playing the landscape
“At your own convenience” pre-academic pan playing for the Severn River Project…..2005 - 7
Playing the landscape developed from the actions and process of walking through the environment, paying attention to sounds as well as visuals. It wasn’t until I was on a 2009 walk (or misguide) with mythogeographer Phil Smith that I created a new interruption. I discovered some public art that made produced beautiful musical notes, when struck with a length of tree branch. Three tall bakelite cylinders, standing in a grassy area of Manchester’s city centre, looked like part of an electricity generator, and resounded as bells when I ‘played’ them with tree branches.
This was the start of creating further interruptions in public space, with the idea of interacting with public art, that is normally only looked at, in new ways - by listening to its sounds in open space. The works and ideas mutated and morphed through playing street furniture (lamposts, bollards, railings - thank you and respect to Francis Alys) to sounding buildings and larger structures. At that time I moved from the city of Bristol to the West Welsh countryside and began to take particular notice of the difference in soundscapes.
From 2010 - 2013 I walked the streets of Llandysul, Ceredigion, documenting and creating work from my excavations and interrogations: from these I wrote a book chapter “Walking with Ghosts” (2011) in Ineffable Intervals, Bristol: Wild Conversations Press; I created a video “Free Range Eggs and Chutney” (2103) , Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/69477449, which compiled interviews, conversations and personal anecdotes from local residents around the theme of whether Llandysul was a village or a town. I was invited to present this in performance at the 2013 Emotional Geographies Conference in Groningen, Netherlands.
In 2014 I was invited by musician and academic, Pete Stacey, to create a soundwork in my village, Llandysul, Ceredigion as part of the Mapsain/Soundmapping project funded by Community Music Wales. I knew the place to start: the decommissioned telephone exchange. Together with musician, Heather Summers, and performing as hSquared, I created a re-sounding of the building using our hands, xylophone beaters of different sizes, sticks, twigs and metal b-b-q skewers. We spent an hour testing and then recording sound, documenting with photos at the same time in create a visual dimension to the piece. We then edited the sound in Logic, and put it together with the photos in iMovie.The recording is titled “Calling You” . The work was part of the exhibition hosted at The Powerhouse, Pont-tyweli, Llandysul from 24 - 28 August.
I was becoming increasingly attuned to the sounds within the rural landscape of West Wales, which was rarely quiet, contrary to popular perceptions. Welsh sheep in particular seemed to be in constant communication with each other. I realised that in the re-sounding of the decommissioned telephone exchange I was finding another way to interrupt the cycle of forgetfulness and abandoning of the past to move forward that is such a strong force within the anthropocene. My intention is always to interrupt this cycle, unearth the past and its forgotten voices, review it, connect it to the present and future, to make visible the invisible and hidden (with permission). Close to the house was the local primary school which was now closed, with students moved to a larger more modern building. In 2015 hSquared created another re-sounding work at/with the school, developing it further by including other sounds occurring in the immediate surrounding environment at the time (overhead jets, chain saw, shovelling manure…) and later interweaving local schoolchildren’s voices, thus creating a richer sound composition evoking past and present. “School’s Out!” was accompanied by a visual documentation with photographs. This was then shown to audiences at the former school which was then being used as a community cultural centre.
In June 2015 I was invited to to present School’s Out! at the International Society of Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) 15th Congress: Utopias, Realities, Heritages. Ethnographies for the 21st century, in Zagreb, Croatia. The sound panel was “interested in looking at the sonic-ethnography as an authored narrativisation of an empirical experience, in opposition to an articulation of transcendent principles, which ascribe conceptual causes to the unfolding of life. ”School’s Out” in its problematizing notions of the ‘rural idyll’ and contemporary rural life and traditions resonated fully with this brief.
In September 2016 I was invited to create a ‘sound jam’ (a series of sound works) with participants at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities/ESA Research Network Sociology of the Arts 9th midterm conference, at the University of Porto, Portugal.
From 8 - 10th September I facilitated workshops with a group of conference participants, improvising with and re-sounding the buildings and constructions of the conference area, using a variety of beaters, sticks and sounding tools, both found on site and brought with me. We recorded audio and visuals of the workshops. I was then invited to prepare a finale ‘ceremony’ for the conference, with the sound workshop participants after the plenary. Together we read a manifesto we had composed, and ‘played’ the central outside conference area, finally inviting all conference participants to play and re-sound the area with us.
