Tipping Point

A tipping point is the point at which a phenomenon moves from a slow progression to a sudden, explosive change, as if tipping to one side. With climate change becoming more pronounced by the day, one of the most talked-about key phrases in the scientific community is "climate change, the point of no return has already been passed." We are either witnessing irreversible changes to the climate system, or we are very close to it, and we may have already passed the tipping point caused by climate change.

 

I wanted to musically represent the idea of something that is already out of control, or out of control, through a sonic exploration of what it means to be out of control. Because my thoughts on climate change go in so many different directions, I focused on how I've been thinking about and acting on climate change before I started sketching out ideas for the song in order to find a connection to what I was actually experiencing.

 

Just as the Earth sends us periodic warnings through environmental disasters, sometimes small, sometimes catastrophic, I wanted to create a sense of unease in the piece, sometimes small, sometimes large, as if an ambulance to protect the Earth were sirening regularly, and I wanted to change and develop the musical idea so that the listener, directly or indirectly, could experience the urgency of the Earth's situation due to climate change sonically.

 

I think it was relatively difficult to find a connection between the message I was thinking about and the musical material, or sound, while working on the piece. This is a difficulty I always face at the beginning of a piece, not just this one, and it seems to present a difficult problem whenever I start working on a piece, as one ego, which wants to directly convey the message I have been thinking and drawing to the listener, and another ego, which wants to metaphorically conceal my ideas through music as much as possible, hiding them in a fog.

 

I think that the scales and rhythms that make up music, which are directly related to science and mathematics, as well as the projection through poetic metaphors, share fundamental roots in science, especially psychology. Even the emotions that we feel as listeners can be analysed through psychological analysis in the 21st century, and contemporary composers tend to work with these themes as well, so it's like two different disciplines in dialogue.

 

Above all, I think climate change is something that is very close to our lives, and it was a meaningful work for me because I have been indirectly involved in a situation where Western European countries, especially Northern Europe, have been paying close attention to climate change since about 15 or 20 years ago, and there has been a constant social movement, including discussions on how countries, companies, and civil society organisations should deal with it.