”
Being a touring musician most of the time, I have similar relationships with many towns and I always say I’m going to return to them and spend more time getting to know them... but I rarely do. The emerging artist fellowship at Epicenter gave me an opportunity to finally follow through. As a result, I was able to explore my own creative desires amidst the Green River area’s unique landscape and community, and it was really enjoyable and deceptively productive.
I say deceptively because it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how I spent my time since I did such a wide variety of things. Because I’ve identified as a musician for so long, I’ve allowed some of my other interests to fall to the wayside, so it felt appropriate to really dive into the “emerging” part of the “emerging artist fellowship”. I gave myself permission to follow whatever creative whims came to me and didn’t worry too much about whether what I was doing really fit with my vision of myself as an artist or with the other things I was working on at the time. I focused instead on allowing the area to guide me to new endeavors.
In preparation, I planted a few seeds in my own psyche before arriving. The root that took the strongest hold was a quote from Nikola Tesla: “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” This became my mantra, and a concept that permeated my experience at every turn.
Another concept that found its way into my work is the idea of a palimpsest.
In art terms, a palimpsest is described as “anything having diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath its surface...”.
This stood out to me, particularly as I contemplated the natural surroundings.
One can clearly see the layering effects of the earth's formative process, while the crumbled stone, spread out in undulating wave forms along the base of the cliffs, are a constant reminder of the degenerative nature of all things. This came up again when I began to investigate the rock art in nearby canyons, which had originally been drawn long ago by the Fremont or Ute peoples. Many of these had been altered over the years by passers by, however. Some had been traced over with chalk, others shot with bullets, and some simply served as inspiration for others to make their mark elsewhere on the same panel. I’m not sure that this necessarily qualifies as a “palimpsest”, but thinking about the concept changed the way I thought about my surroundings.
I began to think about the idea of “seeing through” to the origin of a thing or an idea. I began to think about layers and how they are built and perceived and stripped away and how the amalgamation of layers creates a different experience than any single layer would on its own. I made little animation toys like thaumatropes:
I spent time in canyons and large, abandoned buildings, exploring the natural delay and reverberations of audio in various spaces--- always thinking about frequency and vibration!
Around this time, I was introduced by a piece of audio created by Alvin Lucier entitled, “I Am Sitting in a Room”, in which he speaks into a microphone and records the sound of his voice playing into the room. He then plays the recording back into the room and records that. He then plays the recording of the recording and records that... and so on... The original audio gradually morphs into new, conglomerate tones that become a sort of drone with only the rhythmic ghost of the original speech poking through. This led me to start a series called “Erosion”, which became the main focus of my residency.
The project involves reversing Lucier’s concept so that one begins by hearing a very amorphous sound which gradually takes shape as the layers of reverb and resonance are stripped away until only the original message remains. I did a lot of these in the Epicenter building itself, but also explored using a mobile recording setup to attempt to capture the resonant frequencies of other buildings and caverns and canyons in nature as well. Unfortunately the few opportunities I had to experiment with the mobile rig in natural settings did not produce very pleasing results, but it was fun and informative nonetheless.
One day I went out to Black Dragon Canyon and really spent a lot of time singing and just listening to the delay and decay of my own voice bouncing off the canyon walls. I explored some caves and pictographs and was reminded of one local’s theory on pictograph panels in the area. Many of them look otherworldly in nature and this person believed that the locations of those panels might be physical locations that allowed for such unique acoustics as to potentially help people achieve altered states through sound. This concept fits nicely into my thoughts on energy, frequency and vibration, but I can’t say I had any transcendental experiences whilst singing in those locations... perhaps I never hit the proper frequency, or wasn’t committed enough to the process (in achieving altered states without drugs, it seems helpful to deprive yourself of sleep and food or something along those lines... which I did not do in this case). I did, however, find it very interesting how different frequencies resonated more or less powerfully in certain locations, and that tied nicely into my “Erosion” experiments.
In addition to thinking about and experimenting with frequency and vibration, I also had the pleasure of engaging in the community in various ways, although I wasn’t the only outsider. The emerging fellowship is sort of a “partner” affair, in that there are two fellows operating at the same time. My cohort Leah Danze and I spent a lot of time exploring the area together and having lovely discussions about our processes and our work. Once a week, we taught music and art to local kids during an after school program. We also had the extra good fortune of being in residence for “Melon Days” and helping out with Epicenter’s booth for what I understand to be the biggest festival of the year. We carved melons, made thaumatropes, and even got to see a locally made slasher film projected onto the shed wall at Epicenter.
