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Moses Sumney

Fall Creek

-86.14298, 39.810928

Fall Creek, one of the six waterways in Indianapolis, has maintained a lot of its natural beauty over the years, even though it is surrounded by noise pollution from the street traffic. It also suffers from the direct insertion of the city’s sewage into its waters. Singer-songwriter Moses Sumney sought to capture the friction between the waterway’s inherent, natural qualities and the invasive human elements that have affected it over time. Fall Creek commences with a folk-like essence captured through the use of a single acoustic guitar and Sumney’s vocals. Halfway through the score, electronic elements enter to represent modernity and the lyrics bid warning that it will be “missed when it ceases to flow.” The wordless bridge section that follows acts as an aural time lapse to capture the duration of decades rolling by, and how human presence is increasingly disturbing the creek’s ecosystem. Fall Creek, like the actual creek itself, is a poetic amalgamation of elements that are acoustic, technological, and natural — sometimes seamless, sometimes chaotic.

• Duration: 04:00

• Year: 2015

• Commissioned: National Science Foundation