For best experience listen on headphones, or play on large screen with good speakers, preferably at head height.
In 2022 April, I participated in a collaborative project at the Ceramic House Brighton, with ceramics artist Juss Heinsalu, exploring the concept of Edges and Peripheries. This was supported by funding from Creative Scotland and iPortunus. Through a series of experimental conversations, and text-based communication, we began to ask, ‘what constituted life’, ‘intelligence’, who defined that, and how anthropocentric were our definitions? This was shaped by my own research into using genetic editing, with the Non Random Collective, as an adaptation response to climate change and the ethical implications of that.
What emerged was an idea about how we might take an experimental leap to create new definitions of life, explore new modes of communication, think about how life might have formed many hundreds of thousands of years ago, hybrid forms of life connected to stone, soil, rock, plant, and animal. In response to the theme, I created the film Continents Drifting and Juss, a large scale ceramic work created.
These works are the first in a set or series of works that we will continue to examine going forward, but here is a sample of the works we developed for the Brighton Festival Open House exhibition.
So we finally have a video reel of how the production Hidden was created at 42nd Street in Manchester, earlier this year. I don’t think the camera loves me, or at least I am not that comfortable in front of the camera, but hey there I am in my studio, woohoo. Also cool that you get to hear some of my sound designs throughout.
I’m delighted that the film maker used my music for the closing credits, the rock music that plays throughout was composed by Tony Doyle and was used for the ground floor scene.
We are all delighted that we are currently shortlisted for the Northern Soul Awards, its a really proud moment for us and all the teen carers who helped make this production happen.
In the evening we performed a new work generated by text performed by the attendees of the sound camp and collected objects.
After a brief introduction to acoustic ecology and listening methods each participant was given a listening meditation (meditation and composition). They brought this on their walks through the reserve. Later, we recorded their texts and a series of sound performances they created with materials they collected as part of the listening meditation and object collection. These were incorporated into a live coded and 3d graphic score performance, see image above.
This performance was broadcast online and performed at the London sound camp. We will have sound and images of the evenings performance to follow.
The HIDDEN immersive theatre performance launches this evening at The Horsefall in Manchester. The play written by Tom Bowtell and directed by Annette Mees explores the world of young carers.
I was hired as the sound designer for this production and found the whole process incredibly exciting. I worked with Tony Doyle to create a spatial audio mix for this performance.
You move through three floors of interactive engagement with sound, lighting and characters, experiencing worlds within worlds as you debate the potential of machines to replace carers in the future. This play asks a lot of questions about the ethics of caring and whose job it is to be responsible for disabled or mentally ill family members. A really exciting project.
Another interesting addition to this production is the use of the LiveShout application to broadcast one world of this play, the world of the carers as they monitor the journey of the audience. In this performance, it is their responsibility to ask what choices you made that concern their experience and commitment to caring. I spent several weeks working with the young carers exploring sound design and the use of applications for performance, an element of this is located online through LiveShout.
To listen in to this go to the Locus Sonus website and find the HIDDEN project at 7pm each evening in Manchester. The play runs from the 1st of February to the 11th, except Sundays. There you can earwitness this space with the teens.
