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John Kannenberg
Autumn Enso

Album MY 2005 on Why Not Ltd label
Electronic (Experimental, Ambient)

Composed, performed and produced 2003-2005. Created on a 12″ 867MHz Powerbook G4 using Reason 2.0, Peak 3.0 and Soundtrack 1.0. Sound sources: autumn leaves, rice paper, snare drum, hi-hat, crash + ride cymbals, synthesis, Kaoss pad. « Autumn Enso » began as a visual idea. In the winter of 2003, I attended an exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago entitled « Visual Mantras: Meditative Traditions in Japanese Buddhist Art » and was particularly struck by two pieces in the exhibition. « Sunrise Enso, » a folding fan painted by Nakahara Nantenbo in 1920, and especially « Fire Enso, » a hanging scroll painted by Setsudo Joen in the late 18th century, were simplecalligraphic designs that incorporated the enso, a stark black circle of ink that became one of the most important visual symbols in zen artwork. Embodying many facetrs of zen philosophy, the enso makes reference to the cycle of birth, death and reincarnation; the cyclical nature of the seasons; the shape of the planets; and the curved space of the cosmos. Around the same time I had been thinking about making some visual pieces using autumn leaves. After seeing the enso brush paintings in the exhibition, I decided to make an enso out of autumn leaves. It wasn’t until I decided that the leaves should be placed in a circle around the edge of a snare drum that I began to think of ways this concept could become the basis for a sound piece. I decided to create the leaf enso as part of a recording session in my studio, and decided to document the process with photographs and audio recordings. I began with a starkly lit snare drum. Slowly, I placed a circle of autumn leaves, gathered from the sidewalk outside my home, around its outer edge. I then placed a piece of rice paper on top of the leaves and made a charcoal rubbing. The four photographs that documented this process became the basis for a visual work entitled « Autumn Enso ». The pieces all make use of low frequencies, giving them a degraded, « static » sound which is meant to represent the decay of autumn – a nod to another Japanese aesthetic, wabi-sabi, which celebrates the beauty of imperfection and impermanence. (John Kannenberg)

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