Leah Bertrand

Sound recorded by Leah Bertrand and Ricky Covell; audio created by Leah Bertrand and video created by Ricky Covell in Fall 2017.

A thematization of residue, dregs-magic functions like a microscope, revealing streams of subterranean texture and movement, freeing some ordinary metal to reveal its internal world. Unlike the microscope, however, the work does not purport to depict a viewer-independent world – rather, it is the residue of the encounter itself which is interrogated – the bumping of the microphone, the texture of the chalk and charcoal. Its microscope is one of nakedness, its object, vision.

Dregs-Magic has been programmed at the 2018 MFA Media Arts Annual, National Students in Electronic Music Event (NSEME) 2019, and the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) 2019.