Carissa Olson Crowton & Camryn Rasmussen - 2024

Artist's Statement

The video “MAN” by Steve Cutts has greatly impacted how we view humanity’s impact on Earth. It depicts man’s relationship with the natural world starting 500,000 years ago to the present day. Animals are transformed from their natural form to clothing items and food, and trash begins to pile up on the ground. As the story progresses, industrial cities are built, and the main character is seen prancing around his “achievements” until he sits on his throne of trash after taking over the world. At the end of the film, aliens pull the Man from his throne of trash and stomp on him until he morphs into a welcome mat. From this film, we were inspired to create a composition on humanity’s impact on Earth’s finite resources. After deliberating, we moved forward with Carissa’s concept of using a percussion ensemble to tell this story.

“The Earth’s Harvest” is a composition that depicts the current impact of man on Earth. The piece acts as a symbol of humanity’s exponential growth that is breaking Earth’s planetary boundaries. We chose percussion because we wanted the composition to be unconventional and chaotic. We wanted to convey humanity’s lesser and larger impact and different points in time. This is because humanity’s impact has not always been as destructive as it is today. Percussion instruments have the ability to be played soft and timid or loud and overpowering. This brings out the duality of humanity’s ability to affect the Earth in a sustainable or unsustainable way. At some points in our history, our civilizational metabolism, or the amount of things we consume, has been within Earth’s planetary boundaries. The idea of the piece is to suggest that humanity can live well within Earth’s planetary boundaries by lowering our civilizational metabolism. In addition, the piece is meant to bring the listener’s attention to the fact that if we do not decrease our civilizational metabolism, the Earth will die, and therefore, so will we.

The final piece was performed by a percussion ensemble made up of a conductor and 3 performers playing a bass drum, snare drum, tambourine, coin rainstick, and triangle. Each instrument represents a different “character” to help tell the story of how humanity is currently affecting the Earth.

The first performer plays the bass drum and triangle. The bass drum represents the Earth’s heartbeat, symbolizing its health. The triangle represents a warning bell, symbolizing natural disasters which are warning signs of crossing planetary boundaries.

The second performer plays the tambourine and coin rainstick. The tambourine and coin rainstick represent economic activity (GDP) which is a figurative indicator of how much we are harvesting from the Earth.

The third performer plays the snare drum. The snare drum represents humanity’s infrastructure and resource extraction which is connected to GDP. This represents what we are literally harvesting from the Earth.

Finally, the conductor represents humanity’s focus and culture. In other words, it represents what we as a society choose to magnify and focus on.

In more technical vocabulary, exponential growth was used as the compositional method for this piece. For every 3 measures, the amount of attacks doubles, just as in an exponential growth model. Eventually, it rises to an amount physically unplayable. As a substitute for this unplayable section, the players are to make as much noise as possible. The piece follows the story that our civilizational metabolism was growing until COVID-19. During COVID-19, our growth declined significantly, which decreased the pressure we placed on Earth’s planetary boundaries. However, we have continued to grow after coming out of that period. As the chaos ensues, the music shows what will happen to us and the Earth if we continue on this path of growth.