With walking artist Simon Persighetti (Wrights & Sites) and sound artist Tony Whitehead explore the edges of Plymouth Sound following signals, echoes, calls and songs blowing in the wind. Help collect an archive of sounds to shape into a programme for Plymouth Arts Centre radio station Freesound which will be broadcasting on line from 7 August to 6 September 09.
Will be working on with schools as part at INSTAL festival, Glasgow in March 2009. The project involves both sound walks and visual poetry.
Following the success of our first Dartmoor listening retreat last year, composer Richard Povall and myself are running a second one in May (14-17th).
The retreat gives participants the space and time to immerse themselves in the sound environment of this unique place, to learn more about the various sounds, especially the many and varied voices of animals and to spend time responding creatively to what is heard.
In particular we’ll be out and about day and night doing sound walks, learning the songs and calls of birds and other creatures that live on the moors and simply taking pleasure in the flow of water over stone or the soft whisper of the breeze in the trees. We’ll also make field recordings of the various sounds which we’ll then edit and use as the basis for composition – no previous knowlege is necessary as we’ll show particpants how to do this. We will also consider other ways of responding to what is heard, visually and with text.
The retreat is particulalrly designed for artists wanting to build an appreciation of the natural sonic environment into their work and individuals who would like to include work with sound in community/environmental arts projects.
Find out more at www.auneheadarts.org.uk
01822 890 539
Simon Persighetti and myself shared our city/forest explorations with fourteen keen adventurers yesterday. Personal highlights of a really fun day include: fourteen people buying one eccles cake in the bus station cafe to feed a pigeon; fourteen people standing in Coral bookies watching a horse race; planting wild flower seeds in a patch of grassy `non-space’ outside the police station; running on the spot and succesfully getting worms to come up to the surface; making origami cranes and decorating a forest tree with them; the whole group walking with eyes closed along a forest track; trying to find north while standing amongst the trees; standing in silence in the forest surrounded by birds.
A few notes written in advance of the Animal Gaze walk here.
The Animal Gaze walk is now fully booked.
On 31 January 2009 artist Simon Persighetti and myself will be leading a couple of walks that explore the themes of the Animal Gaze exhibition. This large show considers the often paradoxical relationship between animals and humans. Full details of the walk here.
Nice review of our Kings Place performance here
” ‘Sound Walk’ was a collaboration between sound artists Tony Whitehead and Matthew Sansom, presented by the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Tony Whitehead had spent a day in and around Kings Cross, keeping a sound diary in which he wrote descriptions of the noises he heard, then honing these descriptions into a poem. Whitehead’s words were projected, verse by verse, onto a screen while we listened to Matthew Sansom’s composition – a soundscape constructed from recordings he had made of the ambient sounds of Kings Cross. This was serious, contemplative work which benefited from being presented in a concert hall: had I encountered it in a gallery or on a CD my attention span might not have been long enough to appreciate it, but sitting in a darkened room, concentrating on the patterns of sounds and words, it was fascinating how things were gradually revealed.”
Its online at Bill Drummond’s The 17 website here
This text accompanied Mathew Sansom’s field recording based composition performed at King’s Place yesterday as part of a series of SPNM performances. One audience member described it as the “writing of a rural poet with culture shock”!
In a series of short simple texts accompanying a new work by composer Matthew Sansom, Tony will describe his personal impressions of the sounds of Kings Cross. These are based on a close listening to the area in a number of visits over the past few weeks. From footsteps and voices at St Pancras to robins and falling leaves in Argyle Square the descriptions hope to encourage others to consider their relationship to the often overlooked everyday sounds and silences that accompany our lives.
