Piper (Recordings from Home), 2025
In Piper (Recordings from Home), THIRTYMINUTES collaborated with Marla Hlady to explore the capabilities of a new instrument programmed to play a shared collection of recordings captured around each of their homes. Piper (Recordings from Home) began with a shared interest in found sounds and field recordings. From their respective cities—Hlady in Toronto, Liam Ross Gibson in Nanaimo (both Canada), Aliayta Foon-Dancoes in London, and Paul Deighton MacIntyre in Cambridge (both UK)—they gathered small recordings: incidental sounds, passing noises, textures of our environments. Hlady then designed and built Piper, a handheld instrument with sixteen buttons, internal speakers, and no fixed rules. Without a clear front or back, and with no “correct” way to hold or play it, the instrument offered a tactile, playful means of exploring our database of sounds.
Guided by a graphic score, they each recorded their parts remotely, each with their own instrument copy of Piper. These recordings—video and audio—are stitched together into a single performance that collapses the distance between them.
Time becomes porous. Disembodied sounds are recontextualized. As such, Piper is a vessel for shared experience, a point of contact, and a way of reaching across space. Piper (Recordings from Home) is less a composition than a confluence—a composite moment made from many.
See also: Piper (Instrument), 2022; Piper (Nottawasaga Bay 1 & 2), 2022
